Metadiscourse and Hedging

This thesis reports an exploratory and contrastive corpus study examining two phenomena in postgraduate academic writing: expressing commitment/detachment and signalling authorial presence in dissertations. More specifically, the overall purpose of the study is to investigate how postgraduate academic writers from particular contexts build their academic stance and voice by employing a range of linguistic items that could be identified as hedges, boosters and authorial references. The corpus consists of a total of 90 discussions sections of master’s dissertations, 30 from Turkish L1 writers, 30 from Turkish writers of English and 30 from UK English L1 writers. A range of items, discourse functions and roles were determined during the pilot study via Nvivo 9. Then, the whole corpus was searched and analysed via WordSmith 5.0 based on the linguistic item list signalling certainty/doubt or authorial presence. In order to address two crucial phenomena in dissertation writing of postgrad...

Acquiring proficiency in academic writing is becoming increasingly important for academics, irrespective of the academic discipline, given that publications in highly rated, peer-reviewed international journals have a profound impact on how knowledge is constructed through the process of writing. In academic writing, the use of metadiscourse markers is fundamental since academic writers have to write in such a way that they are able to skilfully distinguish opinion from fact. At the same time, they have to assess their affirmations in suitable and convincing ways. Considering the afore-mentioned, this article examines the use of metadiscourse markers in academic writing in whichspecial attention is paid to the use of hedges and boosters. It is a general analysis and mini-review of the use of metadiscourse markers in academic writing. One empirical research article, from the field of Applied Linguistics, is used for this purpose. An introduction is given about academic writing and the need to use metadiscourse markers. Literature review based on metadiscourse markers in academic writing, with particular emphasis on hedges and boosters, is presented and discussed. The methodology of the study is outlined. The results show that there is a greater use of interactives than interactionals: with regard to interactive markers, transitional/logical connectives were most used, followed by endophoric markers, evidentials, and code glosses; with respect to interactional markers, hedges and boosters were the most used in this category with more hedges used as compared to boosters. Finally, concluding remarks are made about the analysis conducted.

Keywords: metadiscourse markers, interactive(s), interactional(s), hedges, boosters, academic writing, research

The role of English as a lingua franca in the affairs of the world’s nations is currently unquestioned. The multi-faceted character of this role not only facilitates wider communication in a variety of fields and their constituent workplace contexts but also serves as a source of identity and cultural expression among speakers of other languages. In addressing selected language learning, use and associated issues that are salient to this scenario, the present collection of recent research topics in English language studies brings to the initiated reader a smorgasbord of insights into the linguistic environment of the multicultural microcosm that Malaysia is. The topics highlight language and identity, workplace communication, learning science and mathematics in English, community language learning, use of electronic portfolios and forums, academic metadiscourse, the language in literature, acquisition of specific linguistic forms among majority Malay speakers, as well as modelling Malay similes and metaphors in English.

The purpose of this study is to compare the usage of metadiscourse in English and in Chinese research articles (RAs) published in applied linguistics journals and to investigate how metadiscourse may contribute to knowledge construction in RAs. A small corpus in each language was built consisting of 20 journal articles in English and another 20 in Chinese. In order to highlight metadiscourse features, an established model of metadiscourse was adopted to annotate both Chinese and English articles. It was found that there are generally more metadiscourse features in the English sub-corpus than in the Chinese sub-corpus. While both English sub-corpus and Chinese sub-corpus were found to use statistically significantly more interactive metadiscourse resources (organising discourse) than interactional metadiscourse resources (indicating writers' attitude and stance to themselves, text and audience), the English sub-corpus employed statistically significantly more interactional metadiscourse features than the Chinese sub-corpus. Implications of this study are discussed for both English and Chinese academic writing, including the teaching of English writing as a second language (L2).

Expressing an authorial stance in contextually valued ways may be
especially challenging for English as a Second Language (L2) writers (in addition, certainly, to many L1 writers), as the subtle ways that writers in the disciplines go about evaluating evidence and positioning the reader toward their views are largely tacit and therefore not often made explicit to students. In response to this problem, this chapter discusses ways that writing specialists can assist faculty in the disciplines to become explicitly aware of stance expressions in their students’ writing. Drawing on analysis of student writing in two disciplinary contexts (political theory and economics) as well as interviews with the course instructors, I offer examples of stance features that appear to be valued in these two contexts even though they run below the instructors’ fully conscious awareness. I then discuss ways that disciplinary faculty can be assisted to identify these features explicitly. The larger goal of this chapter is to argue for a way of reading students’ disciplinary writing that is sensitive to the details of stance-taking and to the language related problems that many students experience when writing in the disciplines.

From a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective, this paper reports on the findings of an exploratory study examining the features of the academic texts produced by three groups of postgraduates: native speakers of Turkish (TL1), English (EL1) and Turkish speakers of English (EL2). To this end, the study involves a microdiscourse analysis of a corpus of ninety discussion sections of dissertations to identify and classify the choices made by the authors for expressing commitment/detachment in presenting knowledge claims. The results indicated interesting similarities and differences across the groups in the ways in which writers qualified their level of commitment to a higher level and detachment from the claims in their writing. In other words, this can be described as a cline from the highest to the lowest, even intentionally withholding their commitment. By looking at the hedging and boosting devices contributing to the interactive side of academic writing, the discourse constructed by Turkish L1 writers appeared to be slightly less interpersonal but highly authoritative overall. In contrast, the results suggested that the Turkish writers of English were similar to their English L1 counterparts in terms of building a significantly more cautious strategy for presenting knowledge claims and making use of relatively fewer boosting devices when presenting their claims. It is hoped that the implications of the findings can be useful for teaching of academic writing to postgraduates within the contexts of the study.


Keywords: Postgraduate academic writing, Metadiscourse, Hedges and boosters, Discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, Commitment and detachment

The present study aims to examine cultural variations in the use of metadiscourse between Iranian mining engineerings' research articles and their English counterparts. Hyland's (2005) taxonomy was adopted as a framework and the corpora in the present study comprised a total of 68 articles written in English, 34 articles from native English researchers and 34 from Iranian researchers.The analysis showed that there were some cultural differences in the amounts and types of metadiscourse markers.The occurrence of interactional metadiscourse markers in the English corpus was generally more than the Persian corpus. However, hedges were more frequently in Persian corpus than the English one. On the other hand, self mentions and attitude markers were used frequently in the English corpus. Nevertheless, apart from self mentions,there was not any significant difference in the application of interactional metadiscourse markers between in the two corpora. Significant differences in the use of intractional metadiscourse markers could imply the influence of Persian writers' cultural identity.The use of evidential and transition devices in the Persian corpus was higher than that of English corpus, whereas English authors use frame markers and code glosses more than their Persian counterparts. The findings show significant differences in the case of code glosses and evidentials.The utilization of boosters, engagements, and endorphics were approximately the same across corpora. Finally,attitudes and self mentions were the less frequent metadiscourse markers in both corpora and this may be related to the nature of hard sciences because they are considered as objective and unbiased.

We are happy to announce that an open-access special issue on #Metadiscourse, edited by Erdem Akbas and Ciler Hatipoglu, is now relased by Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice!

Please see the editorial and table of contens of the issue entitled ''Metadiscourse Variations across Academic Genres: Rhetorical Preferences in Textual and Interpersonal Markers''.

The issue covers the following articles on Metadiscourse:

Annelie Ädel
''Variation in Metadiscursive “You” Across Genres: From Research Articles to Teacher Feedback''

Claire Louise Rodway
''Metadiscourse Use in a Dialogic Feedback Practice''

Vesna Bogdanovic, Ivana Mirovic
''Young Researchers Writing in ESL and the Use of Metadiscourse: Learning the Ropes''

Erdem Akbas, Jan Hardman
''Strengthening or Weakening Claims in Academic Knowledge Construction: A Comparative Study of Hedges and Boosters in Postgraduate Academic Writing''

Sheena Gardner, Chao Han
''Transitions of Contrast in Chinese and English University Student Writing''

Melanie Andresen, Heike Zinsmeister
''Stylistic Differences between Closely Related Disciplines: Metadiscourse in German Linguistics and Literary Studies''

Hmoud S. Alotaibi
''Metadiscourse in Dissertation Acknowledgments: Exploration of Gender Differences in EFL Texts''

Hanna Martikainen
''Modal Markers as Potential Sources of Distortion in Translated Medical Abstracts''

Alessandra Molino
''What I’m Speaking is almost English…: A Corpus-based Study of Metadiscourse in English-medium
Lectures at an Italian University''

Çiler Hatipoğlu, Sedef Algı
''Catch a Tiger by the Toe: Modal Hedges in EFL Argumentative Paragraphs''

If you are interested in any of the articles in the issue, please visit and download: http://www.estp.com.tr/issues/issue-18-4/

All the best,

Erdem Akbas

Üstsöylem (metadiscourse), yazarların okuyucu ile ilişki kurmak için kullandıkları araçlardır. Bu araçlar; söylemi düzenlemeye, okuyucuyu metne dahil etmeye ve yazarın tutumunu okuyucuya aktarmaya yardım etmektedirler (Zarei, 2011). Üstsöylem, bir söylemin ya da yazarın metnin içeriğine veya okuyucuya olan uzaklığını düzenlemek için kullandığı dilsel kaynaklardır (Hyland 2000). Bunu yaparken yazar, bir takım üstsöylemsel araçlar kullanmaktadır. Üstsöylem belirleyicileri (metadiscourse markers) olarak anılan bu araçlar, yazarın ortaya koyduğu metnin içeriği ile doğrudan ilişkili olmasa da yazarın, metnin alıcısı ile iletişim kurmayı amaçladığını ve metnin anlamsal içeriğini kavrama konusunda metin alıcısının ihtiyaçlarının farkında olduğunu göstermektedir. Üstsöylem belirleyicileri, etkileşimli (interactive) ve etkileşimsel (interactional) olarak iki ulama ayrılmaktadır. Etkileşimsel ulamın alt ulamlarından biri olan kaçınsamalar (hedges), yazarın, alternatif sesleri ve bakış
açılarını algılayarak verdiği karar ve bir önerme hakkındaki
yorumunu metne yansıtmasıdır. Vurgulayıcılar (boosters) ise
yazarın alternatif fikirleri, karşıt bakış açılarını kapattığı ve
kendi kesinliğini ifade ettiği araçlardır.
Bu bağlamda bu çalışmanın konusu, Hyland (2005)’ın ortaya
koyduğu Üstsöylem Modeli temel alınarak Sosyal Bilimler
alanında yazılmış Türkçe bilimsel metinlerde kullanılan
kaçınsamaların ve vurgulayıcıların sıkılıklarının saptanmasıdır.
Derlem, ULAKBİM Sosyal Bilimler Veri Tabanında yer alan ve
2010-2015 yılları arasında yayımlanan süreli yayınlardan
(Sosyoloji Dergisi, Eğitim ve Öğretim Araştırmaları Dergisi, Türk
Psikoloji Dergisi, Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi, Felsefe Dünyası,
Turizm Araştırmaları Dergisi, Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi)
rastlantısal olarak seçilmiştir. Toplamda 145.448 sözcükten
oluşan bir veri tabanı incelenmiştir. Saptanan kaçınsamalar
ve vurgulayıcılar, sıklık ve ki kare analizi ile değerlendirilmiştir.

Abstract Metadiscourse are the tools the authors use to contact the reader. They help organize discourse, include the reader into the text, and convey the attitude of the author to the reader (Zarei, 2011). Metadiscourse is the linguistic sources used by a discourse or author to regulate the distance to the content of the text or the reader (Hyland 2000). In doing so, the author uses a number of metadiscourse tools. These tools, called metadiscourse markers which show that the author aims to communicate with the recipient of the text and is aware of the needs of the text recipient in understanding the semantic content of the text, even though it is not directly related and perspectives. Boosters are the tools that the author closes
alternative ideas, opposing perspectives and expresses his
own certainty.
In this context, the subject of this study is to determine hedges
and boosters used in Turkish academic texts written in the field
of Social Sciences based on the Hyland (2005)’s Metadiscourse
Model. The data is randomly chosen from the periodicals
(Sosyoloji Dergisi, Eğitim ve Öğretim Araştırmaları Dergisi,
Türk Psikoloji Dergisi, Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi, Felsefe
Dünyası, Turizm Araştırmaları Dergisi, Dilbilim Araştırmaları
Dergisi) in the ULAKBİM Social Sciences Database and has
been published between 2010-2015. A database of 145,448
words in total was examined. The hedges and boosters
were detected were evaluated by frequency and chi-square
analysis.

This study explores interactional metadiscourse resources in master’s dissertations (introductions and conclusions) of Turkish students written in Turkish and English. Interactional resources were identified according to Hyland and Tse’s (2004) framework by using WordSmith Tools (5.0). A statistically significant difference between two groups of writers was found in their introductions in terms of overall five subcategories whereas their uses of interactional metadiscourse in conclusions were statistically insignificant. Further analysis showed that Turkish writers of English predominantly used hedges, attitude markers and self-mentions. It is interesting to note that Turkish writers, while writing in their mother tongue, tended to build a strong relationship with their target readers in both of the sections by employing approximately twice engagement markers compared to their peers writing in English.

Within the system of modality, modalization builds an area of uncertainty. It is an intermediate point between positive polarity (it is) and negative polarity (it is not), which has various degrees of indeterminacy (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 176). This indeterminacy includes probability and is expressed through items that Holmes (1990) and Hyland (1998) termed hedges and boosters. However, hedges and boosters can also function within intensity, where they convey a certain level of degree. Through them, writers achieve approval by finding the right balance between the reinforcement of statements with the assurance of reliable knowledge and the tentativeness to convey doubt and adequate social interrelations (Hyland 1998b: 349). The aim of this comparative study is to investigate the usage of hedges and boosters in Italian and Albanian student academic writings in their L1 and L2. Author-related and proposition-related hedges (e.g. suppose, approximately) and boosters (e.g. show, completely) as well as interrelated aspects such as their positioning, orientation, manifestation, and prosody of modalization will be analysed. My paper will interweave Prince et al.’s (1980) categorization of hedges, Quirk et al.’s (1985) model of boosters, Lafuente Millán’s (2008) categorization of approximative meanings and related concepts of the Systemic Functional Grammar (henceforth SFG) (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014) to create an innovative combination. I have compiled two corpora of Italian student writings (around 3 million words each) respectively in Italian and English and two corpora of writings by Albanian students in Albanian (around 2.2 million words) and in English (around 600.000 words). All corpora include a similar number of words and genres for each disciplinary domain as well as a balance of male and female writers. Disciplinary domains pertain to both soft and hard sciences (Social Sciences, Languages and Literature, Medicine, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Informatics). As Toska (2015) stated, very little research has been conducted on academic writing in Albania. Thus, it is essential to initiate research in this field. Results of the quantitative analysis show that hedges were favored by Albanians and boosters were favored by Italians. The neutral position (in-between the clause complex, next to the verb, temporal or finite operator) of hedges and boosters was the most frequently encountered position in my corpora, followed by medial (in-between the clause complex, not next to verb, temporal or finite operator) and thematic position (at the beginning of the clause). Lastly, the same hedge (probably) and booster (significantly) appeared as author-related (shield) and proposition-related (approximator). This overlap between author-related and proposition-related categories demonstrates the importance of context in ranking these items and suggests relevant modifications to the original categorization by Prince et al. (1980). From my findings, I conclude that Italians show more commitment than Albanians, who appear more tentative in their writings.

Como ocurre con la mayor parte de los elementos pragmáticos, la cortesía verbal cumple una función esencial en la elusión de los efectos no deseados de los actos amenazadores de la imagen, lo cual permite que se establezca una comunicación eficaz en la interpretación de los textos. Con el fin de facilitar esta labor, el escritor emplea una serie de recursos retóricos interpersonales −asociados con la expresión de la voz del autor− que se utilizan para proyectar una imagen social determinada del emisor del escrito y, al mismo tiempo, establecer un diálogo eficaz con su audiencia. En el análisis textual realizado en la presente investigación se identificaron y clasificaron las estrategias interpersonales de cortesía verbal, empleadas por los autores en la evaluación de las fuentes de su estudio en los distintos apartados de 48 textos escritos en la disciplina de la Lingüística Aplicada. El corpus estudiado se compone de 24 memorias de máster escritas por 12 estudiantes estadounidenses y 12 estudiantes españoles de posgrado en su lengua nativa y otros 24 artículos de investigación elaborados por 12 escritores profesionales en inglés y 12 en español. Los resultados muestran una mayor tendencia a la evaluación en los textos escritos por anglohablantes. Esta es especialmente frecuente entre los escritores profesionales, quienes a diferencia de los estudiantes de posgrado, hacen uso de la cortesía valorativa. Los estudiantes norteamericanos usan mecanismos de cortesía negativa para modular el grado de fuerza ilocutiva en su voz y contrarrestar así las posibles amenazas a la imagen del destinatario.

Abstract The purpose of this study is to compare the usage of metadiscourse in English and in Chinese research articles (RAs) published in applied linguistics journals and to investigate how metadiscourse may contribute to knowledge construction in RAs. A small corpus in each language was built consisting of 20 journal articles in English and another 20 in Chinese. In order to highlight metadiscourse features, an established model of metadiscourse was adopted to annotate both Chinese and English articles. It was found that there are generally more metadiscourse features in the English sub-corpus than in the Chinese sub-corpus. While both English sub-corpus and Chinese sub-corpus were found to use statistically significantly more interactive metadiscourse resources (organising discourse) than interactional metadiscourse resources (indicating writers' attitude and stance to themselves, text and audience), the English sub-corpus employed statistically significantly more interactional metadiscourse features than the Chinese sub-corpus. Implications of this study are discussed for both English and Chinese academic writing, including the teaching of English writing as a second language (L2).

Farklı akademik konular üzerinde çalışan akademik yazarların ilgili söylemsel topluluğa yönelik bilimsel bir metni nasıl üreteceği konusunda farkındalığı olması gerekir. Okuyucuların metin içinde karşılaştıkları ifadeler, gerçekte yazarın konu ile ilgili kendi çıkarımlarının yazar tarafından değerlendirilip sunulmasından oluşmaktadır. Yazar tarafından metinde ileri sürülen önermelerin kesinlik dereceleri değişik dilsel ifadelerle okuyucunun yorumuna sunulabilir. Metin içinde kesinlik bildiren ifadelerin başında kaçınma (hedges) ve vurgulayıcı (boosters) dilsel kullanımlar gelmektedir (Hyland, 2005a). Bu konuyla ilgili Türkçe ve İngilizce akademik metinlerde üstsöylemsel öğelerin kullanımı üzerine birçok çalışmalar yapılmıştır (Akbaş, 2012; Akbaş, 2013; Algı, 2012; Bayyurt, 2010; Can, 2006; Çandarlı, 2013; Fidan, 2002; Doyuran, 2009), ancak, bu çalışmalarda daha çok yazarların değişik akademik metin türlerindeki dil kullanımına bakılmıştır. Bu çalışmanın amacı ikidilli (Türkçe ve İngilizce) lisansüstü öğrencilerinin akademik metinlerde kaçınma (hedging) ve vurgulayıcı (booster) ifadeleri nasıl algıladıklarını ve uyguladıklarını saptamaktır. Çeşitli üniversitelerde lisansüstü eğitim alan (yüksek lisans ve doktora) 17 öğrenci bu betimleyici ve açınlayıcı (exploratory) pilot çalışmaya katılmıştır. Çalışmanın sonuçları ikidilli lisansüstü öğrencilerinin İngilizce metinlerdeki kaçınma ve vurgulayıcı ifadeleri daha doğru ve yerinde algılarken ve metin içinde kullanırken Türkçe metindeki kaçınma ve vurgulayıcı ifadeleri algılamakta ve kullanmakta güçlük çektiklerini göstermektedir. Diğer bir deyişle, lisansüstü eğitim gören öğrenciler genellikle akademik metinleri İngilizce okuduklarından dolayı kaçınma ve vurgulayıcı ifadeleri İngilizce’de daha rahat ve daha kolay algılayıp kullanırken Türkçe akademik metindeki vurgulama ve kaçınma ifadelerini seçme konusunda güçlük çekmektedirler. Türkiye’deki üniversitelerde eğitim veren araştırmacıların Türkçe olarak yazdıkları akademik metin sayısının artması ve bilimsel yazma dili olarak Türkçe’nin gelişmesi açısından ileriye yönelik öneriler sunması açısından bu çalışmanın sonuçları büyük önem taşımaktadır. Ancak, bu çalışmanın sonuçlarının genellenebilirliğinin artırılması için daha geniş katılımlı çalışmaların yapılması tavsiye edilmektedir.

Grice’s maxim of quality (1989, pp.26-27 [1975, p.45]) includes the statement: “Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence”. In academic communication what we mean by “adequate evidence” in support of statements about knowledge or information is of great importance. The way to talk about the quality of evidence is through words like ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘possibly’ or ‘seems’. This area of language is called ‘modality’. 

This paper will mainly consider the importance of ‘modality’ in EAP, arguing that it is a particularly useful concept for both developing academic competence and for analysing academic texts. It can help us address some of the most critical questions in academic communication: 

• What is the relationship between language form and language use?

• What is the relationship between the language choices that academic writers make and the content of their message?

• What is the role of evidence in supporting arguments and what means are available to competent writers to express their evidence?

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate current EAP textbooks in terms of pedagogy of transition markers. Transition markers, e.g. moreover, therefore, are interactive metadiscourse devices which facilitate the reader’s understanding of the text (Hyland, 2005). Previous research shows that they pose a challenge to learners of academic English, who tend to overuse transition markers and misuse them both semantically and stylistically. Recommendations for teaching transition markers from the literature were used to evaluate 39 published EAP textbooks. The results show a rather low application of the principles identified, ranging from 0% to 59%, with an average of 21% (median 18%). The study has implications for EAP practitioners as well as materials writers. Most importantly, EAP teachers should supplement textbooks with authentic academic texts and possibly with concordance lines from corpora, explicitly discourage overuse of transition markers, teach syntactic distinctions between conjunctions and adverbials and raise stylistic awareness related to the use of transition markers in formal academic texts.

This paper reports on the findings of a study that aimed to identify the linguistic items which act as hedges in the speeches of King Abdullah II of Jordan, as well as to examine the pragmatic functions of these devices. Twenty-five political speeches of King Abdullah II, randomly selected from the official website of King Abdullah (see Appendix), were analyzed adopting Salager-Meyer’s (1994) taxonomy. The study revealed that the most frequently used hedging device in King Abdullah’s speech is modal auxiliaries, and the most frequently used hedging device subcategory is the modal auxiliary “can”. The findings suggest that these hedging devices fulfil several pragmatic functions. These findings contribute to understanding that speaking a second language (Arabic, in the case of King Abdullah II) neither affects the types of hedging devices nor the functions these devices perform. Moreover, contrary to scientific discourse (e.g., medicine), the research concludes that political discour...

The present article investigates the use of everyday academic language in German history writing. The starting point is a brief discussion of the two conceptual tools used in this study: alltägliche Wissenschaftssprache and metadiscourse. The data for an empirical and contextual analysis of everyday academic language have been extracted from a parallel corpus of German history writing. The analysis confirms that the most frequent patterns found in historiographic metadiscourse belong to the category of everyday academic language. It is suggested that one meaningful way of categorizing this vocabulary consists of linking it to a number of acts and processes characteristic of academic writing in general and of history writing in particular, namely the organization of knowledge in textual formats, the accommodation and refutation of existing knowledge claims and the self-reflective identification of cognitive and communicative processes involved in the creation of (historical) knowledge.