An intercultural analysis of the use of hedging by Chinese and Anglophone academic English writers

Abstract

Due to the dominance of English as the international language of scientific communication, second language (L2) academic writers with different first languages (L1s) need to enhance their L2 pragmatic competence and make rhetorical and stylistic accommodations to publish their academic work in English-medium journals. Hedging strategies, among other things, are one of the important indicators of L2 pragmatic competence in academic writing. With Crompton’s taxonomy of hedges as the conceptual framework and by referring to the interview findings, we built two purpose-driven corpora and analysed the use of the hedging devices in the conclusion section of applied linguistics research articles written in English by Chinese and Anglophone scholars from intercultural perspectives. We attempted to answer an overarching question: “To what extent did the two groups of academic writers differ in hedging?” Results indicate that: 1) overall, Anglophone academic English writers used more hedges than their Chinese counterparts; 2) Chinese and Anglophone writers did not show statistically significant differences in the frequency of using most of the categories of hedges except for only one subcategory (namely, the “I/we+non-factive verb” structure); 3) both groups showed a similar pattern in the choice of various categories of hedges; 4) there were differences in linguistic expressions between the two groups in the use of hedging. These results are discussed in relation to intercultural rhetoric and L2 academic writer pragmatic competence.

Definitely Maybe: Hedges And Boosters in the HCI Literature

“…Several studies have examined writer characteristics that may influence the use of hedging or boosting (e.g., [25,106]). Among the important influencing factors we can find educational level and background [54,81] as well as cultural aspects (the author's mother tongue for instance) which have been extensively studied [25,57,70,84,85,90,103,106].…”

“…Several studies have examined writer characteristics that may influence the use of hedging or boosting (e.g., [25,106]). Among the important influencing factors we can find educational level and background [54,81] as well as cultural aspects (the author's mother tongue for instance) which have been extensively studied [25,57,70,84,85,90,103,106]. To mitigate the influence of these factors, some linguists have constrained their analyses to only include papers written by native English speakers (e.g., [108]), but doing so provides only a narrow view of publication practices within the analysed domain, especially in scientific writing where papers are written for an international audience.…”

Teachers Helping EFL Students Improve Their Writing Through Written Feedback: The Case of Native and Non-native English-Speaking Teachers' Beliefs

“…In the learning-to-write process, students expect teachers to offer them feedback and teachers do take feedback provision as one of the significant pedagogical procedures in teaching writing (Li et al, 2020 ; Teng and Zhang, 2020 , 2021 ; Zhang and Zhang, 2020 ; Cheng and Zhang, 2021a , b ). Feedback can be offered to students at the global or local levels depending on the learning task expected to be completed (Chen and Zhang, 2017 ; Rahimi and Zhang, 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2021 ). Embedded in the pedagogical contexts, feedback functions to facilitate students' learning process and improve their learning outcomes (Sadler, 1989 ; Hattie and Timperley, 2007 ; Zhang, 2018 ; Gan et al, 2021 ).…”

Reviewing a journal article with clarity and politeness: key language tips for non-native English-speaking reviewers

“…In addition, while non-native English-speaking (NNES) reviewers may have good intentions and a thorough understanding of their role as a reviewer, they may not be fully aware of common sociolinguistic norms in English. They may use inappropriate expressions or tone in their reviews, inadvertently offending or confusing the authors [2,3]. By strategically employing the strategies that are introduced in this paper, NNES authors and reviewers can improve their communication skills.…”