hedging in academic writing
Hedging in academic writing | Pinkie | October 20th, 2000
Greetings to those who are interested in this topic: apologies to those who aren't...
Has anyone out there read extensively on hedging in academic writing?
I've been reading Hyland (supplied with TDA), and find many of his statements rather hard to swallow: he seems to me to be confounding a) objective assessments of the probability of a given outcome and b) rhetorical "bending" of those assessments. Often, he appears to subsume (a) within (b).
Does anyone (tutor, CP or innocent bystander) know of authors who have looked at this question in any depth- ie who have tried to distinguish between "objective hedging" and "rhetorical hedging", and/or have attempted a detailed analysis of the types of probability assessment that "objective hedging" might be considered to cover?
I see a certain Crompton has published two articles in "English for Specific Purposes" that deal with the precise definition of hedging: I haven't seen the full texts, only the abstracts. Do they deal with the sort of thing I'm talking about?
Best wishes,
Pinkie
Spain
Re: Hedging in academic writing | James Hobbs | October 21st, 2000
Pinkie,
You might want to look up Hyland's 1996 article "Writing without conviction? Hedging in science research articles" (Applied Linguistics 17/4). Although he's looking specifically at science research articles I think many of the points he makes could be applied to academic writing in general. In the article he presents a very clear distinction between "content-oriented" hedges, which concern the "adequacy" of a proposition, and "reader-oriented" hedges, which concern the "acceptability" of a proposition. Is this what you have in mind when you refer to objective hedges vs. rhetorical hedges?
While making this distinction, Hyland also makes the point that while such conceptual definitions of hedges are relatively easy to come up with, it is often difficult to determine which category a particular hedge belongs to. He argues that in some cases both functions may be realized simultaneously in the same hedge.
You also refer to Crompton. I found his 1997 paper "Hedges in academic writing..." (ESP 16/4) very useful. It's basically a critique of the lexical approach to identifying hedges. For example, he raises the issue of "responsibility for propositions": in a statement of the form
"Smith suggested that X is true".
It is unclear whether "suggested" reflects the current writer's lack of commitment to Smith's findings (and is thus a hedge), or whether it simply reports the original author's lack of commitment to his own proposition. However, if you plan to read Crompton then you might want to look up the following article at the same time:
Salager-Meyer, F (2000) Procrustes' recipe: hedging and positivism (ESP 19:175-187).
This short paper is essentially a retort to Crompton, arguing that hedges are by their vary nature vague and ambiguous, and ultimately cannot be pinned down to clear-cut, unambiguous categories.
One last point on reading: I haven't been able to get hold of the following collection, but it looks like a very useful one:
Markkanen, R& Schroder, H (1997) Hedging and discourse: Approaches to the analysis of a pragmatic phenomenon in academic texts (Berlin: de Gruyter).
James Hobbs
Japan
Re: Hedging in academic writing | Pinkie | October 22nd, 2000
Hi James!
Many thanks for this EXTREMELY useful reply. Sounds like you really have looked into this in depth: for an assignment, or your dissertation, or purely out of interest?
Hyland's (1996) distinction between "content-oriented hedges" concerning "adequacy" and "reader-oriented hedges" concerning "acceptability" certainly sounds like the sort of thing I'm getting at. I should be able to get hold of this article this week, and will get back to you. The English for Specific Purposes articles will take me rather longer! By the way, no Markkanen & Schroder in my library either, I'm afraid.
Thanks again.
Best wishes,
Pinkie
Spain
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