2. Four types of hedging language


According to Hyland (1996), there are four general reasons writers tend to hedge their ideas:

1.      „Where the principal role of the hedging device is to specify the extent to which a term accurately describes the reported phenomena, it is likely to be acting as an attribute hedge.“ (example: „Viewed in this way the concept of lateral heterogeneity becomes obsolete“)

2.      Where the principal role of the hedging device is to convey the writer's assessment of the certainty of the truth of a proposition, then it is likely to be performing a reliability function

(example: „However, the opposite is also possible, and it cannot be ruled out that the 21 -kD

polypeptides seen in the bacteroid lane…“)

3.      Where the device occurs in a context which conceals the writer's viewpoint and avoids personal responsibility for propositional truth, then it is probably acting as a writer-oriented hedge (example: „The present work indicates that the aromatic ring to which the carboxyl group is bound is not necessary, provided that a bulky substituent is present…“)

4.      Where the writer acknowledges personal responsibility for the validity of propositional content or invites reader involvement, then the device is likely to be acting as a reader-oriented hedge“ (example of „managing susbstantive disagreement and avoiding conflict“: „We do not know the reason for the discrepancy between our results and those of Ngernpraintsin et al, but it might reflect genetic differences in….“)

The author argued that even though using hedging phrases in academic writing is very important, it is difficult to understand why the writers hedge their ideas without seeing a complete picture which would include social and institutional contexts.

Source: Ken Hyland’s article on types of hedging language retrieved from

https://courses.washington.edu/englhtml/engl563/PDFs/Applied%20Linguistics-1996-HYLAND-433-54.pdf on Oct 25, 2021