中英学者英文学术论文引言中模糊限制语的对比研究

发布时间：2016-08-31 06:49

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background
English, as a popular language, gradually becomes “the predominate language inthe published academic discourse”(Hyland, 1998a:246), and it has been used as amedium to get the articles published in international English language journals,including Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Second Language Writing, English forSpecific Purposes etc. What is more, Baker(2009) indicates that English has gainedthe position of “lingua franca” in academic writing. Thus, both the novices andestablished researchers need to improve their English proficiency for being acceptedand maintaining their international statuses among the members of their communities.Researchers who want to achieve communicative functions, get to have the abilities,like lexico-syntactic skills, and the generic structure suitable for an academic genre(Swales, 1990,2004). What is more, when the researchers are non-native Englishspeakers, they have a lot of issues to consider, especially, the cross-cultural factors.In an academic article, the Introduction part, as the first part to be read after theabstract, is pretty important, so if this part is not that interesting to arouse the readers’attention, they might not be likely to continue reading this article( Safnil, 2001),which means the introduction section is used to motivate the readers to read the wholearticle.Therefore, this section should be as interesting and convincing as possible. Inaddition, it can show the important proving ground in a certain field to readers tounderstand. Actually, the introduction section is pretty complex, which has beenproved by many researchers(Gilbert & Mulkay, 1987). That is to say, the introductionsection is more than gathering all the relative facts, and it should also include thepeer-colleagues’ own perceptions. Belcher(2009:209), argues that the introductionsection in a research article is mainly used to offer as much information as possible tothe readers to understand the “argument and its stakes”. Swales and Freak(1994) havemade similar conclusion, which shows two aspects: giving a reason logically, andmotivating the readers to continue reading. 
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1.2 Significance of the Study
This comparative study on lexical hedging usage in the introduction of RAs willbenefit many people, including second language learners, second language teachers,second language novices researchers etc, by helping them create high qualityintroductions via expressing their statements in a more appropriate way through usinghedging devices properly. Hedging devices have many functions, which have beenfound out by some academic scholars( Salager-Meyer, 1994; Hyland, 1996a; Varttala,2001). Firstly, writers could convey their tentative claims by using hedges for theirlack of knowledge. In this way, the writers can attenuate their absoluteness. Also, thewriters could show their politeness and not be against other statements claimed byother previous scholars, which means that hedging devices could help writers toexpress their opinions much more modestly with humanity to some degree. Inaddition, hedging devices could help writers to avoid criticism which is not necessaryat all, by offering them much room to share their own thoughts with others. Besides,hedging devices are very useful, especially when writers want to claim precisely.Hedging devices play an important role in academic discourse. However, theneglect of the awareness of hedging usage still exists, especially in the empiricalresearch articles due to the fact that some academic researchers held that empirical research should be as accurate as possible. Whereas they misunderstand the hedgingdevices, with which they could convey ideas with more preciseness. According toJalilifar (2007b), hedging has aroused many researchers and scholars’ interests,especially those in corpora linguistics who have treated hedging as a particular featureof academic writing (Salager-Meyer,1994; Hyland, 1998a). However, those studiesare primarily about classification of hedges used by English writers and non-nativeEnglish writers, or investigating the similarities and differences of making statementsof interpersonal metadiscourse in different degree, focusing on one specific part,abstract(Jalilifar,2007a;Jalilifar,2007b; Swale,1990; Hyland,2000), and even somecomparative studies between English and non-native writers in certain fields likemedical English, natural science, biology etc( Salager Meyer,1994; Hyland,1998a).Some studies have conducted on hedging in the causal or oral discoursecontext(Coates, 1987), and some studies have conducted on the cross-linguistic in thefield of literature like Mahmound Samaie, et al(2014).
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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Definitions of Hedges
Hedging, as the nature of language, was first mentioned by Peirce(1902:748),who is the first person to study the hedging nature of language. The concept of FussySets is originated from Zadhn’s(1965:339) work, which was defined as “a class inwhich the transition from membership to non-membership is gradual rather thanabrupt”. Gradually, in the field of linguistics, some subjects have appeared, like thehedging linguistics, hedging semantics, and hedging language semantics, etc. In the1970s, the hedging language has drawn Lakoff’s attention. It is Lakoff who makes agreat contribution to the concept construction of hedging, and defines hedges as those“ words whose job it is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy”(1972:195). Hedges, asthe academic term, first appears in his revolutionary paper named “Hedges: a study inmeaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts”(Lakoff, G, 1972). Later, thesemantic functions of hedges interest him a lot, and thus he conducts research onwords which can decrease the membership of things, words like rather, sort of , kindof, etc.With the development of hedging on the aspects of pragmatics and discourseanalysis, its concept has been extended from the purely semantic one to bothpragmatic one and semantic one. In this way, more scholars have a tendency to definehedging from a functional aspect. Among them, Brown and Levinson (1978:145) tryto explain hedging as the phenomenon of politeness. They claim that hedges are usedto convey the meaning of illocutionary force of speech acts, and mainly to reduce thestrength. Thus, hedging is employed as a strategy to protect the hearers’ faces frombeing threatened.
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2.2 Classifications of Hedges
Due to the fact that there is no such a definition that scholars agree on, thus thestudy on hedging has aroused scholars’ great interests, and different taxonomies ofhedges have been given, corresponding to various definitions of hedges. While, just aswhat has been mentioned the advantages and disadvantages of various definitions ofhedges, the various divisions of hedges will also have their merits and demerits. In thefollowing part, different kinds of taxonomies of hedges will be showed.When Zadeh(1972) first gives the concept of hedging in his work “A FuzzySet”, he also mentions that the hedges could be divided into two categories from semantic perspective. The first category includes words like very, more or less, much,highly, slight, etc, which are used to modify fuzzy words. The second categoryincludes words like essentially, actually, regular, technically, etc, which are used to bethe representations of the patterns in which the unites of fuzzy words are modified.
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Chapter Three Methodology.....18
3.1 Research Questions......18
3.2 Research Instrument.....18
3.3 Data Collection.....19
3.3.1 Data Sources...... 19
3.3.2 Criteria for the Identification of Hedges..........20
3.3.3 Processing Procedures.......23
Chapter Four Results and Discussion.......25
4.1 Overview.......25
4.2 Frequencies and Distribution of Hedges in Both Corpora........27
4.2.1 Modal Auxiliaries...... 27
4.2.2 Full Verbs........... 34
4.2.3 Adverbs.......38
4.2.4 Adjectives...........42
4.2.5 Nouns..........45
4.3 Description and Interpretation of Similarities and Differences........47
Chapter Five Conclusion...........56
5.1 Implications.......... 56
5.2 Limitations....58
5.3 Suggestions for Further Study.....58

Chapter Four Results and Discussion

Based on Varttala’s(2001) model of lexical hedges categorization and rulesduring the data collection procedures which are introduced in the previous parts, thischapter presents quantitative and qualitative analysis of the study, including the resultof statistical analysis, as well as the textual analysis of lexical hedges devices with theexamples from the two sub-corpora. Then, the similarities, differences and possiblereasons will be discussed and given. Hopefully, this study will shed some helpfulinsightful on academic writing for the Chinese EFL learners.

4.1 Overview

Hedging as a phenomenon which has been examined before. It could occurfrequently in research articles in order to achieve various functions via differentlinguistic forms, including modal auxiliaries, full verbs, adverbs, adjectives, as well asnouns, which are the mainly four categories examined in this study. The similaritiesand differences about the lexical hedges in the two corpora will be given in thefollowing discussion in detail. The similarities and differences will be showed directlyin the following table.This table shows the data of lexical hedging devices employed to expressepistemic meanings in the two corpora. The Ant Conc3.2.4 has been used to count thefrequencies of lexical hedging forms in these two corpora respectively. The resultshows that both native English researchers and Chinese researchers frequently usehedges in their introduction part. According to the table, the overall incidence is33.4 per 1,000 words (n=502) in the native English researchers’ introductions of RA,and 22.8 per 1,000 words (n=136) in the counterpart Chinese researchers’introductions of RA, which shows a high frequency of lexical hedging devices usagesin the research articles in the introduction section. The frequency might be a littlehigher than that found in the other types of research articles. In addition, there aremany other differences showed in this table. As for the types of hedges used in the 40introductions, the native English researchers employ 125 sub-types of lexical hedges,while the Chinese researchers use only 68 sub-types. Compared with the latter, theformer has a tendency of using more types of hedges in the introduction part. That isto say, in the introduction section, the American researchers are more proficient whenthey are using the lexical hedging devices.

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Conclusion

Based on the results reported in the previous sections, this chapter will presentthe implications which is mainly about how to improve the ability of hedging usagesin academic writing, limitations of this study, and suggestions for future research.This research conducts a comparative study of lexical hedges in theself-compiled corpora, the ESP corpus and the CJAL corpus. Based on the dataevidence showed in the last chapter, some findings are as follows: firstly, there aresome significant differences between the two groups of researchers in the lexicalhedging usage. As for the total occurrence and average number of hedges, nativeEnglish researchers outnumber Chinese researchers. Secondly, these differences showthe researchers’ psychological state, concerning their certainty and confidence. Forexample, native English researchers tend to be more tentative and prudent, whileChinese researchers seem to be more confident and authoritative. The reasons mayrelate with the different cultural and language backgrounds. The following are somesuggestions for the novice researchers or English teachers and learners to have abetter understanding about hedging nature, and thus could master the hedging strategyin academic writing.
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The reference (omitted)

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