Professional Documents
Culture Documents
between facts
and claims,
writers often use
tentative
language such as
it seems likely 5
“ Hedging
crucial
is
in
academic
discourse, and
hedge words
account for
approximately 1 6
7
Reduce the risk of Ways of being more
opposition precise in reporting
This position results
associates hedges with Hedging may present
scientific imprecision the true state of the
and defines them as writers' understanding
linguistic cues of bias and may be used to
which avoid personal negotiate an accurate
accountability for representation of the 8
statements. state of the knowledge
Positive or negative Established writing
politeness style in English
strategies A certain degree of
Hedging is a rational hedging has become
interpersonal strategy conventionalized.
which supports the
writer's position builds
writer-reader
relationships and 9
guarantees a certain
Types
Examples
As used in a
sentence
1
0
A B C
1
1
A B C
to seem, to appear
Modal lexical (epistemic verbs), to
verbs doubting believe, to assume, In spite of its limitations, the
and evaluating to suggest, to study appears to have a
2
rather than estimate, to tend, to number of important
merely think, to argue, to strengths.
describing indicate, to propose,
to speculate
1
2
A B C
assumption, claim,
We estimate that one in five
4 Nouns possibility, estimate,
marriages end in divorce.
suggestion
1
3
A B C
perhaps, possibly,
There is, perhaps, a good
probably, practically,
5 Adverbs reason why she chose to
likely, presumably,
write in the first person.
virtually, apparently
approximately,
Approximators
roughly, about,
of degree,
often, occasionally, Fever is present in about a
6 quantity,
generally, usually, third of cases.
frequency and
somewhat,
time
somehow, a lot of
1
4
A B C
believe, to our
Introductory knowledge, it is our We believe that there is no
7
phrases view that, we feel simple explanation.
that
1
5
A B C