VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HANOI COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE _______________________ PHAM THI THANH THUY HEDGING DEVICES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ECONOMIC RESEARCH ARTICLES ERAs..
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
E XPLORING THE C ONCEPT OF H EDGING
In our life, if there is something unpleasant or unwanted for us, we might hedge (limit the effect, defend, or protect ourselves) against it by avoiding dealing with it or avoiding committing ourselves to a particular action or decision It is possible to find out the similarity between the everyday meaning of the term hedge and the linguistic expressions referred to when using the term According to R Markkanen and H Schroder, two German dictionaries of linguistics indicating that the formulation of concepts in everyday communication require the use of hedges because “concepts trigger prototypical images in people’s minds, which makes it necessary to somehow mark their less prototypical representatives” (1999:1) In this thesis, the term hedge will be considered in semantic, pragmatic and social aspects
2.1.1.1 Semantic and Pragmatic aspects of hedging
The use of hedge as a linguistic term goes back at least to the early 1970s, when
G Lakoff (1972) published his article Hedges: A Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts Lakoff was interested in the linguistic phenomena used to talk about the more peripheral members of broad concept categories To illustrate the practical possibility of studying such linguistic terms in terms of logical properties and to address the questions involved in such analyses, Lakoff carefully studied a group of words and phrases like rather, largely, in a manner of speaking, very that he regarded as hedges in “making things fuzzier or less fuzzy” (1972: 213)
Although the meaning of the term hedge has been broadened to cover linguistic items other than what Lakoff mentioned in his work, his early work and his definition of hedges have remained a basis for a number of later analyses of the hedging phenomenon because his definition elucidates the semantic basis on which the notion of hedging rests Lakoff also briefly mentioned the possibility that hedges may “interact with felicity conditions for utterances and with rules of conversation” (1972: 213) Supporting Lakoff’s definition, Brown & Levinson define the term hedge/ hedging as “a particle, word or phrase that modifies the degree of membership of a predicate or a noun phrase in a set; it says of that membership that it is partial or true only in certain respects, or that it is more true and complete than perhaps might be expected” (1987: 145)
Since the early 1970s the concept of hedge has moved far from its origins, especially after it caught the interest of pragmatists and discourse analysts It is no longer used to indicate expressions that modify the category membership of a predicate or noun phrase The idea of hedged performatives (I suppose/ guess/ think that…; won’t you open the door?) which had been mentioned by Lakoff
(1972) in his article “Robin Lakoff’s observation” became one way of widening the concept of hedges Fraser (1974) considers the effect of hedged performatives on the illocutionary act in performative sentences like I must advise you to remain quiet in which the modal must relieves the speaker from some of the responsibility
However, Halliday and Hasan (1985) have called attention to the fact that utterances have not only an ideational but also an interpersonal component Consequently, the concept of hedging has been further developed in pragmatics and discourse analysis where it has been approached as a pragmatic, rather than a purely semantic, phenomenon Hedges, in this point, were taken to be modifiers of the speaker’s/ writer’s commitment to the truth-value of a whole proposition, not just the category membership of a part of it For example, Kopple, V (1985) considers the use of hedges as showing a lack of full commitment to the propositional content of an utterance Kopple sees such hedges as perhaps, seem, might, to a certain extent as modifying the truth-value of the whole proposition, not as making individual elements inside it more imprecise
Brown/Levinson (1978, 1987), dealing with politeness in verbal interaction from the point of view of pragmatics, viewed hedges as a device to avoid disagreement They describe hedges as a strategy or an expression of negative politeness in face-saving Sharing Brown and Levinson at this point, Hoang Phe
(1994) in Tu dien Tieng Viet (Vietnamese Dictionary) defined hedging as a device to “avoid misunderstanding or reactions to the utterances the speaker is going to say” In negative politeness, hedges are used to mitigate on the illocutionary force of an utterance or on any of the four maxims introduced by Grice (1975) Supporting Brown and Levinson (1978), Hübler (1983) postulates the role of hedging in making sentences more acceptable to the hearer, thus this will increase the chances of ratification for these sentences According to Hübler, the function of hedges is to reduce the risk of negation
Since the concept of hedge is widened to contain the modification of commitment to the truth of propositions, some researchers think that it is necessary to distinguish between two types of hedge They start from Lakoff’s
(1972) definition of hedges as devices that make things fuzzy, and add that there are two kinds of fuzziness: One is fuzziness within the propositional content
(called approximators); the other is fuzziness “in the relationship between the propositional content and the speaker, that is the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition conveyed” (called shields) (Prince; Frader; Bosk 1982:
85) The first fuzziness: approximators (e.g She is sort of nervous) affect the truth-conditions of propositions, and the second fuzziness: shields (e.g., I think she is nervous) do not affect the truth-conditions but reflect the degree of the speaker’s commitment to the truth-value of the whole proposition Hübler (1983) makes a similar distinction between understatements, which concerns the propositional content of a sentence, and hedges, which connect with the claim to validity of the proposition a speaker makes For example, a sentence like It is a bit stuffy in here contains an understatement, while It is stuffy in that coal mine, I suppose contains a hedge Hübler admits that both understatements and hedges perform the same function of expressing indetermination of making sentences more acceptable to the hearer and thus increasing their chances of ratification
Besides the mentioned above factors affecting the understanding of hedging, social factors should also be considered in order to have a complete knowledge about hedging In conversations, people from different societies, different cultural backgrounds may not understand each other and even get troubles (especially when they impose their own cultural background and norms to others) For example, an Anglicist person may have a very bad comment to a Vietnamese person, who does not have the same reaction as the Anglicist people: saying “thank you” when offered a compliment on, say their clothes If this Anglicist person does not understand the difference between the two cultures, their communication may be broken down or got a fatal consequences In order to avoid misunderstanding in intercultural communication, besides the requirements in exchanging and understanding information between individuals who are unalike culturally, there are some means that can help communicators soften their talk such as hedging devices According to Salager-Meyer (2000), hedging is added into the conversation (in spoken or written form) to make linguistic behavior more socially acceptable in accordance with certain social norms established by a given culture at a given moment, time or epoch In other words, hedging is a good device to direct linguistic behavior to a right track in order to meet certain conventionalized expectations of professional or academic communities with a certain social norms Moreover, hedging competence, which entails knowledge and understanding of these conventionalisms, is often considered an integral part of general linguistic competence which allows us to assume our place in a community (Wilss, 1997)
In addition, hedging is also used to obtain other purposes besides assisting the writer to gain agreement from professional communities According to Bhatia, every genre has a certain rules and conventions which the researcher or academic writer can use different means to discover them, but they “cannot break away from such constraints completely without being noticeably odd.” (1993:14)
The Dictionary of Stylistics also classifies the concepts hedge and hedging as belonging to the fields of discourse analysis and speech act theory and defines them as “qualification and toning-down of utterances and statements (…) in order to reduce the risky of what one says” (Wales 1989: 58) The motivation for their use is given as “mitigation of what may otherwise seem too forceful” and
“politeness or respect to strangers and superiors.” Similarly, Markkanen & Schrửder (1989; 1992) see hedging as a means to accomplish the writer’s intention, a modifier of the writer’s responsibility for the truth value of the propositions expressed or as a modifier of the weightiness of the information given, or the attitude of the writer to the information According to these two linguists, hedging also offers a possibility for textual manipulation in the sense that “the reader is left in the dark as to who is responsible for the truth value of what is being expressed” (1992: 56) They consider the use of certain pronouns and the avoidance of others, the use of impersonal expressions, the passive and other impersonalization constructions (e.g It is…; There is…), in addition to the use of modal verbs, adverbs and particles, which are usually included in hedges Thus, hedging can operate on different levels of communication at the same time
H EDGING AND S CIENTIFIC D ISCOURSE
This section will provide a critical overview of the nature of scientific discourse in order to situate the aspects of hedging in the wider context of scientific discourse The section is divided into three parts It begins with a discussion of the nature of scientific discourse, both in textual features and in organizational features of scientific discourse
The purpose of part 2 is to establish the linguistic context of research writing in order to emphasize the importance of discourse analysis in understanding written texts Specially, identifying relationships between linguistic forms, exploring surface cohesion and providing linguistic environments in which hedging expressions appear are the main tasks of part 2
Part 3 will identify an overall picture about hedging – a means by which arguments are negotiated in scientific communication In particular, this part will consider some concepts in the speech acts, and in linguistics literature such as
2.2.1 The Nature of Scientific Discourse
2.2.1.1 The Nature of Scientific Discourse in Empiricist Views
Unlike novels, poetry or short stories, which reflect the specific mark of each author, scientific written discourse is normally believed to be purely informative and directly representative of natural facts As Kaplan and Grabe (1991:200) observations, researchers studying scientific discourse seem to assume that scientific reports are truthful and precise accounts of experimental processes as they occur in the laboratory According to Bazerman, “the accomplishment of scientific discourse is that it appears to hide itself” (1988:14) Scientific knowledge is believed to be built upon the qualities of the subject matter, the judgment of publication, critical peer evaluation and strict scientific procedures, and the non-subjective basis in which scientific text pays a role of “a messenger replaying the truth from nature” (Gilbert, 1976: 285) Besides that, it is believed that when presenting research findings, authors of scientific texts have to follow a conventional style and format which “represent the standard product of the knowledge manufacturing industry” (Swales, 1987: 42) This means that almost all personal opinions and interests of authors are removed and the authors’ identities are excluded from their scientific products
One of the features clearly recognized in scientific discourse is rhetorical procedures of objectivity and impersonality (Knorr-Cetine, 1981) Authors of scientific texts often try to hide their presence and personal interests in reporting their research to aim at peer audiences, which helps fulfill the persuasive role of scientific discourse Passivation, indirectness or avoidance of explicit value statements are among many examples of this strategy These devices help to remove scientists from the report, add to the objectivity and precision of reporting and as Bazerman (1984:163) states, they are “far from the rhetorical fancy to be avoided in scientific writing.” The reason infancy and persuasive features become a central part of scientific discourse is that research findings, as well as other information presented by scholars, will be offered for examination in the scientific community in the sight of the production of scientific knowledge which traditionally was considered to be beyond social factors The traditional view of science was that the nature world is a world of reality and objectivity, and
“its [the nature world] characteristic cannot be determined by the preferences or intentions of its observers These characteristics can, however, be more or less faithfully represented Science is that intellectual enterprise concerned with providing an accurate account of the objects, processes and relationships occurring in the world of natural phenomena To the extent that scientific knowledge is valid, it reveals and encapsulates in its systematic statements the true character of this world (Mulkay, 1979: 19-20)
Therefore, scientists are generally aware of the importance of the accuracy of the production of scientific knowledge which is built up in a process involving strict criteria against which the validity of knowledge is to be criticized Moreover, scientists are assumed to produce an accurate portrayal of the physical world and are believed to act according to a distinctive spirit of great people Beyond that, Merton praises scientists for their number one position in the universe, and strongly claims that “the activities of scientists are subject to rigorous policing, to a degree perhaps unparalleled in any other field of activity”(1973:276)
2.2.1.2 The Social Nature of Scientific Discourse
However, recently many studies on sociology have investigated the social and linguistic aspects of scientific research (for example Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984; Mulkay, 1979; McKinlay & Potter, 1987; Myers, 1990) Mulkay (1979:60) was objected to Merton’s (1973) normative opinion by an argument that besides having the role of reflecting the physical world, scientific discourse also creates its scientific community socially and these two roles support each other In other words, the physical world is based on the scientist’s “attempts to interpret that world.” This interpretation is continually “revised, and partly dependent on the social context in which interpretation occurs” (Mulkay, 1979:61) Mulkay’s view suggests that the production of scientific knowledge is built from a process of negotiation within a specific context; therefore, to some extent, this process chosen by scientists is affected by the expectations and presumptions of those scientists Specifically, the entire research procedure, including choosing a reasonable research topic, methodology and/or other means to analyze and theories to base the procedure on, more or less depends on the individual scholar who has his/her own critical eyes of a specific group of scientific community Therefore, the product of this scientific research may not necessarily be a true picture of the universe, but is the result of a negotiation process within the research scope:
“The conclusion established through scientific negotiation are not, then definitive accounts of the physical world They are rather claims which have been deemed to be adequate by a specific group of actors in a particular cultural and social context There is, at least a prima facie case in favour of the thesis that “objects present themselves differently to scientists in different social settings, and that social resources enter into the structure of scientific assertions and conclusions” (Mulkay, 1979:95)
Sharing Mulkay’s opinion, other researchers such as McKinlay & Potter, 1987, and Myers, 1990 conclude that scientific language serves two rhetorical functions which are (i) to assist the scientists and researchers in addressing and persuading readerships about scientific issues, and (ii) to establish and maintain the authority of science itself This means that, besides presenting the crucial reality about the scientific world, scientific writing has another rhetorical objective which involves persuading readers that the scientific question discussed by the researcher is situated within the land of fact In other words, the production and validation of scientific knowledge is not simply the true values expressed through analysis by scientists and is not a dispassionate, objective representation of nature, but also includes the social negotiation ability of the researchers within the community This description is accurate because although in theory the technical aspects of knowledge production can be made by an individual scientist, in practice scientific information may warrant the status of truth only after being communicated to and accepted by the relevant scientific community
In this communication process, the audience with its own theoretical and methodological competence may not accept the research results; the scientific scholar, therefore, has to convince the readership of the importance of his/her study, of the reliability and suitability of the theories, the methods applied in the analysis process, and the validity of the interpretation of the research results Therefore, communication of scientific knowledge with the readership is nearly always considered an important component of the knowledge-validation process in the research procedure itself (Bhatia, 1985; Rounds, 1982; Pettinari, 1983), and Alley (1987) is not unreasonable when advising researchers that if they do not communicate well and persuade readers to accept their idea, then they should change their research In the consequence, the important thing here is “how we really do convince each other, not what is true according to abstract methods” (Booth, 1974, cited by McCloskey 1994:106) Sharing this opinion, Latour and Woolgar (1979:76) take the experimental research article as an example of scientific discourse and show that the production of this type of research depends on various writing and reading process which is based on the successful persuasion of readers, and that scientific knowledge is produced in a process of negotiation that focuses on texts rather than on facts Their conclusion appears to be almost exclusively dedicated to the production of research papers and basically related to operations on statements, citing, criticizing and forming knowledge claims from other researchers’ criticism and competition While Latour and Woolgar’s study is criticized as rather subjectivist, it draws attention to the importance of public judgment as an important factor for success in professional research The scientist’s contribution is judged by colleagues, people in his/her field of study or those who are potentially able to make use of it And once the scientist’s contribution is judged to be significant, grand, and is borrowed, or cited by other researchers, it will soon achieve recognition In other words, scientific publication is more or less a tangible reward which satisfies the specific needs of certain people in the scientific community operating a reward system - a system of “distributing property.” This system resting on peer judgment (Barnes & Edge, 1982:15), thus becomes the primary reason for the use of persuasive rhetoric in scientific discourse
Regarding to persuasive language in scientific discourse, Hyland (1996) also agrees with the opinions of the above authors According to him, meaning of a scientific text is created by the author through the form of linguistic expression; however, there are many other factors affecting the interpretation of the text One of these factors is the readers’ scientific competence, which may include opinions contrary to those of the scientific author Being aware of this possibility, scientific writers must be careful in using linguistic expressions, and must organize their scientific discourse well in order to avoid negative reaction
From these viewpoints, it is concluded that scientific discourse is a sender- addressee relationship in which social issues play an important part in constructing texts for a specific discourse community According to Kaplan and Grabe, (1991:200), due to this social nature, scientific discourse may be shaped according to cultural and rhetorical assumptions of the scientific authors so that it may be presented in a maximally acceptable way, not necessarily one which is objectively most transparent Knoor-Cetina points out that “the scientific paper hides more than it tells on its tame and civilized surface”, and adds that “it [scientific discourse] forgets much of what happened in the laboratory, although it purports to present a “report” of that research Furthermore, the written products of research employ a good deal of literary strategy largely unnoticed by the readers” (1981:94-5) Many strategies have been used to achieve maximal acceptability in scientific discourses, among which are the use of impersonal statements, vague language, and hedging expressions
Because research articles play an important role in the dispersal of scientific information among scientists, so far there have been various studies on scientific work such as through conference papers, book reports, review articles Swales
(1990) remarked, the research article is probably the most thoroughly studied type of text in literature relating to scientific discourse, the literary conventions of research articles having been commented on in a number of studies However, there are various gaps in research into RAs needed to be bridged Studying hedging expressions is one of many types of studies about research articles
2.2.1.3 The Characteristics of Scientific Research Articles (RAs)