(LUẬN văn THẠC sĩ) hedging devices in english and vietnamese economic research articles (ERAs )

PHAM THI THANH THUY HEDGING DEVICES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ECONOMIC RESEARCH ARTICLES ERAs.. PHAM THI THANH THUY HEDGING DEVICES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ECONOMIC RESEARCH ARTICLES

PHAM THI THANH THUY

HEDGING DEVICES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ECONOMIC RESEARCH

ARTICLES (ERAs.)

(PHƯƠNG TIỆN RÀO ĐÓN TRONG CÁC BÀI BÁO NGHIÊN CỨU

KINH TẾ TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

PHAM THI THANH THUY

HEDGING DEVICES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ECONOMIC RESEARCH

ARTICLES (ERAs.)

(PHƯƠNG TIỆN RÀO ĐÓN TRONG CÁC BÀI BÁO NGHIÊN CỨU

KINH TẾ TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

Field: English Language Code: 62 22 15 01

PH.D Thesis

English Language

Supervisors:

1 Assoc Prof Dr Le Hung Tien

2 Assoc Prof Nguyen Quang

HANOI, 2008

TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com

ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS VI CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED

1.1 RATIONALE OF THE STUDY E RROR ! B OOKMARK NOT DEFINED

1.2 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS E RROR ! B OOKMARK NOT DEFINED

1.3 THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE STUDY E RROR ! B OOKMARK NOT DEFINED

1.4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY E RROR ! B OOKMARK NOT DEFINED

1.4.1 Data Collections Error! Bookmark not defined

1.4.2 Procedures for the Analysis of the Corpus Error! Bookmark not defined

CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE - 22 -

2.1 EXPLORING THE CONCEPT OF HEDGING -22-

2.1.1 The Concept of Hedging - 22 -

2.1.2 Social aspects of hedging - 24 -

2.1.3 Toward a Working Definition of Hedging - 25 -

2.2 HEDGING AND SCIENTIFIC DISCOURSE -27-

2.2.1 The Nature of Scientific Discourse - 27 -

2.2.2 Hedging in Scientific Research Articles - 37 -

2.2.3 Hedging in Economic Research Articles - 51 -

CHAPTER 3 CORPUS ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH RESEARCH ARTICLES ON ECONOMICS 58

-3.1 LEXICAL HEDGES IN THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH ARTICLES (RAS.) -58-

3.1.1 Comparing Hedging Usage in English RAs with Two other Areas: Applied Linguistics and Physics - 58 -

3.1.2 Lexical Hedges in the English Corpus - 61 -

3.1.3 Non-lexical Hedges - 95 -

3.2 PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF HEDGING DEVICES IN THE ENGLISH CORPUS -105-

3.2.1 Content-oriented Functions of Hedging in the English Corpus - 106 -

3.2.2 Reader-oriented Functions of Hedging Devices in the English Corpus -

119 - CHAPTER 4 CORPUS ANALYSIS OF VIETNAMESE RESEARCH ARTICLES ON ECONOMICS 122

-4.1 LEXICAL HEDGES IN VIETNAMESE ECONOMIC CORPUS -122-

4.1.1 Modality Functions as Hedging Devices in the Vietnamese Corpus- 123 - 4.1.2 Lexical Verbs as Hedging Devices in the Vietnamese Corpus - 135 -

4.1.3 Nouns and Pronouns Function as Hedging Devices in the Vietnamese Corpus 141 4.1.4 Impersonalizations as Hedging Devices in the Vietnamese Corpus 145

4.1.5 Compound Hedges 150

4.2 PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF HEDGING DEVICES IN THE VIETNAMESE CORPUS.153

5.1 GENERAL COMPARISON AND CONTRAST 170

5.2 COMPARISON AND CONTRAST IN DIFFERENT CATEGORIES 172

5.2.1 Devices in the Two Corpora with No Differences 175

5.2.2 Differences among Hedging Devices in the Two Corpora 179

CHAPTER 6 CONCLUDING REMARKS AND IMPLICATIONS 186

6.1 CONCLUDING REMARKS 186

6.2 IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY 190

6.2.1 Implications for Language Awareness 190

6.2.2 Implications for research 191

6.2.3 Implications for language learning 192

6.3 SUGGESTED FOR FURTHER STUDY 194

Table 3.2 Descriptive Statistics: Economics, Applied Linguistics, Physics - 59 -

Table 3.3 One-way ANOVA: English Economics, Applied Linguistics and Physics- 60 - Table 3.4 Categories of Lexical Devices in the English Corpus - 61 -

Table 3.5 Distribution of Modal Auxiliaries in the English Corpus - 66 -

Table 3.6 Distribution of Lexical Verbs in the English Corpus - 83 -

Table 3.7 Distribution of Adverbs found as Hedges in the English Corpus - 84 -

Table 3.8 Distribution of Phrasal Hedges in the English Corpus - 90 -

Table 3.9 Distribution of Adjectives Found as Hedges in the English Corpus - 92 -

Table 3.10 Distribution of Selected Non-lexical Hedging Devices in the English Corpus - 96 -

Table 3.11 Distribution of Impersonalizations as Hedging Devices in the English Corpus - 96 -

Table 3.12 Hedging Constructions with IT in the English Corpus - 98 -

Table 3.13 Relative Numbers of Hedging Devices per 100 Words in the English Corpus - 103 -

Table 3.14 Numbers of Compound Hedges in the English Corpus - 104 -

Table 3.15 Combinations of Hedges in the Same Sentence in the English Corpus - 104 - Table 4.1 Number of Lexical and Non-Lexical Hedging Devices per 100 words in Vietnamese and English Corpora - 122 -

Table 4.2 Modal Adverbs in the Vietnamese Corpus - 123 -

Table 4.3 Modal Auxiliaries as Hedges in the Vietnamese Corpus - 127 -

Table 4.4 Whether CẦN or CẦN PHẢI is a Hedging Device - 128 -

Table 4.5 Reasons for Deciding CẦN or CẦN PHẢI a Hedge or not - 129 -

Table 4.6 Lexical Verbs as Hedging Devices in the Vietnamese corpus 137

Table 4.7 Assessment of Social Factors: Hedging vs Impersonalization 146

Table 4.8 Non-lexical Hedging Devices in the Vietnamese Corpus 147

Table 4.9 Numbers of Hedging Combinations in the Same Sentence 150

Table 4.10 Harmonic Combinations of Hedges in the Same Sentence in Vietnamese corpus 151

Table 4.11 Mitigating Hedging Devices in the Vietnamese Corpus 156

Table 4.12 Reasons for Using Hedging of Writers 163

Table 4.13 Number of Hedges per 100 words in RAs on economic, applied linguistics and sociology 167

Table 4.14 Descriptive Statistics: Vietnamese Economics, Vietnamese Applied linguistics, and Vietnamese Sociology 167

Table 4.15: One-way ANOVA Vietnamese Economics, Vietnamese Applied Linguistics and Vietnamese Sociology 169

Table 5.1 Number of Hedging Devices per 100 words in Vietnamese and English Economic Discourses 170

Table 5.2 Descriptive Statistics of Hedging Devices in the English and Vietnamese corpus 171

Table 5.3 ANOVA Hedges in English and Vietnamese Economics 173

Table 5.9 ANOVA of English and Vietnamese Nouns/Pronouns as Hedges 182 Table 5.10 ANOVA of English and Vietnamese Compound Hedges 182 Table 5.11 ANOVA of English and Vietnamese Non-lexical Devices as Hedges 183

Figure 3.5 String Matching of SUGGEST in the English Corpus - 79 -

Figure 3.6 String Matching of APPEAR and SEEM in the English Corpus - 82 -

Figure 3.7 Strings Matching of SOME in the English Corpus - 86 -

Figure 3.8 String Matching of PERHAPS in the English Corpus - 88 -

Figure 4.1 Possible Strategies for Doing FTAs (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 60) - 131 -

Figure 4.2 Boxplot of Vietnamese Economic, Applied Linguistics and Sociology 168

Figure 5.1 Histogram of Hedges in the English and Vietnamese Economic Corpus 172

Figure 5.2 Boxplot of Hedges in the English and Vietnamese Economic Corpus 174

Figure 5.3 Boxplot of Phrasal Hedging Devices in English and Vietnamese Economics .177

Figure 5.4 Boxplot of English and Vietnamese Lexical Verbs 177

Figure 5.5 Boxplot of English and Vietnamese Adverbs 179

Figure 5.6 Boxplot of English and Vietnamese Adjectives 179

Figure 6.1 String matching of suggest 193

AEA The American Economic Association

ANOVA Analysis of Variance

BEPress The Berkeley Electronic Press (BEPress)

CIEM Ministry of Investment -Central Institute for Economic

Management CIEM Institute for Economic Management

EA English Applied Linguistics Texts

EDR Economic & Development Review

EE English Economic Texts

EP English Physics Texts

ERAs Economic Research Articles

ES English Sociology Texts

ESP English for Specific Purposes

FTA Face Threatening Act

H1 Alternative Hypothesis

IE Institute of Economics

JCR Journal of Citation Reports

JEL The Journal of Economic Literature

JEP The Journal of Economic Perspectives

JIEEP The Journal of International Economic and Economic

VA Vietnamese Applied Linguistics Texts

VE Vietnamese Economic Texts

VS Vietnamese Sociology Texts

written academic genres are not purely objective, impersonal, and informative as they were once believed to be In fact, many researchers, such as Butler (1990), Crompton (1997, 1998), Hyland (1994, 1996, 1998), Myers (1985, 1989), Salager-Meyer (1994, 2000), Swales (1990), have shown that writers also need to present their claims cautiously, accurately, and persuasively in order to meet academia’s expectations and to enhance acceptance for their propositions One of the means to achieve such goal is the use of hedging

Hedging was first introduced by Lakoff (1972) as a linguistic concept referring to linguistic strategies which qualify categorical commitment Hedging is now often known as an expression of tentativeness and possibility and has become a common feature in academic discourse (Hyland, 1996) It is used to qualify the writers’ confidence in the truth of a proposition, and the presence of hedging devices is generally viewed as an indicator of fuzziness

However, while hedging in spoken discourse is a well-documented phenomenon, one which plays important interpersonal and facilitative roles, less attention is given to hedging in different disciplines or genres in academic writing This thesis, therefore, provides comprehensive research on this feature in the written discourse of economics with a systematic analysis of (1) linguistic forms and (2)

a pragmatic explanation for their use

1.2 Objectives of the Study and Research Questions

The main objectives of this thesis are to characterize the common extent, functions and major forms of hedging in one particular genre: economic research articles (RAs) In particular, the study addresses the following primary objectives:

1 To identify the hedging devices used in the discussion sections of the English and the Vietnamese ERAs

2 To identify the communicative functions of hedges in Discussion sections of English and Vietnamese ERAs

3 To compare/contrast hedging expressions in Discussion sections in English ERAs and in Vietnamese ERAs

2 What are pragmatic functions of hedging devices in the English and Vietnamese ERAs?

3 What are differences or similarities in the use of hedging between the two languages?

1.3 The Contributions of the Study

Unlike previous studies focusing on hedging in primarily spoken conversation, where it is extremely common and represents a significant communicative resource for speakers (for example, Stubbs, 1986; Coates, 1987; Nittono, 2003; Nguyen Quoc Sinh, 2004; Phan Thi Phuong Dung, 2004), this thesis places the concept within academic strategies for modifying illocutionary force based on an analysis of authentic written articles

The research describes the distribution of surface forms used to hedge in ERAs in English and Vietnamese The thesis also identifies a valid explanatory framework underlying rhetorical choices

The analysis of these rhetorical principles provides a new area of insight for linguists

Knowledge about hedging from this thesis provides insights into how researchers establish their claims, how they carry out their work and how they anticipate negative reactions from readers to their propositions

Information about hedging can also contribute to our understanding of the practice of evidential reasoning and the structure of argumentation In other words, the study of hedging can help us anticipate possible rebuttals and help reveal how writers move between grounds and claims in the process of gaining reader ratification of their statements

Moreover, studying hedging has pedagogical implications This study provides

an analytic insight into hedging expressions which enables teachers of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in general and of economics in particular, to assist their students in understanding economic texts

1.4 Research Methodology

1.4.1.1 Criteria for Collecting the Data

In light of the experience gained during the present research, it is possible to divide collection criteria into Authenticity, Reputation, Accessibility and Variation

1.4.1.1.1 Authenticity

The data to be collected must be real life examples of language as used by the target professional community The data in the present thesis is empirical research papers selected from journals published in the United States and in Vietnam The sample collected exemplifies the typical language of Economics and is linguistically recognizable

The sample collected for the present analysis seems to be authentic and not simulated since it is extracted from well known journals edited by distinguished professors from famous universities in the USA such as Harvard University, the University of Texas, New York University, the National Economics University

in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam Many prominent economists publish their real experience and case studies in these journals including Elhanan Helpman (Harvard), Torsten Persson (London School of Economics), Eric Rasmusen (Indiana), Robert J Shiller (Yale), Blanchard (MIT), Le Trong Khoi, Phan Dinh Huong (Hanoi), Phan Trong Tue (Ho Chi Minh City)… Moreover, writers of these journals are usually aware that their audience is international and that they have responsibility for almost all of their statements in the articles

However, only the authenticity may not be enough because publication can have

an influence on the readership that the corporate writers are aware of and consciously initiate The second criterion for collecting the data is set up

1.4.1.1.2 Reputation

Reputation has to do with the extent to which peers or the readership as a whole rate the articles released by a given source as well as the extent to which this source is renowned in the Economic field Bley-Vroman and Selinkers state that

reputation means the extent to which the texts collected are valued by the readership

The sources from which data for the present analysis has been collected are reputable sources in the Economic field For one thing, they all have world-wide coverage For another, these articles are ranked by the Econometric Journal; the RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) published by the Department of Economics of University of Connecticut The Econometric Journal ranks journals, articles and working papers in economic field This journal bases on Impact Factors of the JCR (Journal of Citation Reports) Several rankings bases

on impact of journals and impact per articles (see more at the website: http://www.feweb.vu.nl/econometriclinks/rankings) RePEc is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 54 countries and 34 US states to enhance the dissemination of research in economics The heart of the project is a decentralized database of 184,000 working papers, 201,000 journal articles and 1,350 software components The American Economic Association has the first ranking in the number of articles published in RePEc (8681 articles) (more information can be seen at the website: http://repec.org/) About Vietnamese economic corpus, all four journals chosen are suggested by leading experts in the Faculty of macro-micro economics- National Economics University, Hanoi

1.4.1.1.3 Accessibility

Accessibility refers to the extent to which the researcher can obtain the material

to be analysed, together with the possibility for the researcher to get in touch with the writers of these articles, as, for example, when the researcher finds some of these to be not fully understandable

It is therefore possible to break the criterion of Accessibility down to accessibility, content – accessibility and people – accessibility

material-With regard to the data, most of the articles were downloaded from electronic journal service in the libraries of the University of Wisconsin - Madison (either PDF files or html files) The updated articles published in 2005 forward were found as hard copy in the library As for Vietnamese articles, all journals are available in the library in the National Economics University, Hanoi We can also get some of them free from the publishers (e.g Economic and Development Review) This is a privilege that cannot be overlooked in this world of extremely busy and time-conscious professionals

1.4.1.1.4 Variation

This criterion forms a bridge between collection and selection criteria and has to

sources for the purpose of generalization Furthermore, taking care to vary the source of material to be collected and selected may help the researcher to avoid the pitfall of drawing conclusions from a small and poor corpus

1.4.1.2 Criteria for Collecting the Corpus

Three criteria for the selection of the corpus for the present analysis were identified: Universality, Text Length and Representativity

1.4.1.2.1 Universality

The reason for choosing empirical research articles for the corpus is because of their universality in the journal data We have shown and summarized in table 3 the different types of research papers in the journal data Because we are seeking generalizations across a set of similar texts, a decision had to be made to select for analysis not only what could be manually manageable, (i.e not excessively long), but especially those in particular type of research papers which were present everywhere at once in the sample from all four sources Moreover, there

is a hypothesis that in discussion section- one of 4 sections in an empirical research, the writer will use a lot of hedging devices to give a series of points referring back to statements made in the Introduction and interpret what has been learned in the study

This criterion and hypothesis led us to consider mostly texts from the discussion section which was found to occur universally, as expounded in table I-1

Type of research articles Sample

Theory papers

and reactions

Short comm or notes

Empirical research

The American Economic Review (AER)

Nghien cuu kinh te (Economic

Vietnam Economic Management Review (VEMR)

Economic Studies Economic & Development

Table 1-1 Feature Matrix of Data Base Sections

The similarity and recurrence of titles in discussion section from different sample data are further elements that add to the criterion of the universality of material selected

1.4.1.2.2 Text Length

Text length has been a major criterion in deciding which text should go in the corpus and which should not Text length in this corpus is various because of the content The shortest texts chosen are 190 words (EE Texts 9) and 354 words (VE Text 6); the longest are 1417 words (EE Text 13) and 2064 words (VE Text 2), respectively below and above which limits a text was excluded from consideration Such a selection of short and fairly long texts has a certain purpose

1.4.1.2.3 Representative

Like the Authenticity criterion, the criterion of Representative deals with the genuine exemplification expressed in the target model of language use Representative also ties with the extent to which conclusions drawn from the analysis of a corpus are applicable to texts which may be of the same genre but which have not been included in the corpus The contents in the texts setting up the corpus are real (narrowed to economic policy), life projections and up-to-data

at the moment of data collection (from the year 2002 to 2005)

A corpus of nearly 50,000 words of the present thesis is quite manageable manually (due to the unavailability of a sufficiently large and suitable computerized corpus of recently published economic texts) and can be argued to

be sufficient for the purpose of a qualitative linguistic analysis In addition, and

as shown by Smith and Kurzon (1985:233), there appears to be no common agreement amongst discourse analysts about the large of word number needed in

a corpus to warrant viable generalization For example, Smith observes the number of associations of linguistic features with particular characteristics of texts with a corpus of 8,000 words Meanwhile, Kurzon prepares corpus (with the large of 48, 000 words selected from 24 texts from the million-word Lancaster/Oslo-Bergen corpus of written Business English) for a computer-based study of the occurrence of text deixis in the entire corpus

It may therefore be argued that whatever observations are made on the basis of the word stock of the corpus for the present analysis also hold for similar instances of the

Economic language in term of hedging expressions

1.4.1.3 Corpus

Since this is a corpus-based analysis, the findings of this thesis come from a linguistic analysis of a substantial number of written articles (50 articles) The corpus of this study is built from the source of analyzed materials, the database and the article extracts

1.4.1.3.1 Sources

The sources of the corpus in this case mean the institutions or agencies publishing the economic articles considered in this study There are eight main sources, three of which are journals in English and five sources from journals in Vietnamese

• Source I: The American Economic Association (AEA)

The purposes of this New-York-based economic journal are (i) to encourage economic research, especially the historical and statistical study of the actual conditions of industrial life; (ii) to issue publications on economic subjects; and (iii) to discuss perfect freedom of economics This spirit of these objectives has been confirmedly kept throughout the history of the Association At present, over 50% of the AEA membership is associated with academic institutions, 15% with business and industry, and the remainder largely with federal, state and local government or other non-profit organizations

The Journals of the Association include The American Economic Review (AER), The Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) and The Journal of Economic Perspectives (JEP)

• Source 2: Springer

There are three things that shape Springer Science+Business Media’s business activities: Knowledge, information and quality With the world’s best academics and authors (more than 150 Nobel prize-winners have published with Springer up

to the present), Springer’s publications are considered authoritative works in may fields, read by academics and students, used by libraries and universities, academic professionals and practitioners in various branches of industry

Springer’s main publishing fields are economics, science, medicine, engineering, architecture, construction and transport In the economic field, Springer publishes many journals, such as International Economic and Economic Policy, Economic

of Planning, Economic Theory, Empirical Economics, Experimental Economics

• Source 3: The Berkeley Electronic Press (BEPress)

Launching its first journals in December of 2000 As word of the B.E.Press model has spread, interest within academia has grown significantly BEPress produces tools to improve scholarly communication These tools are innovative and effective means to provide content production and dissemination

The high quality peer-reviewed journals, working papers, and institutional repository materials published by BEPress provide scholar work for the academic community all over the world

According to Ms Mary Folster- Senior Academic Librarian- working at the Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison, if we base on the impact factors (the number of times when the authors are cited by other journals) as a criteria to choose the corpus, BEPress will not be chosen because it just published the first number in 2000 and therefore, the number of articles to be cited is not as many as some other journal However, BEPress is till be chosen as the third source in my corpus because all articles are online and can be downloaded from the internet and economic policies are updated everyday in this journal

In the economic field, the main journals published by the BEPress are The B.E Journals in Economic Analysis & Policy, The B.E Journals in Macroeconomics, The B.E Journals in Theoretical Economic, Global Economy Journal, review of Law & Economic…

• Source 4: Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences- Vietnam Institute

of Economic

Belonging to the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, the Institute of Economic (IE) is a national research organization The IE focues on fundamental theoretical and practical problems in the Vietnamese economy and scientific basis for making policies and plans on economic development In general, the IE’s function is promoting economic science in Vietnam

The IE is also appointed to be a training centre for post-graduate education programmes at master and Ph.D degree level in some economic fields

The IE has a wide co-operation with institutions, organisations, universities and induviduals inside and outside Vietnam, on research development programmes related economics

In recent years, the IE has focused its research activities on a summing up of Vietnamese economic reforms, of structural changes in the economy, development of key economic sectors and regions, renovation of mechanisms for economic management, development of the agricultural economy and rural areas,

industrialization and modernization, Vietnam's integration into the world economy, economic theories and models in the region and other countries

Research results are disseminated through books, monographs, articles, journals and active programmes of conferences, seminars and workshops

The IE publishes two periodical scientific reviews: Nghien cuu kinh te (Economic Studies Review) (monthly in Vietnamese) and Vietnam's Socio- Economic Development (quarterly in English)

• Source 5: Ministry of Investment -Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM)

Established in 1978, The Central Institute of Economic Management belongs to the Ministry of Investment The CIEM functions to study and propose economic regulation and policies, economic mechanism, business environment, economic reform The CIEM also focuses on educating and training management officers, consulting economic issues

Among 95 employees of the CIEM, there are 2 associate professors, 15 doctors,

32 people hold master degrees

Website: http://www.ciem.org.vn

• Source 6: The National Economics University (NEU)

Established more than 50 years ago, the National Economics University is a high standard university specializing in training students at graduate and post-graduate level in economic and business management Besides, the NEU also has functions to consult macro policies to the Government

The number of lecturers and administrators of the NEU is 1117 Among them there are 26 professors, 69 associate professors, 207 doctors, 250 masters, 20 advanced teachers, 230 senior teachers, 329 lecturers

The NEU has a monthly journal: Economics and Development Review

1.4.1.3.2 Database

The database in this project refers to the set of publications from which articles for analysis have been extracted It consists of the following journals:

• The American Economic Review (AER)

This journal is published quarterly Each of the regular issues (March, June, September, and December) contains a number of articles and shorter papers on economic fields

Each issue begins with main articles which discuss matters on economic subjects Each main article often is 18 pages in length with around 7500 words There is a

document summary section at the beginning of each main article Following the main articles are short papers with approximately 15 pages in length

Topics of the journal included are salaries, distribution of faculty by rank, sex and race, trends in undergraduate enrollment, and information about graduate programs in economics, monetary issues, financial crises, monetary policies

• The Journal of Economic Literature (JEL)

With the initial name The Journal of Economic Abstract, in 1969, the Journal of Economic Literature became an official publication of the Association, with issues appearing quarterly in March, June, September and December Unlike AER, JEL contains mainly survey and review articles, book reviews, an annotated list of new books classified according to specific subject matters, and indexes of articles from economic periodicals For the purpose of the present study, articles extracted from this journal are all from empirical studies which have a length of more than 40 pages

• Advances in Economic Policy & Analysis

Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy welcomes submissions that employ microeconomics to analyze issues in business, consumer behavior, and public policy The Journal in Economic Analysis & Policy is recognized as a forum for scholarship all around the world to consider a general issue or an economic issue attached to a particular country or region

The Journal focuses on the effects of domestic and international policy, the interaction of firms, the functioning of markets, and the design of organizations and institutions The articles can also be in corporate finance, industrial organization, international trade, labor economics, public finance, law and economic, environmental economic, or other related fields

This B.E Journal in Economic Analysis and Policy produces specialist economic and business publications that make advances in economic analysis and policy It also publishes articles suitable for publication in a top field journal or an excellent general interest journal

• Advances in Macroeconomics

In the same family as other journals such as Frontiers in Macroeconomics, Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy, this Advances in Macroeconomics (or The B.E Journals in Macroeconomics) focuses on both theoretical and applied macroeconomics Articles in this paper are edited by distinguished professors from Berkeley, Princeton, New York University, Boston College, Frankfurt, and Oslo This journal is assigned to cover papers from the broad research area concerning modern macroeconomics The paper meets the demand of researchers

in exploring such issues as unemployment, inflation, poverty, growth, and globalization

For the purpose of this study, each section is taken to be an independent article All articles taken from discussion sections in this journal have been considered for analysis The tables and graphs in these articles have been ignored because of lack of sufficient verbal information

• The Journal of International Economic and Economic Policy (JIEEP)

As a member of Springer, the Journal of International Economic and Economic Policy publishes empirical and theoretical contributions, especially papers relevant to economic policy The main focus of the journal is on comparative economic policy, international political economy, including international organizations and policy cooperation, monetary and real/technological dynamics

in open economies, globalization and regional integration, trade, migration, international investment, internet commerce and regulation JIEEP aims to create

a forum for exchanging knowledge among the academic and policy community

• Nghien cuu kinh te (Economic Studies Review)

This is a monthly published journal in Vietnamese

• Vietnam Economic Management Review (VEMR)

Under the management of the Vietnamese Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), the peer-reviewed economic journal - Vietnam Economic Management Review (VEMR) has some following aims:

(i) to provide rigorous analyses of emerging issues in Vietnam's economy regarding micro and macroeconomics management, factor market development, the process of economic institution reform and integration, and sustainable economic development; (ii) to update and analyze the country's economic performance; and (iii) to introduce newly released publications in both Vietnamese and English

(http://www.ciem.org.vn/home/en/home/InfoListExtended.jsp?area=1&cat=111&sh=1)

Articles are selected from completed research projects of CIEM staff and contributions from non-CIEM and foreign scholars

• Economic & Development Review (EDR)

The Economic & Development Review is an organ for economic studies of the

Ho Chi Minh University of Economics This journal has functions of promulgating the economic development policies of the Party and Government,

introducing achievements in techno-scientific, advanced technologies as well as local experience in management

The journal covers contents of economic research and development, world economy, legislation, markets and prices, as well as culture, education

Writers of articles in the EDR are well-known professors, researchers, Doctors of Philosophy in economics, journalists and entrepreneurs worldwide and nationwide

The journal is published monthly on the fifteenth of the month All contents of the journal can be accessible on the website of the HoChiMinh City University of Economics and the Financial Times Group

For the purpose of the present analysis, each section extracted from the discussion sections (although they have different names) is treated as an independent article in its own right The reason for this decision is that, on conceptual grounds, the sections deal with different economic issues concerning economic policy, which relates to possibly quite different topics Although authors might give their discussion about the mentioned issues in other sections

of the article, the subsequent sections do not appear to have a common beginning

or introduction, nor do they appear to have a common ending or conclusion Therefore, each section in the article which, in this study, is the discussion section is treated as an ARTICLE

However, not all the articles found in this sample have been considered for analysis for many reasons stated later in the thesis

1.4.1.4 Extracted Research Articles

As mentioned before, discussion sections devoted to each article are taken as independent articles A total of 50 economic articles (25 articles in English and

25 articles in Vietnamese) have been extracted from the sample publications mentioned previously with a view to analyzing hedging devices in their expressions and their functions in semantic, syntactic and pragmatic aspects Moreover, in order to consider the use of hedging devices in different fields, 10 other articles in applied linguistics and physics genres (in English), 5 other articles in applied linguistics and 7 articles in sociology (in Vietnamese) are also used

The recent issues (2000-2007) of the above journals are deliberately selected and only empirical research articles (RAs) are chosen due to the fact that the language used in these journals is not only authentic but updated as well The empirical RA is a recognizable genre and has emerged as a result of a mutually understood communicative purpose, reporting new experiments intended to

contribute to the existing knowledge of the discipline The empirical economic

RA is; therefore, distinguished from other types of economic articles such as theoretical papers (meta-discourse), review articles (meta-analysis) and short communications or notes A difficulty was emerged when Vietnamese articles were collected: There is no clear distinction between rhetorical sections in Vietnamese articles To solve this difficulty, economic experts (specialist informants) were asked for assistance in identifying sections where discussions were given in each article The articles whose discussions scatter are not included

in the corpus of the thesis

To keep to a minimum the rhetorical influence from other languages on those of the English RAs or Vietnamese RAs, all articles are monolingual articles extracted from journals published either in America or in Vietnam It is hoped that by choosing monolingual articles from journals published in a native country, native journal editors or referees might minimize the impacts of the other language because of translation process

Seventy articles, each averaging around 800 words in length are selected and narrowed in policy and management fields Therefore, the corpus obtained in this sample consists of about 55, 000 words

Appendix 21 summarizes English corpus used (both economics, applied

linguistics and physics), including sources and the extracted texts A detailed referencing of each selected text can be found in appendix 1, 2, and 3 In the appendix, detailed information about how to analyze each individual sentence is included

Appendix 22 summarizes Vietnamese corpus used (both economics, applied

linguistics and computer technology) A detailed analysis of each sentence can be found in appendix 4, 5, and 6

The database also includes survey questionnaires: A 40-question survey for native speakers of English and a 20-question and 10-question survey for native speakers of Vietnam (2 versions) The objectives of English survey questionnaire are native English professors, associate professors, lecturers, journalists and experts in economics, students in linguistics field and in other majors than linguistics The objectives of Vietnamese survey questionnaire are native Vietnamese economists, university lecturers, businessmen, students in M.A courses in economics in National Economics University These M.A students are special in various specific majors in economics and are rich in practical experience in economic fields

1.4.2 Procedures for the Analysis of the Corpus 1.4.2.1 Approaches

Corpus analysis was the mainly used approach in this thesis to investigate discourse features of hedging expressions A corpus (sample) of naturalistic economic discourse excerpts that are relevant to the thesis’s particular research questions was collected The discourse corpus was analyzed by counting the frequency of discourse elements, categories, sequences, and combinations of these linguistic/ discourse entities The frequencies could be normalized by counting the number of occurrences per 100 words According to the hard-core scientific researchers, the discourse corpus needs to be sampled systematically and scientifically, rather than haphazardly or with bias To avoid possible mistakes, the corpus for the thesis was selected carefully, at random and with suggestions of economic professors

1.4.2.2 Methods

A comprehensive understanding of hedging in English and Vietnamese ERAs involves at least two levels of linguistic description: an analysis at surface-level hedging devices employed in a particular academic genre, and a deeper functional analysis at pragmatic level The analysis of the corpus was undertaken

by blending qualitative and quantitative methods The analysis followed several steps, beginning with a quantitative search, followed by a computerized compilation of the corpus, then by a qualitative analysis all the texts and a contrastive analysis

• Descriptive analysis was used at the first level of analysis to discover the devices and functions that were most likely employed to express hedging in this variety, to characterise the extent of hedging, its distribution and its principal forms in typical samples of ERAs A parallel analysis of the computer corpus of heterogeneous academic material was also made to determine the range and quantitative significance of lexical hedges in more general contexts

• The research then employed a contextual analysis of authentic texts at the second level of analysis to identify the purposes served by items in particular cases and continuously refining a series of categorisations The focus of this analysis was on the contextual interpretation of linguistic phenomena that may be seen as devices modifying group membership, truth value, or illocutionary forces

• Comparative and contrastive analysis methods were also used to illustrate the differences and similarities of hedging devices used in English and Vietnamese economic texts

• To test the hypothesis of the use of hedging expressions and their functions in ERAs, both in English and Vietnamese, questionnaires and surveys were conducted The subjects of the questionnaires and surveys were chosen among English speaking journalists and experts in economics and Vietnamese economic journalists and experts They evaluated and gave comments on the hedging forms and hedging functions of the corpora selected from the above-mentioned journals The findings and discussions followed up the surveys would contribute to the reliable answers for the research question 2 and 3

1.4.2.3 Procedures

The approaches and methods were employed with some of the following elicitation procedures:

1.4.2.3.1 Compiling a list of hedging devices

Firstly, a list of frequent items used to express mitigation was compiled by reference to published studies about epistemic modality, verbs, adverbs… introduced by Holmes (1988), and Kennedy (1987) For example, Holmes’s work

indicates the likelihood of encountering epistemic verbs such as appear, assume, suggest, or suppose in academic discourse Kennedy shows that tentative expressions such as seldom, infrequently, or hardly ever In the most distinctive

or significant features of hedging devices, lexico-grammatical features and structure interpretation were mostly focused on Hedging devices and their contexts for later reference were stored in computer, with codes indicating the linguistic status of the items, the title of the article it belongs to, its position in the text and other contextual categories This phrase of the analysis was the surface level analysis of hedging phenomena

To avoid the trouble of quoting a whole text every time an example is needed, all

50 texts were divided into numbered sentences and each sentence was divided

into clauses (see Appendix 2 for more detail) Moreover, because of this

dividing, the linguistic context from which a particular quotation was extracted in the appropriate text would be found easily Another, and probably more important reason is that when sentences and clauses are divided into minimal linguistic unit, some semantic relations of a proposition or a set of propositions will probably seen clearly

Based on the verb or predicate, clauses were identified Every clause was assumed to have a verb which is either finite or non-finite (with –ing form verb, -

ed form verb or to-infinitive verb) Regarding to verbs which were elliptically omitted, they were considered to be restored in the clause without affecting the meaning of the sentence including that clause For example,

(2a) In May, the three months’ interbank rate stood near 10% (2b) and the long-term government bond rate at 12% (EE 14)

The clause (2b) is still counted as clause because the verb stood was omitted in

this clause

Consider another example

(10a) I can think of (at least) three strategies for curtailing unethical conduct, (10b) involving increasing amounts of coercion: long-run market pressure, moral suasion, and government regulation (EE 1)

Although there is no subject in (10b), it is still considered as a clause because (10b) can be modified by the previous noun “three strategies”

1.4.2.3.2 Conducting textual analysis

Because of the relatively small dimensions of the corpus, a close reading of the whole texts could be undertaken This is useful because it allows a more detailed look at the texts, taking into account single words as well as strings of words, considering their collocations Moreover, a small specialized corpus is more homogenous than many large corpora Therefore, every word or phrase expressing a hedging function in the RAs was noted in order to consider whether these devices perform hedging functions In this stage, the analysis aims at taking account of the hedging potential of a variety of other possible means that may be seen as epistemic In other words, it is hoped that the second level of analysis will help to sketch the possible contextual picture of hedging phenomena

1.4.2.3.3 Computerizing data

Using specialized corpora, the primary aim of this study is not size but the possibility of studying typical hedging devices used in the specific principle genre within a discourse area: economics A text analysis software -Concordance program MonoConc 2.0 is used to process the data The program helps to count the frequency of a certain hedge in the whole corpus and also to find common collocates of any word accompanying with a certain hedge This program is also useful because the output found from the program can be copied and pasted into other Windows applications and can be printed out

Besides that, a statistical software program-MiniTab (version 14.) is also used to process the corpus The program assists in contrastive analysis among three principles: economics, physics, and applied linguistics The difference in using hedging devices among genders is also seen clearer with the help of this MiniTab program

1.4.2.3.4 Using Specialist Informants (SIs)

In order to overcome limitations of the subjectivity in analyzing data and to ensure the validity of the interpretation of the data analysis, the results were discussed for consistency with specialist informants

The use of Specialist Informants may be described as a research tool in ESP oriented Applied Discourse Analysis in which the Applied Linguist systematically consults a specialist in a field other than his own in order to obtain expert help or advice in processing the texts he has to analyse Bhatia (1983) for example, while investigating the role of qualifications in English Legislative writing, found it necessary to frequently consult a British parliamentary counsel involved in the drafting of Acts of Parliament in order not just to validate his analytical findings but also to formulate, modify and confirm his hypotheses Rounds (1985) consulted both the psychiatrist and a geologist in order to

‘confirm some of her hypotheses’ concerning hedging in academic discourse while Pettinari (1983-1985) used medical residents in Surgery both as a source of data (post-operative surgical reports) and for assistance in interpreting them

In this present thesis, the SIs have been approached formally in two stages: the exploratory and validatory stages

In the exploratory stage, initial contacts were made both formally and informally with economists, lecturers in economics and librarian in economics with a first degree in economics through emails, letters and phone calls The tool used for gathering information and cross-checking the researcher’s preliminary findings with the editor was the Structured Interview This is a well-known instrument in various aspects of ESP research in general and Speaking of English for Economics in particular Wall (???) for example has used it as the exclusive means for gathering input data that helped her construct a pre-sessional course for Economic Postgraduate students at the University of Lancaster In this analysis, however, it is used as a subsidiary technique for getting specialists reaction to the analytical findings

The questions were mainly open-ended and mostly concerning schematic structure of a discussion section in an empirical research paper, the use of hedging devices as well as their functions in the discussion section, some

potential meanings of ambiguous cases of epistemic expressions and other indeterminate devices

Besides that, a cover letter was also sent to some authors writing articles in the corpus The authors would be asked to comment on hedging as found in extracts drawn from discussion sections of their articles Along with the cover letter, a copy containing extracts from each article was submitted to the authors, who were asked to provide their interpretation of some presumed cases of hedging in the extracts and to indicate whether there are any other devices in the extracts to

achieve similar results (see Appendix 20 for the letter)

The validatory stage was concerned exclusively with elucidating matters related

to linguistic choices for hedging Effort at this stage was directed to two main linguistic matters

Informants, both subject specialist and non-subject specialist who are native speakers of English were approached to find out

1/ their assessment of authorial commitment to the economic propositions 2/ their assessment of the chances of fulfilment of such typical propositions

3/ their assessment of the extent to which the context of occurrence affected the strength of propositions

These objectives of this stage were set to support or disprove the researcher’s own observations of hedging devices as well as their functions It is hoped that together with the interviews in exploratory stage, this procedure would partially avoid the subjectivity of me as a non-native, non-specialist reader

To achieve these objectives, the informants’ views were sought through a

questionnaire, a sample of the questionnaire can be found in Appendix 8 Before

submitting the questionnaire to the Human Subject Research Protections Board

in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA to get the license conducting this survey, I had a pilot test on a group of five TAs (teaching assistants) in English and Linguistics Department of University of Wisconsin-Madison to check if the answers provide suitable information for my research Then some minor points in the questionnaire are changed and then it is used for ask real SIs Besides Economists, lecturers in economics and Economic librarian with a first degree in Economics, SIs in this stage are also my native-speaker colleagues who are linguistic TA (Teaching Assistant) at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, the University of Queensland- Australia, and the National Economics University Vietnam, second year undergraduate students of linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Foreign Languages Vietnam, Hanoi University for Teachers of Foreign Languages Copies of the questionnaire sent

to the SI had different covering letters since the degree of acquaintance the researcher had with each of them varied Besides sending the questionnaire to the SIs, I met some of the SIs especially undergraduate students (20 of them) to provide them any necessary background information to the questionnaire I also had face-to-face talk with some lecturers in linguistics (6 of them) who volunteered to help after I got their answers for the questionnaire to ask for their clarification about some of their answers

The questionnaire had two versions: English version for English SIs and Vietnamese version for Vietnamese SIs The questionnaire was divided into two parts In part I, some background information is provided to SIs so that they could have a certain knowledge about what a hedge or hedging is There are 4 questions in the second part of the questionnaire In question 1, SIs are asked to check the one(s) they think a hedge or hedging from the sentences selected from discussion sections of empirical articles The purpose of this part is to assist SIs

to be familiar with the context in which hedging is used in the economic research articles and to help me avoid subjectiveness of my research in identifying hedging in the texts

In question 2, SIs are asked to evaluate the commitment of the writer in the given sentences extracted from different research articles To answer, SIs have to express their judgment on three scales corresponding to the writer’s chances of fulfilment and the degree of the writer’s commitment: (1) weak, (2) moderate, and (3) strong

Another aim of this thesis is to identify the purposes of hedging devices used in the economic research articles; therefore, in question 3, SIs are asked to give their viewpoint indirectly about the reasons of using hedging devices by comparing sentences (in pair- one is hedged and another is not hedged) The purpose of the question 4 is to identify the differences among genders in using hedging devices SIs are asked to choose a sentence that they prefer from paired sentences if they are supposed to use that sentence in a written discourse Besides choosing the preferable sentence, SIs are also asked to give reasons for choosing that sentence In all questions, SIs are welcomed to give any other opinions about other reasons in the light of the sample expressions of forecasting found in the questionnaire

Besides the main set of questionnaire, in Vietnamese version, another set of questionnaire is employed with an aim to figure out whether or not power (social and working power) besides gender power affects the use of hedging The SIs are asked to decide if the author (authors) holds any power or is/are at any leading position in their working environment when stating given statements

1.4.2.4 Specialist Informants of this study

As stated before, using SIs in this thesis is to avoid the subjectiveness of the researcher who is neither a native English speaker nor an economist in sorting out entirely hedging expressions in economic discourse and figuring out the pragmatic aspect of these devices in economic articles Therefore, using SIs in research is obviously an adequate and a good approach However, who will be chosen to be SIs is another problem; otherwise, the results of this approach will not worthy

According to Bhatia (1989), a good Subject Specialist Informant needed to be either an informed reader or the author of the text being analysed Pindi (1988) suggested that good SIs should be:

o more than one individual

o native speakers of the target language

o real corporate writers of the material being analyses

o aware of difficulties subject specialists have in writing professional texts

in a language other than their own

o knowledgeable about matters related to their professions as a whole by virtue of either or both their training and professional experience

There are some good SIs for this thesis They are:

a) Authors of the articles analysed:

o David Domeij (2006) “Consumption and Health” Contribution to Macroeconomics, 6, 1

o Richard Cothren (2006) Long-Run Money Growth and the Liquidity Effect Topics in Macroeconomics, 6, 1

o Dương Bá Phượng, (2005) Một số ý kiến về đổi mới cơ chế tài chính đối với khoa học xã hội Nghiên cứu Kinh tế, 331, 59-62

o Phan Thi Nhiem: Dr., Senior lecturer in International Economics Department of the National Economics University

o Becky Fisher, senior lecturer in English Department of University

of Wisconsin- Madison, America (bvfisher@wisc.edu)

o Dr Lynn Wales in Linguistics Department, University of Queensland, Australia (wales@uq.edu.au)

o Rasha Diab: TA., Ph.D candidate in Rhetoric and Linguistics Department, University of Wisconsin – Madison

o Phan The Hung, Ph D candidate, senior lecturer in English Department of Da Lat University (thehungphanorg@yahoo.com) d) Librarian special in Business and Economic

o Mary Folster, Senior Academic Librarian- Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison, American

Chapter 2 Review of the Literature

2.1 Exploring the Concept of Hedging

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

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 & Schröder (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

In the opinion of Mauranen (1997), there are both macro-level and micro-level motivations for hedging Since it is expected by certain discourse communities, it appropriates and it becomes part of a ritual (this is a macro-level motivation for hedging) Furthermore, hedging assists a person to realize his/her personal purposes such as avoiding losing face, gaining more respect from other people and showing modest (this is a micro-level motivation for hedging) Sharing Mauranen’s opinion about the role of hedges, Hübler (1983) states that hedges can help writer/speaker protect him/herself from potential anger, contempt or other humiliation on the part of the addressee

Hedging, as mentioned above, can be broadly defined as a genre-specific, interactional, multi-functional phenomenon which integrates semantic, pragmatic, social and cognitive factors Depending on the genre, hedging is used

to meet certain macro-level expectations, or to accomplish certain micro-level

intentions, but always attends to particular norms and limitations Genre also

decides certain type of hedging strategies employed, functions of hedging and

certain lexical items used to recognize a hedge Semantically, hedging helps

identify the typical statement component which is often signaled by characteristic linguistic items which serve to carry out specific discourse strategies

Pragmatically, hedging assists the writer/speaker to obtain both macro- and micro-level purposes simultaneously Socially, hedging serves to meet the

demand and expectation of a certain discourse community A good way to understand hedging concept is to consider all these elements of the phenomenon

In other words, the definition of hedging will be incomplete or even comprehensive if these elements are not integrated since it is hard to figure out their boundary Channell (1994) defined ‘Meaning’, which is the combination of Semantics and Pragmatics, as any of a proposition which a reader can withdraw from the writer’s statement before putting it into a certain context and background environment Therefore, the communication between the writer and the reader only succeed if both sides (the writer and the reader) do their task well: the writer gives statements which are hedged, the reader bases on not only lexico-grammatical background knowledge, but also on pragmatic background knowledge about language and its relationship with context to interpret the statements given by the reader The interpretation of a hedge ultimately depends

in-on the reader’s/receiver’s intuitiin-on, ability to understand the cin-ontext in which the hedge is produced, and invocation of linguistic and pragmatic background knowledge which must be shared with the reader/ receiver If both the writer and the reader share the same background knowledge, the reader could “go beyond the information given and use principles of categorization which have been observed as a fundamental aspect of human cognition” (Channell, 1994: 199) Interpretation of a hedge, therefore, requires the ability to classify which is, according to Taylor (1995), usually viewed to start with simple examples and then structure To categorize a hedge, the reader must draw on the same cognitive reference points as the writer, and engage a shared schema comprising extra-linguistic factors such as perception and encyclopedic knowledge

Because there is not an agreement in defining hedging, the thesis will consider hedging textual, pragmatic, cognitive and social factors which simultaneously work together in communication Thus, variety of hedges, hedging strategies, and hedging functions are considered together as mutually interactive components of discourse In term of semantics, different forms as well as phrases indicating hedges will be mentioned Different functions of hedges, in terms of pragmatics society, will also be considered at the same time

Therefore, hedging device might be defined as a group of modal verbs, lexical adjectives, adverbs, lexical verbs, nouns/pronouns; phrases having functions to + Show a lack of full commitment to the propositional content of a statement

+ Modify 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

+ Mitigate on the illocutionary force, in negative politeness, of an utterance or on any of the four maxims introduced by Grice

+ Reduce the risk of negation and disagreement

+ Assist in gaining more respect from other people and showing modest (this is a micro-level motivation for hedging)

+ Modify the writer’s responsibility for the truth value of the propositions expressed or modifying the weightiness of the information given, or the attitude

of the writer to the information

Each group is also categorized in sub-sections and there are also some typical words or phrases given as examples in each sub-section

2.2 Hedging and Scientific Discourse

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

“politeness”, and “gender”

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 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

sender-it purports to present a “report” of that research Furthermore, the wrsender-itten 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