HEDGING IN ACADEMIC WRITING

The present article is aimed at studying the notion of hedging, the frequency of hedges and their functions in academic writing. It also focuses on their use by native speakers of the British variety of the English language and by non-native speakers. Attention is given to the writers’ gender.

Relevance of the research topic. The notion of hedging has been investigated in many scholarly papers and approached in different ways over the past twenty-five years. The significance of the paper is also determined by the fact that hedging is an integral and indispensable part of academic writing. The paper presents particular interest for non-native researchers who contribute to English research journals. The scientific novelty of the paper includes comparison of the use of hedges by native and non-native English speakers. The writers’ gender is also taken into consideration.

The principal objective of the paper is to study hedging devices in research articles written by native and non-native speakers of English with attention to the authors’ gender. It also aims to trace the differences in the use of hedges by the two above-mentioned groups.

The objective of the paper implies the following tasks:

1) To study the notion of hedging, approaches to the study of hedges, the existing definitions of hedges, their properties and functions;

2) To analyse hedging technologies used by native speakers of English (female and male) in writing research articles;

3) To analyse hedging technologies used by non-native speakers of English (female and male) in writing research articles;

4) To conduct a statistical and comparative analysis for both groups of speakers;

5) To work out recommendations for inexperienced non-native writers of scientific articles in the field of linguistics.

The results obtained in the analysis can be used for teaching theoretical and practical courses of English grammar, stylistics and discourse analysis.