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Hedges and Boosters in Academic Prose

Knowing specific discourse conventions within specific contexts is crucial for successful social interaction. This especially applies to academic discourse. Academic writing is only effective if authors of scientific articles follow a specific set of rules which is generally accepted among the scientific community. Different academic disciplines thus obey different conventions. The way scientists present their ideas is also in accordance with these rules. One way to introduce their findings is with the help of boosters or hedges. Boosters and hedges are expressions which serve to increase or decrease the force of statements. By using these kinds of expressions, authors of scientific papers can communicate with their audience more effectively, thus increasing the chances that their ideas will be accepted. This thesis presents results of the research on boosting and hedging in academic articles. The aim of the research was to see how their usage differs across various academic disciplines. The academic disciplines chosen for the study were Agriculture and Computer Science as representatives of the so- called “hard” sciences on one hand, and Economy, Philosophy and Sociology and Anthropology as representatives of the so-called “soft” sciences on the other hand. It was believed that, due to the nature of the scientific data that they deal with, the representatives of the “soft” sciences would have more of these expressions in their research articles than the representatives of the “hard” sciences, and the results support this claim. The research was conducted on a corpus of 50 randomly chosen articles - 10 per each discipline - which were then analyzed using the AntConc program.

discourse analysis ; hedges ; boosters ; academic prose

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