Prudence, precision, and politeness: hedges in academic writing

Abstract

Successful academic communication involves writers persuading readers of the correctness of knowledge claims. Because of potential opposition to such claims however, and the uncertain status of much academic knowledge, writes often need to present their claims cautiously, accurately and modestly to meet the exacting expectations of a skeptical disciplinary community. In this respect, hedging is central to academic writing because it expresses possibility rather than certainty and deference rather than over-confidence. This paper explores the concept of hedging through and examines its different forms, frequencies and functions in a corpus of academic articles.