Gendered Use of the Hedge in Academic Discourse

2013

This paper discusses the distribution of hedges in academic texts in relation to the gender of the writer. The assumption prior to the analysis concerned possible differences in communicative practices between male and female writers reflected in the hedging of their propositions. The textual material covers 20 research articles, 10 written by male and 10 by female authors, published in the Journal of Linguistics in the years 2001–2010. Metadiscourse as “discourse about discourse” is connected with the communicative, social and personal involvement (Hyland 2000). Hedges, as indicators of the writer’s stance, should reveal characteristics of particular writing styles based on powerful or sup…