Abstract:The study examines whether English and Indonesian research articles written by their respective native speaker scholars are significantly different from each other in terms of the number of hedges used. Hedges are rhetorical features (e.g. may, perhaps, suggest) used to withhold complete commitment to the truth-value of propositions. The ultimate goal of the study is to examine whether Indonesian scholars need special instruction in hedging propositions. The assumption underlying the present study is that when they write in English, Indonesian scholars will deploy rhetorical features inherent in the Indonesian academic writing. Statistical analysis on 52 Applied Linguistics research articles (26 from each language) reveals that English research articles contain significantly more hedges than their Indonesian counterparts (Mann-Whitney U = 68.00, n1 = n2 = 26, p < 0.05, r = -0.69), suggesting that Indonesian scholars are indeed in need of instruction that specifically focuses on hedging propositions in English.

This study examines whether sociocultural context and discipline substantially affect usage of hedges in research articles. The corpus for the study consists of 104 research articles from two languages (English and Indonesian) with the disciplines of applied linguistics and chemistry. The analysis reveals that there is a statistically significant effect of sociocultural context in research articles from applied linguistics only. Interaction effect between sociocultural context and discipline is also observed. However, there is no statistically significant effect of the disciplines. It seems that both factors are not the major factors influencing usage of hedges in research articles. One intrapersonal factor, namely the cultural models embraced by the individual authors in regard to hedging usage, is proposed as a significant factor which determines the degree of uncertainty of research articles.

Boosters, defined as linguistic devices (e.g. certainly) used by writers to indicate full commitment to the truth value of a proposition, has received little attention from applied linguists, despite their persuasive power in research writing. The present study investigated the effects of the two variables of sociocultural context and discipline on the frequency of use of boosters in research articles. A specialized corpus of 104 research articles published between 2007 and 2010 taken from applied linguistics and chemistry written in English and Indonesian by the respective native speaker scholars were quantitatively analyzed using 2 x 2 Factorial ANOVA. The results showed that there was a significant main effect of sociocultural context, F (1, 100) = 44,34, p <0,05, ŋ2 = 0,307, a significant main effect of discipline, F (1,100) = 19,16, p < 0,05, ŋ2 = 0,161, and a significant interaction between sociocultural context and discipline, F (1,100) = 6,90, p < 0,05, ŋ2 = 0,065. However, the within-sociocultural context simple effects analysis revealed that English applied linguistics and chemistry research articles were not significantly different from each other, F (1,101) = 1,07, n.s. suggesting that, discipline might not be a decisive factor that influences boosting usage in research articles. These results indicate that the two variables (sociocultural context and discipline) exerted unequal influence upon boosting practices in research articles. The differential characteristics of the two sociocultural contexts are offered as explanations to account for the differential boosting practices of English and Indonesian research articles.

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No study has investigated the relationship between student engagement per se and student motivation within second language (L2) pragmatics, notwithstanding the significance of engagement for L2 learning. The present study aimed to explore the effects of two global motivational orientations (autonomous and controlled motivations) on behavioral engagement within the perspective of L2 pragmatics by drawing on self-determination theory. A total of 76 college students agreed to participate and were requested to fill out a tailor-made, 34-item, 6-point Likert-scale questionnaire. The results of data analysis using standard multiple linear regression revealed that both Autonomous and Controlled Motivations significantly predicted and explained a large amount of variance in Engagement, F(2, 71) = 161.28, p < .01, R2 = .82, adjusted R2 = .81, and that the effect of Controlled Motivation, B = .33, t(71) = 8.05, p < .01, was twice as large as that of Autonomous Motivation, B = .16, t(71) = 4.91, p < .01. These findings indicate that students’ controlled motivation is more powerful in enhancing their engagement in learning L2 pragmatics. Pedagogically, it implies that teachers should bolster students’ motivation to learn L2 pragmatics, which can eventually lead to their increased engagement.