A Comparative Study of Boosting in Academic Texts: A Contrastive Rhetoric

Abstract

Boosting, an authorial commitment, and hedging, a authorial mitigating, are two issues interconnected one another with a gaining importance in the last decades (for detail see Gillaerts & Velde, 2010). However, boosting has remained as an issue needing to be studied from different aspects; for instance, cross-linguistic, cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural or comparative while hedging gains a great deal of attention from researchers. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the corpora in terms of statistical inclusion of certainty markers in the research articles written in English by Turkish, Japanese and Anglophonic authors, and then to explain the results obtained through statistical tests in the sense of linguistic and cultural factors. A corpus of total 60 research articles written by 20 Anglophonic authors, 20 Japanese authors, and 20 Turkish authors of English constituted the data for the present study. The data were scanned by researchers of the present study. Having completed the scanning, the words functioning as boosters were categorized in line with the taxonomy created for the present study. Then, the total certainty markers for each group of scholars were calculated and analyzed through ANOVA test. The test results provided whether there were any statistically significant differences among the groups in terms of including boosters in the research papers. Furthermore, the present study formed a boosting list as a result of dictionary scanning, which may be a reference for further studies, and the most and the least used boosters of authors were gathered in the tables.

Stance and Culture: A Comparative Study of English and Persian Authorial Stance in Applied Linguistics Research Articles

“…It might also provide evidence for the view that stance is a cross-cultural concept (Jiajin & Manying, 2008;Cooper, 1982). As far as hedges and boosters are concerned, this study is also in line with the findings of studies by Yagiz and Demir (2015), Hu andCao (2011), Jalilifar (2007), Keshavarz et al (2007), andVassivela (2001). Similarly, it highlights the interdisciplinary perspective proposed by scholars such as Fairclaugh, van Dijk, and Ruth Wodak "who examine language as a form of cultural and social practice" (Woods, 2006, p. 7).…”

Investigating the Effect of Process-based Instruction of Writing on the IELTS Writing Task Two Performance of Iranian EFL Learners: Focusing on Hedging & Boosting

“…Conversely, boosters strongly support writers' statements and aim at convincing the readers to support the conclusions drawn from the study by the researcher (Vázquez Orta & Giner, 2009;Yagiz & Demir, 2015). As Hyland states, boosters "allow writers to project a credible image of authority, decisiveness, and conviction in their views" (Hyland, 1998b, p. 238).…”

“…In writing academic papers, researchers also apply boosters, as crucial tools, to share their results with readers and convince them to support the stance of the writer. Boosters strongly support writers' statements, and this can contribute to readers' conviction to the issue (Yagiz & Demir, 2015). In fact, writers use boosters in order to make an impact on the response of the audience to whom the paper is addressed and persuade them to support the conclusions drawn from the study (Vázquez Orta & Giner, 2009).…”

An Exploration of Hedging and Boosting Devices Used in Academic Discourse Focusing on English Theses at the University of Namibia

“…Whereas, the phrase "may" is used to show that the writer is not certain that the application of some hedges is indeed as a result of sex and research topics. Hassani and Farahani (2014) argue that the frequency of hedges in research articles is not only influenced by disciplinary background (Ebadi & Khaskar, 2015;Lu & Fu, 2015;Nasiri, 2012), or nationality (Yagiz & Demir, 2015), but by a combination of many factors such as language, discipline, culture, and language proficiency.…”