Hedging Strategies in Academic Discourse: A Comparative Analysis of Turkish Writers and Native Writers of English

Yağız, Oktay; Demir, Cüneyt

doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.12.085

Cited by 13 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…It is clearly understood that Turkish author are at the very rear of Anglophonic and Japanese authors in all boosting categorizations. The results are corroborated by the study (Yağız & Demir, 2014) conducted to investigate hedging tendencies of Turkish authors when compared to native speakers of English. The authors concluded that Turkish authors use tentative language and avoid commitment and boosting when the frequencies of adjectival, adverbial and verbal hedges are taken into consideration.…”

Section: Rq 2 Are There Any Statistically Significant Differences Besupporting

confidence: 61%

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

Yağız

Demir²

2015

IJEL

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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.

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Section: Rq 2 Are There Any Statistically Significant Differences Besupporting

confidence: 61%

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

Yağız

Demir²

2015

IJEL

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“…Thus, in the light of these findings it can be concluded that native and non-native academic writers employ different strategies in conveying authorial stance in their writings. These results are rather similar to those obtained in previous studies (Melander, Swales, & Fredrickson, 1997;Martín-Martín, 2002;Hinkel, 2003;Kafes, 2009;Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011;Çakır, 2011;Çandarlı, 2012;Ülker Eser, 2012;Önder Özdemir & Longo, 2014;Uysal, 2014;Yağız & Demir, 2014, 2015 comparing different scientific communities.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…There have been numerous studies on scientific discourse in Turkey (e.g. Oktar, 1991;Huber & Uzun, 2000;Uzun & Huber, 2002;Yarar, 2001;Emeksiz, 2009Emeksiz, , 2015Doyuran, 2009;Kavanoz & Şimşek, 2013;Akbaş, 2012bAkbaş, , 2014Bayyurt & Akbaş, 2014;Yağız & Demir, 2014, 2015; however, compared to the vast number of studies in other countries, there are few studies on research article abstracts (Ekoç, 2008;Çakır, 2011;Akbaş, 2012a;Çandarlı, 2012;Çakır & Kansu-Yetkiner, 2012;Fidan & Çakır, 2012;Kafes, 2009Kafes, , 2012Uysal & Akpınar, 2008;Önder Özdemir & Longo, 2014;Uysal, 2014;Çakır & Fidan, 2015;Uysal, 2012) written by Turkish academic writers. Kafes (2009) examined modal verbs in research articles as well as in abstracts written by Turkish, Spanish and American academic writers to determine how academic writers construct authorial stance in their research articles published in international journals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Native and Non-Native Writers’ Use of Stance Adverbs in English Research Article Abstracts

Çakır¹

2016

OJML

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Stance in scientific writing has been a major focus of attention. However, studies on stance in the research article abstracts have been relatively scarce in Turkey compared to those in other academic prose. Abstracts contain various sections in which information on the purpose, method, results, and conclusions of the study is presented to promote the study and to attract readers' attention. In this respect, the abstract foregrounds the main findings and serves a promotional purpose (Hyland & Tse, 2005). By comparing abstracts written by Turkish and native writers of English, this paper tries to explore how academic writers from different scientific communities construct author's stance in research article abstracts. In particular, the present study attempts to analyze lexico-grammatical features in research article abstracts focusing specifically on stance adverbs. Stance adverbs (clearly, probably, apparently) present the attitude or assessment of the speaker/writer with respect to the proposition (Biber, 2006). The corpus consists of 240 abstracts from the disciplines of sociology, psychology, linguistics, physics, chemistry and biology. The results revealed significant differences in the total number of stance adverbs. Native writers of English employed more stance adverbs in their abstracts than Turkish writers. Differences were also found of stance adverbs in soft and hard sciences. Academic writers in the soft sciences used more stance adverbs in their abstracts. Considering variations in scientific discourse across cultures and disciplines, the results of the study may have some pedagogical implications for academic writing courses.

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“…The study shows that American writers deployed more proportions of interactional MD strategies (particularly boosters and attitude markers) than their Iranian counterparts. Comparing a similar group of Turkish L2 and American writers, Yagız & Demir (2014) found that American writers deploy more hedging expressions than Turkish writers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Further, previous research on interactional MD strategies in L1 and L2 writing explored how these strategies are employed by native and non-native writers (Abdollahzadeh, 2011;Blagojevic, 2004;BOLDRINI & TOPI, 1954;Toumi, 2012;Valero-Garcés, 1996;Yagız & Demir, 2014). Abdollahzadeh (2011) compared the use of interactional MD strategies by Iranian and American applied linguistics writers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interaction in Academic L2 writing: An analysis of Interactional Metadiscourse Strategies in Applied Linguistics Research Articles

Al-Mudhaffari

Hussin

Abdullah

2019

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It has been acknowledged that academic writing is not only content-oriented but also involves various rhetorical strategies that help writers project themselves on text so that the content as well as the writer's stance can be understood. Interactional metadiscourse (MD) strategies are established to play a rhetorical role that contribute to the persuasiveness of argument. Due to the variation of rhetorical strategies across cultures, L2 writers tend to find some problems employing appropriate interactional MD strategies to express a clear stance and engage readers in the content presented. This paper examines the extent to which interactional MD strategies are employed in advanced L2 writing. To this end, 34 research articles written by Yemeni/Arab applied linguistics L2 writers were analysed. Based on Hyland (2005a), interactional MD strategies were identified via AntConc, a concordance analytical software tool. Moreover, a qualitative analysis was conducted to examine the way how advanced L2 writers use interactional MD strategies to pursue persuasive goals. The findings indicate that L2 writers tend to employ impersonal and less dialogic style in academic writing. A closer in-depth analysis indicates that the most salient interactional strategies in Yemeni L2 writing include making bare assertion as well as marking certainty of claims. They mostly tend to make assertion as they indicate research gaps and express conviction when they state findings and summarize their research. The implications of such findings could be useful for genre analysis, academic writing and L2 writing instruction.

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Hedging Strategies in Academic Discourse: A Comparative Analysis of Turkish Writers and Native Writers of English

Cited by 13 publications

References 12 publications

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

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

Native and Non-Native Writers’ Use of Stance Adverbs in English Research Article Abstracts

Interaction in Academic L2 writing: An analysis of Interactional Metadiscourse Strategies in Applied Linguistics Research Articles

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