Revisiting the Effects of Sociocultural Context and Disciplines on the Use of Hedges in Research Articles

Abstract

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.

Objectifying Science: Impersonalization in English Research Articles From Different Disciplines

“…It is interesting to note, however, that some studies do not seem to corroborate such disciplinary variation (Sanjaya, 2015;Vold, 2006). Sanjaya (2015), for example, argues that scholars are not always affected by the disciplines they are affiliated with in the use of rhetorical features in their research articles.…”

“…It is interesting to note, however, that some studies do not seem to corroborate such disciplinary variation (Sanjaya, 2015;Vold, 2006). Sanjaya (2015), for example, argues that scholars are not always affected by the disciplines they are affiliated with in the use of rhetorical features in their research articles. This means that disciplines may not be the only factor affecting the differing practices of scholars in the use of hedging devices in general and impersonalization devices in particular.…”

“…This means that disciplines may not be the only factor affecting the differing practices of scholars in the use of hedging devices in general and impersonalization devices in particular. Sanjaya (2015) further argues that "rhetorical characteristics (...) of a research article might be significantly determined by the cultural models (...) espoused by the author" (p. 125). this does not seem to be the case in the present research.…”

Investigating the Use of Grammatical Stance Markers in Discussion Section of English Applied Linguistics Research Articles Written by Indonesian Scholars

“…Given the importance of the concept of stance in the field of applied linguistics [6], together with the critical role it plays in academic research writing, a good number of studies has been conducted to examine its use in a research article (RA). With the exception of the research carried out by Crosthwaite, Cheung, dan Jiang [7], almost all previous studies investigated the use of only one aspect of stance, such as hedges [8,9], boosters [10,11], atttitude markers [12], and self-mentions [13].…”