Cihan University-Erbil Scientific Journal a periodic multidisciplinary scientific journal issued by Cihan University- Erbil after auditing and revising by a specialized staff headed by the President of the university. The journal publishes original creative researches related to all fields of pure and applied sciences and humanities in Kurdish, Arabic and English.
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Author: Maysa’ A.Mahmood
Cihan University-Erbil,Department of English, College of Arts & Letters
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24086/cuesj.si.2018.n1a3
Abstract
Hedging plays a crucial role in academic writing style and research articles in particular. It has been proven that hedges fulfil a wide range of both prepositional and interpersonal functions, since they allow writers to present their opinions and comments on the content of the proposition while taking into consideration their readership (Hyland,1994, Salager-Mayer,1994).Differences in the occurrence of hedges in various fields have been satisfyingly explored .However, comparisons within the field of humanities and research articles written by non-natives have received considerably less attention. This paper presents the results of comparing the introductions of twenty research articles in linguistics and literary criticism, written by Iraqi lecturers at the Dept. of English ,college of Arts & Letters /Cihan university-Erbil, during the academic years 2015-2017.The analyses draw on Hyland’s classification (1996) in an attempt to identify different functions of hedges and to describe their grammatical realizations with regard to genre-specific features of the examined texts. In addition to the theoretical background, the study includes description of different forms of scientific hedging, their semantic roles, categorization, and functions. Results of the study revealed the fact that a variety of hedging expressions with different functions and frequency is present in all examined texts though writers of linguistics tend to be less personal and more objective than those of literary criticism who are more personal and subjective.
Keywords: Hedging, research articles, semantic & syntactic realizations
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