A Comparative Study of Hedges in Academic Paper Abstracts—Based on Natural and Social Science Academic Paper Abstracts
歆怡 赵 · Modern Linguistics · 2014
Selecting 100 abstracts from Chinese academic papers on natural science and social science (respectively 50) as analytic targets, this paper attempts to make a comparison on the classification, frequency, and pragmatic functions of the hedges in these two kinds of abstracts, and elucidates their rules and reasons.The findings show that there exist a large number of hedges in these two kinds of abstracts, chiefly presented as approximators.Among them, the frequency of adaptors and rounders in natural science academic paper abstracts is slightly lower than those in social science academic paper abstracts.Hedges are more often used to mitigate the tone in natural science paper abstracts, and it is opposite in social science, but the vague meanings of these words themselves are generally the same in these two kinds of abstracts.In addition, they make the academic paper abstracts more standard, rigorous, and precise, and to some extent, reflecting the author's awareness of self-protection while abiding by Cooperative Principles and Politeness Principles.