Alternative concepts to shields and approximators: Reader-oriented and

and content-oriented hedges

To offer a complete picture of the main concepts related to hedging and boosting, it is necessary to present the existing alternative concepts to shields and approximators. While the concepts I apply are more appropriate for a study on author’s commitment, Hyland’s (cf. 1998a: 156-177) alternative concepts related to hedges are very useful and well-known. One of the most well-known aspects of Hyland’s (1998a: 156) model of

hedging is his “pragmatic" (and semantic) division between content- and reader- oriented hedges. This is shown in Figure 5. It is relevant to explain this division as it contains many similarities with my framework, even though our terminologies obviously differ. However, when explaining the ‘flexible’ interpersonal meanings, the higher importance stands on its meaning realizations or categories, rather than how one names them.

Figure 5: Adapted illustration of Hyland’s (1998a: 156) model of scientific hedging. Figure 5 shows a hierarchical order that enable us to clearly distinguish between reader- oriented hedges and the other scale of content-oriented ones. Reader-oriented hedges concern the relationship between the author and the readership and recognise the readers’ presence and importance in establishing knowledge (cf. Hyland 1998a: 177- 178). Hyland maintains in his various studies from 1998 to 2006 that the reader’s presence in a social interactive academic writing leads authors to also use content- oriented hedges (cf. Hyland 1998a; 2006: 695). The concept is comparable to Brown and Levinson’s (1978; 1987) widely known theory of strategic politeness as a face- saving act. Hyland (2006: 695) adds here that:

First, claims must correspond with what is believed to be true in the world. Hedges here are ‘content-oriented’ and concern the relationship between a proposition and a representation of reality.

From the quote above, it appears that content-oriented hedges have the function of mitigating the relation between the propositional content and a certain non-linguistic representation of reality. Content-oriented hedges can be further divided into accuracy- oriented and writer-oriented, as the passage below reveals. Accuracy-oriented hedges seek to make the propositions more precise (omparable to Prince et al.’s notion of approximators), while writer-oriented hedges reduce the writer’s presence in the text (in the same manner as shields). (cf. Hyland 1998a: 170) As far as my study is concerned, Hyland mentions how moving epistemic elements in an initial position is related to writer-oriented hedging and avoiding explicit responsibility for claims. I consider writer-oriented hedges as comparable to Prince et al.’s (cf. 1980: 11-19) notion of shields. I base my statement in their similar representation of writer’s stance regarding the propositional information and on the fact that Hyland himself confirms that the aim of writer-oriented hedges is ‘to shield’ the writer from possible criticism. However, they differ in the point that Hyland mostly includes in this category impersonal forms (see examples above) where the writer is not prepared to guarantee personally the propositional information presented (cf. Hyland 1998a: 172), while Prince et al. (1980:

11-12) also include explicit uses such as I think, I had to believe. I conclude that Hyland’s (cf. 1998a: 170) term fits more to attribution shields and my category of impersonal shields but not to plausibility shields.

Two of the types of hedges which constitute the category of accuracy-oriented hedges are reliability and attribute hedges. Reliability hedges such as possible, probably, we suspect and similar modal adjectives, nouns and verbs mainly stand where the epistemically possible is. (cf. Hyland 1998a: 166-167) Attribute hedges such as generally, essentially and almost seek precision in conveyance and encode variability of items from an ‘ideal’ correlation, expected result, behaviour and so on. (cf. Hyland 1998a: 165) Hyland compares attribute hedges only to rounders but his examples include also adaptors such as “acidity that generally guarantees” (Hyland 1998a: 165). It is clear that this hedging category is in line with both adaptors and rounders. In a similar manner to adaptors and rounders, hedges almost negate the force of the modified term (e.g. almost) or indicate its degree of precision (e.g. approximately).

In my opinion, content-oriented hedges would include both approximators (accuracy-oriented hedges: proposition and prototypicality) and shields (writer-oriented hedges: author commitment). Meanwhile, reader-oriented forms partly resemble attribution shields when they seek direct reader involvement (one/you would believe). In a general sense, Hyland (2006: 696) implies that content-oriented forms “convey approximations” while reader-oriented forms “evaluate, interpret, and comment on the evidential status of their information.” It is almost impossible to rule out one of the main content-oriented and reader-oriented categories due to their overlap (e.g. in my shields category). Due to my investigation of author commitment, my main focus is on content- oriented hedges (in Hyland’s terminology), with a partial focus on reader-oriented hedges. However, I do recognise the presence of reader-orientation and the fact that academic writing is a joint interactional activity between writers and readers.

After presenting Hyland’s (1998a) model of hedging, there will be a final discussion on my reasons for not fully adopting it. This is partly shown in the words of Diewald. Diewald criticizes Hyland’s (cf. 1998a: 162ff) model of content- and reader-oriented hedges by raising questions regarding the feasibility of capturing interpersonal communicative effects, as the model suggests. (cf. Diewald 2006: 305-306) In a similar manner to Diewald, I acknowledge the difficulty of providing an accurate and non- biased description of interpersonal communicative effects of hedges (as Hyland (1998a) suggests), as my pilot study revealed. They, together with many non-lexical hedges (cf. Hyland 1998a: 143-145), are particularly not feasible for quantitative and qualitative analyses that involve considerably large corpora. However, this does not reduce the relevance of Hyland’s model for research on hedging including useful concepts such as content- and reader-oriented hedges. Hyland’s (1998a) lists of lexemes and word classes was a useful guide for this study as shown in the next subsection.