Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
English, as a popular language, gradually becomes “the predominate language inthe published academic discourse”(Hyland, 1998a:246), and it has been used as amedium to get the articles published in international English language journals,including Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Second Language Writing, English forSpecific Purposes etc. What is more, Baker(2009) indicates that English has gainedthe position of “lingua franca” in academic writing. Thus, both the novices andestablished researchers need to improve their English proficiency for being acceptedand maintaining their international statuses among the members of their communities.Researchers who want to achieve communicative functions, get to have the abilities,like lexico-syntactic skills, and the generic structure suitable for an academic genre(Swales, 1990,2004). What is more, when the researchers are non-native Englishspeakers, they have a lot of issues to consider, especially, the cross-cultural factors.In an academic article, the Introduction part, as the first part to be read after theabstract, is pretty important, so if this part is not that interesting to arouse the readers’attention, they might not be likely to continue reading this article( Safnil, 2001),which means the introduction section is used to motivate the readers to read the wholearticle.Therefore, this section should be as interesting and convincing as possible. Inaddition, it can show the important proving ground in a certain field to readers tounderstand. Actually, the introduction section is pretty complex, which has beenproved by many researchers(Gilbert & Mulkay, 1987). That is to say, the introductionsection is more than gathering all the relative facts, and it should also include thepeer-colleagues’ own perceptions. Belcher(2009:209), argues that the introductionsection in a research article is mainly used to offer as much information as possible tothe readers to understand the “argument and its stakes”. Swales and Freak(1994) havemade similar conclusion, which shows two aspects: giving a reason logically, andmotivating the readers to continue reading.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
This comparative study on lexical hedging usage in the introduction of RAs willbenefit many people, including second language learners, second language teachers,second language novices researchers etc, by helping them create high qualityintroductions via expressing their statements in a more appropriate way through usinghedging devices properly. Hedging devices have many functions, which have beenfound out by some academic scholars( Salager-Meyer, 1994; Hyland, 1996a; Varttala,2001). Firstly, writers could convey their tentative claims by using hedges for theirlack of knowledge. In this way, the writers can attenuate their absoluteness. Also, thewriters could show their politeness and not be against other statements claimed byother previous scholars, which means that hedging devices could help writers toexpress their opinions much more modestly with humanity to some degree. Inaddition, hedging devices could help writers to avoid criticism which is not necessaryat all, by offering them much room to share their own thoughts with others. Besides,hedging devices are very useful, especially when writers want to claim precisely.Hedging devices play an important role in academic discourse. However, theneglect of the awareness of hedging usage still exists, especially in the empiricalresearch articles due to the fact that some academic researchers held that empirical research should be as accurate as possible. Whereas they misunderstand the hedgingdevices, with which they could convey ideas with more preciseness. According toJalilifar (2007b), hedging has aroused many researchers and scholars’ interests,especially those in corpora linguistics who have treated hedging as a particular featureof academic writing (Salager-Meyer,1994; Hyland, 1998a). However, th
