Turkish Writers vs. Native Writers of English: Heading in the Discussion Section of ELT Research Articles Written by Native and Non- Native Writers of English

Turkish Writers vs. Native Writers of English: Heading in the Discussion Section of ELT Research Articles Written by Native and Non- Native Writers of English

Göçmez , Lutfiye
Göçmez, Ensar

Hedging as a very crucial pragmatic-discourse device for the academic writers to be accepted by the academic discourse community has gained much attention among the academics and linguists researching hedges in scientific literature. To define it shortly, hedges are the words or phrases whose job is to make things fuzzier implying that the writer is less than fully committed to the certainty of the referential information given. That is the most effective use of hedges in academic writing, and for this way the academic writers may build a mutual interaction between them and the reader. This study, which was based on corpus analysis, compared the use of hedges in the discussion section of Research Articles (RAs) – published in ELT Journal – of two groups of writers who are the native writers (English) versus the non-native writers (Turkish). For this purpose, Hyland’s (1994) categorization of hedging patterns (modal verbs, lexical verbs, modal adverbs, modal adjectives and modal nouns) in 20 RAs (10 of NNWs and 10 of NWs) were analysed contextually. The findings from the study showed that both English writers and Turkish writers did use the hedges in the discussion section of RAs with almost same frequency. However, by comparison, English writers tended to use different varieties of hedges while Turkish writers preferred using the hedges of modal verbs in their Research Articles more frequently. On the other hand, it was also seen that, contrary to some scholars’ views, the non-native writers (Turkish) were well qualified to use hedges effectively in their Research Articles as well as the native writers (English) were. In sum, this data may emphasize the importance of the use of hedges in academic writing and therefore, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teachers should sensitize the novice writers to the effective use of hedging in their academic writing.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012-05

901