FUNCTIONAL INVESTIGATION OF HEDGES IN STRATIGRAPHY RESEARCH ARTICLES

The main purpose of the academic writing is to inform the other researchers in a particular field. Stratigraphy is a branch of geology .And many researchers work in this field worldwide.. Main purpose of strtigraphical studies is to reconstruct the sequence of events of Earth history and the evolution of life on Earth. Working in the different places around the Globe, Many stratigrapers use English language, as a second or foreign languge,to communicate with each other. On the one hand one of the important issues in academic writing being difficult for non native speakers of English is hedging devices. On the other hand we cannot find clear answers for many research questions in this scientific field. As a result detachment in claims and using hedging devices is inevitable .The concept of hedge was first introduced by (George Lakoff , 1972).It refers to words whose job is to make thing fuzzier or less fuzzy . This phenomenon has been studied by many scholars from different points of view .All of these studies have showed hedges played an important role in academic writing presenting scientific findings cautiously along with leaving room for readers to have their own interpretation. The purpose of this study was to find out the application of hedges in stratigraphy research articles written by American stratigraphers .The reason behind this selection was to investigate the way mentioned stratigraphers, as authentic writers of English scientific papers, utilize these devices in their articles . To this end, 15 research articles, written in two last years, were selected and read carefully to find out existed hedging devices and the relevant concepts they have been used for. Studied sections of articles include abstract, introduction, discussion, and results. Hedges were classified based on Slager –mayer’s (1994) classification. This taxonomy classify hedges in five type including shields, approximators, author’s personal doubt and direct involvement, emotionally-charged intensifiers, and compound hedges. The results revealed that hedging devices have an important role in stratigraphy scientific articles. Furthermore it showed that American writers of stratigraphy research articles use hedging to write about different concepts of stratigraphy, and most important of which are age of lithostratigraphic units, thickness of strata, litholoy, and sedimentary environments. Among different types of hedges approximatores were used more than other types that is against findings in some other research fields .For instance ,(Hyland,1998) showed that typy1(shields) are most frequent hedges in biology. Findings of present research imply our students should learn to recognize and use these devices effectively in writings to hedge their statements when it is necessary.

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Keywords: Hedge ، Stratigraphy ، research articles