HEDGING AS A LINGUISTIC STRATEGY USED BY PAKISTANI ACADEMIC WRITERS: A CORPUS-ASSISTED ACADEMIC DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Abstract

The following study examines the academic discourse practices of Pakistani academic writers through the lens of corpus linguistics. The aims of this study is to collect and analyze the corpus from journal articles produced by Pakistani academicians to identify the use of hedges and boosters in Pakistani academic writing and compare it with research articles published in International Journals, written by International authors, based on Critical Discourse Analysis. This Corpus Linguistics study explores the local and global influences of use of hedging on Pakistani academic writing. The data of this study is based on 30 research articles; 15 by Pakistani scholars, 15 by English scholars and the articles, based on Critical Discourse Analysis, were sourced from reputable academic journals. First, manual coding was done using Hyland’s taxonomy (2005), then frequency and distribution analysis was made using AntConc 4.3.1. This study compares 15 Pakistani academic writing articles with 15 research articles from International Journals using AntConc 4.3.1 to identify who uses hedges and boosters more in academic writing and how does it impact their writing skills. The approximate corpus size is the sample of 100 words, and hedging is analyzed through concordance lines, with special focus on modal verbs, adverbs, and adjectives which show uncertainty. The theoretical framework of this study is based on Hyland’s modal (2005) classification of hedging in academic discourse. Mixed method of research was used for this study, including quantitative comparison of hedges and boosters' raw frequency and normalized frequency per 10,000 with qualitative analysis of hedges and boosters’ functions and their discourse roles in academic writing