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- By hedging, authors tone down their statements in order to reduce the risk of
opposition
Answer: opposition. This position associates hedges with academic imprecision and defines them as linguistic cues of
impartiality
Answer: impartiality which avoid personal accountability for statements.
- Writers want their readers to know that they do not claim to have the final word on the subject. Expressing a lack of
certainty
Answer: certainty does not necessarily show confusion or vagueness. One could consider hedges as ways of being more precise in reporting results.
Hedging may present the true state of the writers'
understanding
Answer: understanding and may be used to negotiate an accurate representation of the state of the knowledge under discussion. In fact, academic writers may well wish to reduce the strength of claims simply because stronger statements would not be justified by the data or evidence presented.
- Hedges may be understood as positive or negative
politeness
Answer: politeness strategies in which the writer tries to appear humble rather than arrogant or all-knowing. Hedging is a rational interpersonal strategy which:
- supports the writer's position
- builds writer-reader (speaker/listener) relationships
- acknowledges any limitations in the writer’s work
- and guarantees a certain level of
acceptability
Answer: acceptability in a community.
Once a claim becomes widely accepted, it is then possible to present it without a hedge.
- A certain degree of hedging has become a
convention
Answer: convention; hedging now functions to conform to an established writing
style
Answer: style in English.