A Pragmatic Analysis of Hedges in Articles on Chemistry, Linguistics and Economics

Farida Hidayati, Syihabuddin Syihabuddin, Dadang Sudana

2017

Abstract

This study examines the use of hedges in the introduction sections of scientific articles in three disciplines, namely Chemistry, Linguistics and Economics, based on Lakoff (1972), Hyland (1998b), Varttala (2001) and Salager-Meyer (1994b). The aim of this research is to discover the distribution of hedges in the introduction sections of those articles written by male and female writers. Data were collected from 6 articles consisting of 2 articles on Chemistry, 2 articles on Linguistics and 2 articles on Economics selected from reputable international journals. This study indicates that the total percentages of hedges are Economics (7.59%), Linguistics (6.27%) and Chemistry (3.1 %). In terms of gender, the total percentages for males are 8.35% and females 8.61%. This study confirms Hardjanto (2016) who states that the use of modal auxiliaries (hedges), tends to be more common in soft sciences (economics and linguistics) than in hard sciences (chemistry). Meanwhile, this study refutes Ansari and Bathaie (2010) and Yeganeha and Ghoreyshi (2015) that hedging has been claimed to be a strategy that is used mostly by female writers than male writers. In this study, male writers hedged as much as females, probably because the genre of the texts is similar, namely academic texts.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Hidayati F., Syihabuddin S. and Sudana D. (2017). A Pragmatic Analysis of Hedges in Articles on Chemistry, Linguistics and Economics.In The Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and The Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with The First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education - Volume 1: CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE, ISBN 978-989-758-332-2, pages 418-422. DOI: 10.5220/0007168404180422

in Bibtex Style

@conference{conaplin and icollite17,
author={Farida Hidayati and Syihabuddin Syihabuddin and Dadang Sudana},
title={A Pragmatic Analysis of Hedges in Articles on Chemistry, Linguistics and Economics},
booktitle={The Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and The Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with The First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education - Volume 1: CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE,},
year={2017},
pages={418-422},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0007168404180422},
isbn={978-989-758-332-2},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - The Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and The Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with The First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education - Volume 1: CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE,
TI - A Pragmatic Analysis of Hedges in Articles on Chemistry, Linguistics and Economics
SN - 978-989-758-332-2
AU - Hidayati F.
AU - Syihabuddin S.
AU - Sudana D.
PY - 2017
SP - 418
EP - 422
DO - 10.5220/0007168404180422