Hedging : A Question with
Probably No Answer
UTELI, January 22, 2003
)This is a fuller version of my
oral presentation)
Beverly A. Lewin,
Division of Foreign Languages,
Tel Aviv University
Ramat Aviv, Israel
e-mail: lewinb@post.tau.ac.il
INTRODUCTION
We have known for a long time that face to face communication is pervaded by hedging. (“He seems angry.”) However, more recently, applied linguistics and EFL literature have been focused on hedging as a salient characteristic of scientific writing, reversing previous notions of scientific writing as totally objective. Actually, the recommendation to hedge claims can be traced back to one of the earliest rhetoricians of scientific reports, Robert Boyle (c. 1650) who saw hedging as one of the many stylistic devices to project both personal honesty and modesty. Several articles in the ESP literature have discussed how students (in particular, novice scientists) should be taught to hedge their claims
But the prescriptions for teaching hedging beg two questions:
1. what is the definition
of a ‘hedge’?
2. what is the function of
hedging?
We have to distinguish
between form and function. For example,
we could say the function of politeness is to make interpersonal
relations smoother; a specific form is the lexical item “please”.
I would like to present some data from my own
research on authors and readers and then give my own recommendations for
teaching hedging.
If you define a hedge as
any devices that qualifies the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the
proposition he/she utters, almost any linguistic item or expression can be
interpreted as a hedge. In the
narrowest definitions, hedges are equated with
“the expression of tentativeness and possibility” (Hyland (1996:433).
Therefore, the most commonly accepted type of realizations for hedging are
those that select an epistemic modality structure, e.g., ‘a possible
interpretation of this finding may be that....’
However, at least 50 types of structures have been categorized in the literature as hedging. (Markkanen and Schroder, 1997). In fact, paradoxically, the literature gives equal weight to opposing options:
1.both certainty and uncertainty, (“I’m sure the earth is round” as well as “I’m not sure the earth is round”)
2. attribution – both personalization (I argue that smoking causes cancer)
and depersonalization (the findings suggest that smoking causes cancer)
(Unhedged = Smoking causes cancer.)
3. qualification, i.e., structures that blur distinctions of quantity and frequency, such as approximately
structures that span the continuum between all and no cases” both strengtheners
(“This correlates quite well with the time-course”) and weakeners (“These proteins
become, at least partially… ”)
It
has been attributed to politeness, self-protection, politics, the need to appear modest, evade aresponsibility or
even conceal the truth. It is assumed that the realization
of any of the structures I have mentioned
e.g., ‘a possible interpretation of this
finding may be that....’ is attributable to one of these
motivations.
So, in summary, we have an open-ended list of forms (specific realizations) that have been called hedges and we have a shorter list of motivations that have been imputed for the use of these forms. There is a one-to-one assumption – analogous to saying the use of the form ‘please’ is motivated by politeness and the reverse is true, too.
So not only is there confusion about the definition of a hedge, but these judgements have been made by linguists, the authors of the text themselves have not been consulted.
Therefore, the questions in
study I were:
a.
which linguistic structures do
authors of scientific texts consider “hedging”?
b.
what
motivation do authors acknowledge for “hedging”?
METHOD
Authors: In the first study, I asked an e-mail list of authors of
scientific papers to select one of their published articles; and underline or
highlight the places in the Introduction
and Discussion sections where
they toned down their claims. 14 authors responded to my request.
Three
points should be noted regarding the wording of the task. I used the phrase “tone down” instead of
hedge because the scientists I interviewed in a pilot study interpreted “hedge”
only in the pejorative sense of evading responsibility. In other words, had I asked, “Where did you
hedge in this article [i.e., the article chosen by the participant for
analysis]?” I am confident that the
common response would have been “I
never hedge”. This was done by mail; I did not give authors any list or hint as
to what to consider as an instance of “toning down”.
Because of time constraints, I’ll talk about only one text that reflects some of the general findings.
Israel
has a consistently higher level of fertility than its European counterparts.
The present paper seeks to reevaluate explanations
for this apparently unusual situation.
We suggest that previous explanations …. are
sociologically incomplete.
To
anticipate, we shall show
that neither of these putative causes can explain Israeli high fertility ….
We shall argue that Israel’s high fertility needs to be
explained [by nationalism]
We shall present evidence that high fertility ….
This
nationalism, of course, is not a homogeneous sentiment.
In general, we can see that as the standard of
living increases, fertility tends
to decline, even if the association is
not particularly strong ….
The first [framework] argues that the reason for
Israel’s high fertility lies in the social origins of what is still, essentially, a
population in the process of modernization ….
Approximately, one-sixth of the population ….
Implicitly, this argument suggests that ….
[Phenomena x and y] are almost certainly attributable to ….
To
remind you, the author worked on a clean text.
I later marked the hedges.
As you can see, this author ignored most of the forms commonly accepted as hedges in the literature. For instance, he did not point out suggest (a lexical verb of uncertainty) as a hedge nor did he consider attribution (we) or depersonalized (the first framework) hedging
He is typical in that he selected very few hedges of the total available.
Each respondent was asked
why s/he used each “downtoner”; thus, different motivations could be ascribed
to different instances of hedging in a particular text.
When the respondents did
hedge, they did so for various reasons, within the same article contrary to the
assumption in the literature of a unitary motivation. Instead, each form of
hedge was inspired by a different motivation.
Moreover, the respondents did not ascribe all their uses of uncertainty to considerations of
politeness, modesty, or immediate audience considerations, (although one can
assume that everyone is ultimately constrained by the anticipated reaction to
their claims). When asked why they had
used a modality structure, the respondents indicated that uncertainty was a
more honest reflection of reality.
These reasons seem to imply that the author is not trying to evade or
conceal the truth; s/he is not trying to say less than s/he believes but is trying to say only what s/he believes. Politeness per se was never mentioned as a motivation When we look at other forms of downtowners,
however, considerations of face or audience did arise. Respondents deleted the
agent or qualified claims in order to avoid confrontations, or to appear more
modest.
Study II
The purpose of
the second study was to see if readers identify the same hedges as the authors
do. I teach writing to Ph.D. students.
I chose one text in medicine, social science, and exact sciences group
and presented it to students in the respective fields (50 in all). The example I show here is a sociology text
which was presented to18 social science students; The numbers are too small to
draw valid conclusions but the results perhaps show trends.
The readers (Ph.D. students) were asked to mark where they thought the author had toned down his claims. Those hedges marked by at least 4/18 people are in italics, below.
Israel
has a consistently higher level of fertility than its European counterparts.
The present paper seeks to reevaluate explanations
for this apparently unusual situation.
We suggest that previous explanations …. are
sociologically incomplete.
To
anticipate, we shall show
that neither of these putative causes can explain Israeli high fertility ….
We shall argue that
Israel’s high fertility needs to be explained [by nationalism]
We shall present evidence that high fertility ….
This
nationalism, of course, is not a homogeneous sentiment.
In general, we can see that as the standard of living increases, fertility tends to decline, even if the
association is not particularly strong ….
The first [framework] argues that the reason for
Israel’s high fertility lies in the social origins of what is still, essentially, a
population in the process of modernization ….
Approximately, one-sixth of the population ….
Implicitly, this argument suggests that
….
[Phenomena x and y] are almost
certainly attributable to ….
(To remind you, the hedges cited by the literature are in bold, the author’s hedges are underlined and the readers’ hedges are in italics. The students saw a perfectly clean text and I gave no example of what I meant by ‘toning down.’)
Summary of findings of 3 texts, of which this text is an example
1. authors identified very few hedges out of total available hedges.
2. readers identified many more hedges, out of total available hedges. Readers recognize more of the ‘traditional’ hedges than the authors, e.g. epistemic modality in all its forms – adjectives, adverbs, nouns, modal verbs – as well
as attribution.
3. Neither authors nor readers recognized approximately as a hedge.
4. Most surprisingly, there was a large discrepancy between readers’ and authors’ identifications. In this case – no one recognized the author’s hedges
This opens up all kinds of questions: the postmodern view that the modern author does not have the final word as to the meaning of his or her text; the reader determines its meaning. This has ominous implications for teachers of reading comprehension, so I’ll leave that question aside! A less radical interpretation is that the reader only sees what he/she has been taught to see.
Another explanation for the authors having chosen very few hedges is that modalized propositions may have become institutionalized in the register for research reports and therefore, the “unmarked” form, so authors do not identify them as hedging.
Conjectures, claims and opinions aren’t hedged by choice; the difference between a fact and a hypothesis or even a generalization from that fact is the selection of a hedge, as sentence 2 illustrates:
“The analyses reveal that extra-community employment is more limited among women than men. Women’s tendency to settle for local jobs may be seen as. ….” It could be that my respondents took this for granted – because there was no way NOT to hedge Authors DO NOT DO this because they are being polite or non-commital. (cf.: “Jones may have been wrong when he said …. “)
IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING
For reading: When we read, we have to make a distinction between when the author chooses to hedge – for interpersonal reasons and when the ‘uncertainty’ is part of the way you realize the speech act. Readers should look for hedging as a signal when an assertion is presented as a fact and when it is presented as a non-fact (generality, claim, hypothesis)
There is conflicting advice in guidebooks for writing.
1. At one pole are those who urge writers to eliminate all hedges in their prose. – probably the most famous being Strunk and White (1959:59) who proclaim that hedges are “the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words”. Well, they obviously have never read scientific prose.
2. Research into other cultures has claimed that NNS need to learn hedging techniques – whether because their culture is different or because – even if they know they should hedge- they just haven’t been taught a wide variety of techniques. These people studied Chinse students in Hong Kong, etc. and not Israelis. Here is an example of an Israeli student: If anything, our students are too assertive for an English audience.
Our research is focused on the investigation of vorticity dynamics in a homogenous and isotropic flow and that is the reason why so many people are interested in our research.
In this case, the writer must add hedging to soften the impact of his remarks. Something like “that may be the reason our research as generated some interest.”
Moreover, hedges make a text more reader-friendly. They allow for negotiation between the writer and the reader. One piece of research found that hedges make the text more acceptable.
Not only do we have to teach students when to hedge, but w e have to teach more options for hedging.
Most textbooks, if they mention it
at all, talk only about modality -
: Smoking appears, seems, tends to
cause cancer.
It seems that ….
Our research indicates / suggests that …. smoking causes…
MODAL VERB:
Smoking may/ might lead to cancer.
Smoking
can / could lead to cancer.
There is a {strong/ slight/ remote} possibility,
probability that smoking ….
We
should add factive vs. non-factive verbs
in (a) and (b) the factual status of the phenomenon differs:
a Jones reports that the earth is flat.
b. Jones showed that the earth is flat.
In presenting results, the author has the choice of making a generalization (A) or restricting her claim to the present study (B):
Tense: A. Human capital is imperfectly portable across countries.
B.
Human capital was imperfectly portable across countries.
Smoking leads to cancer, if certain
other variables are present.
LIMIT GENERALIZABILITY
Smoking causes cancer, among Israeli men
who beat their wives.
According to this preliminary study,
….
ALLOW FOR HUMAN ERROR
As far as we could ascertain, ….
As you can see, I don’t have the answer! I’m not sure there is an answer to the question of hedging. I invite comments and suggestions.
A partial bibliography
Banks, D. (1998) Book Review,
ESP France Newsletter, 13 (4), p3.
Crompton,
P. (1997). Hedging in academic writing: Some theoretical problems.
English for Specific Purposes, 16, 271-287.
Hyland K. (1998). Hedging in scientific
research. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Lewin, B. (1998). Hedging: Form and function in scientific research
texts. In: I.
Fortanet, S.
Posteguillo, J.C. Palmer, and J.F. Coll
(Eds.) Genre studies in
English for academic purposes. Castello: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I. (pp.
89-104)
Lewin, B. (2001) From hedging to heightening: Toning down and up in
scientific texts.
Melbourne Papers in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, September 2001.
Lewin, B. J. Fine, & L. Young (2001). Expository discourse: A genre-based
approach to social science research texts. London: Continuum.
Markkanen,
R. & H. Schroder, (Eds.) (1997). Hedging and discourse: Approaches to
the analysis of a
pragmatic phenomenon in academic texts.
Berlin/NY: Walter de Gruyter.