Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse. English for Specific Purposes 13

This paper discusses how the communicative purpose of the different rhetorical sections of research papers (RP) and case reports (CR) in medical English written discourse influences the frequency and category distribution of the modulation devices (hedges) used in each section. To this end, we analyzed a corpus of 15 articles drawn from five leading medical journals. Hedges were identified by means of a contextual analysis, their frequency was recorded in the different rhetorical sections of the 15 articles, and their percentages (over the total number of running words) were computed. The hedges recorded were then classified according to five pre-established categories, and their percentual distribution per category was evaluated in each rhetorical section. The results were analyzed by means of Chi-square tests. Our research indicates that the three most frequently used hedging devices in both text-types (shields, approximators and compound hedges) account for over 90 % of the total number of hedges used in our sample. The Discussion (RP) /Comment (CR) sections are the most heavily hedged sections, whereas the Methods (RP) and the Case Report sections (CR) are the least-hedged rhetorical divisions (p=.001 and.071 respectively). The Introduction section of both RP and CR favors shields (mainly epistemic verbs) as a hedging convention followed by approximators (negative or quasi negative expressions in RP Introductions, and adaptors of frequency in CR Introductions). In the Introduction hedges allow researchers to establish an "early niche " for their research. Scientific writers mostl