Rhetorical Strategies in L2 Writing: An Exploration of Hedging and Boosting in Applied Linguistics Research Articles

It has been generally attested that academic writing does not only involve propositional content but has also been established as interactional and persuasive (Ho & Li, 2018; Hyland, 2005; Lee & Deakin, 2016; Swales, 1990). Hedges and boosters are interactional metadiscourse (MD) strategies which are considered to play a significant interactional role in academic genre. While hedges are used to reduce epistemic authorial commitment, the use of boosters indicate the writer’s full commitment about the propositional content put forth. Nevertheless, hedges and boosters are not simply used to comment on the truth value of propositions but they are also deployed to reflect the writer’s relationship with members of discourse community (Hyland, 2005; Vassileva, 2001). They are conceived as epistemic expressions that help writers modulate claims by anticipating readers’ responses to the writer’s statements and so their manipulation is considered essential in academic writing (Hyland, 2017). Hedges are linguistically realized by expressions such as might, perhaps, possible, generally, to a certain extent, etc. whereas boosters include such expressions as definitely, demonstrate, in fact, it is clear that, etc