hedging and boosting in abstracts of applied linguistics articles.pdfVIP

Hedging and boosting in abstracts of applied linguistics articles: A comparative study of English- and Chinese-medium journals Guangwei Hu *, Feng Cao Department of English Language and Literature, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 1 NanyangWalk, Singapore 637616, Singapore 1. Introduction This study examines the use of hedges and boosters as metadiscourse markers in the genre of the academic article abstract from a comparative perspective. According to an often-quoted definition, metadiscourse consists of ‘‘the self- reflective expressions used to negotiate in