DOI: https://doi.org/10.61957/joerai-20230102

Title: Functions of Hedges and Boosters in Academic Writing

Author: Zhixuan Shen

Abstract

Hedges and boosters as meta-discourse markers have been the focus of many studies. In academic writing, the effective and balanced use of hedges and boosters can help the writer communicate both the ideational meaning and interpersonal meaning with readers to more precise degrees of accuracy in his/her truth assessments. The ways that writers distinguish their opinions from facts and evaluate the certainty of their assertions are central to the meaning of academic texts, yet this is an area that EFL students often find extremely problematic. This paper, by analyzing a TESOL Quarterly article, explains and demonstrates how hedges and boosters are used and function in all parts of academic writing. The analysis finds that, as a typical academic article, there are more boosters than hedges in introduction and literature review parts, relatively fewer hedges and boosters in method and results parts, and much more hedges and boosters in the last two parts. Moreover, by keeping a balance between hedging and boosting, the writers invest a convincing degree of assurance in their propositions, yet avoid overstating their case and risk inviting the rejection of their arguments. The research is to cultivate EFL learners’ awareness of metadiscourse devices when reading in the target language and to develop their ability to effectively employ these devices in their own academic writing.