Professional Documents
Culture Documents
239-256, 1994
Copyright 0 1994 The American University
Pergamon Elsevier Science Ltd. Printed in the USA
0889-4906194 $6.00 + .OO
0889-4906(94)00014-x
Address correspondence to: Ken Hyland, International Pacific College, Private Bag 11021, Palmerston North,
New Zealand.
239
240 K. Hyland
disciplines has revealed how academic discourse is both socially situated and
structured to accomplish rhetorical objectives (e.g., Gilbert & Mulkay 1984;
Latour & Woolgar 1979). Writing is a social act performed in a specific context
for a particular audience (Bruffee 1986), and thus the impersonal style which
appears to minimise the involvement of social actors also marks the interpre-
tive viewpoint of the writer.
This is not surprising given the fact that one of the most important aspects
of science is the weighing of evidence and drawing conclusions from data. As
Nash observes:
The writer currently evaluates and criticises the information and the prop-
ositions he or she tries to set down as fully, accurately, and objectively as
possible. For centuries this dialectical processing of objective fact and subjective
evaluation has been the goal of academic writing and of the training that leads to
academic writing. (Nash 1990: 10)
Rather than being factual and impersonal, effective academic writing actually
depends on interactional elements which supplement propositional information
in the text and alert readers to the writer’s opinion. Significant among this
interactive element are hedges.
Any utterance in which the speaker explicitly qualifies his commitment to the
truth of the proposition expressed by the sentence he utters is an epistem-
ically modal or modalised sentence. (Lyons 1977: 797)
Research articles are rarely simple narratives of investigations. Instead they are
complexly distanced reconstructions of research activities, at least part of this
reconstructive process deriving from the need to anticipate and discountenance
negative reactions to the knowledge claims being advanced. (Swales 1990: 175)
who acknowledges the caution with which he or she does science and writes on
science. ”
Evidence for the use of hedging in academic discourse comes from a number
of empirical studies. Skelton, for example, examined the expression of “com-
mentative language” in 20 science and 20 humanities research articles (RAs),
focusing on “the way in which we can express the extent to which we commit
ourselves to particular propositions” (Skelton 1988b: 98). Skelton identifies
four realisation categories of comment: (1) copulas other than be, (2) modal
verbs, (3) adjectivals and adverbials which are clause initial, or (4) introduced
by There is, It is, This is, and (5) lexical verbs. These examples are taken from
a corpus of recent articles in molecular biology:
Comments are common in academic writing, and about equally common in arts
and sciences they certainly appear to occur, overall, in between one third
and one half of all sentences. (Skelton 1988b: 103)
TABLE 1
Distribution of Modality in Scientific Discourse
Methodology
The study examines hedging in textbooks by focusing on the coverage of
lexical items as markers of uncertainty and tentativeness. The evaluation is
based on the number of exercises and quality of information devoted to rele-
vant concepts and linguistic items. For purposes of comparison, it is helpful to
categorise the devices used to express epistemic mitigation into distinct gram-
matical classes as modal verbs, lexical verbs, adverbs, nouns, and adjectives.
Hedging in AcademicWriting
These markers have been broadly grouped under three headings. The cate-
gories are “no coverage,” referring to cases where the topic is not addressed,
“minimal coverage, ” where little information, few examples, and less than
three exercises are provided, and “fair to extensive coverage,” which includes
cases which offer a more thorough coverage of examples and three or more
exercises.
While a focus on lexical markers of hedging ignores such structural elements
as tense, conditionals, question forms, or concessional clauses, lexical choices
represent the most frequently used means of expressing doubt, tentativeness,
and affect in native speaker usage and are the simplest devices for L2 learners
to acquire. The modal verbs are particularly strongly represented in both
spoken and written English (e.g., Coates 19831, but written corpora show
there is equal justification for attending to other grammatical classes (e.g.,
Adams Smith 1984; Holmes 1988; Skelton 1988b). In fact, a computer fre-
quency count of over 800,000 words in the JDEST’ corpus of science and
technology and the academic written sections of the Brown and LOB corpora
confirms the particular importance of lexical verbs and modal adjectives and
adverbs in academic discourse.
Textbook Corpus
A corpus of 22 textbooks was chosen as representative of a range of writing
materials intended for L2 students, from post-beginner to advanced level,
engaged in or preparing for academic study or specialist science courses in
English. The selection was devised to provide a wide cross-section of popular
commercial texts produced in the leading ELT publishing countries over the
last 20 years or so. Consequently, the texts contrast in a number of ways and
vary widely in their styles, organisation, assumptions of proficiency, intended
audiences, and pedagogic approaches. Taken together, they constitute many of
the texts in use around the world today to teach academic writing skills.
Texts covering a wide time scale were selected to ensure that a variety of
approaches were included in the survey. Commercial texts constitute the prin-
ciple source of teaching ideas for many teachers (e.g., Richards 1993; Swales
1980), and while older books may no longer be used as core texts, many
continue to figure in EAP courses as reference or resource materials. The
constraints of inexperience, institutional pressures, and inadequate preparation
time mean that resource banks of published texts from different eras are
frequently drawn on for practice activities, language information, and teaching
models; indeed, in many countries older textbooks are the only available re-
sources. As a result, large numbers of students continue to be exposed to the
1 The JDEST corpus is a collection of English texts in 10 science and technology subjects, randomly selected
from theses, textbooks. academic works, popular science, and science digest articles published in the UK, USA,
and other countries. It consists of 2,ooO units of about 500 words each in a total corpus of about 1 million words.
The “learned” samples from the Brown and LOB corpora contain published academic texts heterogeneous as to
genre and subject area.
246 K. Hyland
Results
Modal Verbs
TABLE 2
Occurrence of Modal Expressions in Selected ESP Textbooks
Unfortunately such an awareness of how hedges are used is rare. For the most
part, modal expressions are simply introduced without system or comment and
are summarily dealt with in a single exercise which fails to emphasise either
their function or importance.
Generally, the range of modal verbs addressed and the information provided
on their use is inadequate given the fact that modals are the most easily
identified and widely used means of hedging in academic writing. Most texts
limit their coverage to would, should, can, or may, and these often appear
under a topic such as “conditionals” (Intevface: 15) or are concealed in a gram-
mar exercise such as a passive transformation task (Intermediate Scientific
English: 61; Beginning Scientific English 1: 93). Other textbooks simply point
to their existence without incorporating them into a writing activity (Strictly
Academic: 128; Basic Scientific English: 53; Approaches to Academic Writing:
83). Importantly, many texts fail to either maintain or clarify the crucial dis-
tinction between epistemic and root modality, thereby confusing possibility
with necessity and neglecting the hedging function of modal verbs (e.g., Zn-
termediate Scientific English: 60).
248 K. Hyland
TABLE 3
Occurrence of Modal Expressions in Selected EAP Textbooks
Lexical Verbs
After modal verbs, the most common means of expressing epistemic mo-
dality in written discourse is through the use of lexical verbs, often referred to
as “speech act” verbs (e.g., Brown 19921, as they are used to perfomz acts
such as doubting and evaluating rather than merely to describe acts (cf. Perkins
1983: 94-99). Analysis of the JDEST, Brown, and LOB academic corpora
reveals that the most frequent of these are seem, appear, suggest, indicate,
assume, and believe (see also Holmes 1988: 31-32; Skelton 1988a, b).
Once again, the textbook coverage is patchy and only AMroaches, and
Strictly Academic expose learners to more than a limited range of the most
frequently occurring items. Strictly Academic asks students to complete sen-
tences giving an appropriate source from a reading passage, then to list all the
Hedging in AcademicWriting 249
“verbs of assertion” and consider which are “strong” and which “weak” (pp.
50-51). The best coverage is offered by AMroaches, which introduces report-
ing verbs in a reading sample and then discusses them with examples according
to whether they express neutrality, connotation, opinion, or uncertainty. This
is followed by a paraphrase exercise where students select a verb to convey
the appropriate meaning (pp. 153-157). Writing up Research (p. 56) instructs
students to use tentative report verbs in the past tense when citing the work
of others, and then asks students to determine whether example statements
are presented as facts or tentatively and to rewrite them expressing the op-
posite attitude. There are also reading tasks which require students to circle
tentative verbs and modal auxiliaries in a passage (pp. 57, 84, 193).
Once more, a number of texts present lexical verbs without giving adequate
recognition to their important discourse function. Plan, Write, Rewrite informs
students how to incorporate quotations into their writing (p. 78) and express
their own ideas (p. 86) without mentioning the writer’s attitude to the material.
Writing Academic English includes believe, think, and estimate when introduc-
ing the rules governing the sequences of tenses in noun clauses (p. 142), while
Write Ideas merely provides three examples in a substitution table as “useful
language for making recommendations” (p. 119). Jordan’s Academic Writing
Course does suggest that lexical verbs may be used to introduce conclusions
(p. 67) or the writer’s point of view (p. 77), but offers only a limited list of
phrases to do so. Only Writing up Research suggests that writers might use
“tentative verbs” such as appear, seem, and suggest instead of modals to gen-
eralise from results when presenting findings (pp. 56, 149) and to “emphasise
the speculative nature” of statements (p. 171).
While less frequent than lexical and modal verbs, adjectives, adverbs and
nouns are used quite extensively to express modality in written texts (Adams
Smith 1984; Skelton 1988b). Holmes (1988: 27) suggests that these grammat-
ical classes make up around 27% of the devices used to express epistemic
modality in written discourse. Like lexical verbs, adverb& offer a wide range
of means for expressing degrees of certainty, and these tend to receive some
attention in the textbooks. Probably, possibly, apparently, and unlikely occur
most frequently in the materials, with Academic Writing Course providing the
most extensive list, including hardly, scarcely, practically, virtually, presumably,
and slightly (pp. 54-55, 66).
Both Assignment Writing and Approaches distinguish adverbs of tentative-
ness from those expressing certainty, but only Academic Writing Course (p.
66) and Think and Link (p. 42) indicate the relationship between different
items in terms of their scale of certainty. None of the textbooks give much
attention to the epistemic uses of adjectives and nouns, despite their distribu-
tion in academic writing. The nouns assumption, claim, and evidence are the
only examples cited, and the absence of high frequency items such as possibility
and estimate are difficult to explain. Similarly, only a handful of adjectives are
250 K. Hyland
illustrated, and only Basic English for Science (pp. 101-1131, DevelDping Com-
munication Skills (p. 90), and Academic Writing Course (p. 66) explicitly in-
clude adjectives as a strategy for expressing degrees of uncertainty.
Discussion
as a student writer, you too should make use of this kid of language in your
writing. Otherwise the conclusions you draw or the support you offer will be
open to criticism from your professors and classmates as not being intellectually
honest in that you are not “leaving the door open” for other points of view.
(Arnaudet & Barrett 1984: 83)
and the affective function of modality. Addressing the negative face require-
ments of readers assures them that the writer does not intend to infringe on
their freedom to hold alternative opinions.
With some notable exceptions therefore, textbooks fail to meet one of the
four major criteria proposed by Candlin and Breen (1979) for analysis of teach-
ing materials:
A student who knows only the way textbooks use hedges for uncertainty is
unprepared for the ways articles use them in polite statements of claims.
Textbooks are widely drawn on to provide harassed teachers with both inspi-
ration and a sense that the relevant and important areas are being covered. In
fact, there is a common assumption that any item in a textbook must be an
important learning item and, conversely, that anything not included can be
safely omitted from a course. So, while “textbooks and other commercial
materials in many situations represent the hidden curriculum of the ESL
course” (Richards 1993: l), such sources are often flawed from a linguistic and
descriptive point of view. The shortcomings of textbooks can therefore have
serious effects on students’ successful acquisition of essential communicative
discourse features.
The only way out of this closed circle is a more careful consideration of
formal written language itself, turning to corpus studies and applied discourse
analysis research as sources of theoretical insight and instances of actual use of
epistemic modality. Such an approach is particularly valuable given that the
inadequacies of coverage and explanation which have emerged in this analysis
appear to be principally due to poor selection procedures by authors. Clearly,
no textbook can be globally comprehensive, but the high proportion of hedged
propositions in academic writing, and the possibility of student misinterpreta-
tion, means that information on this topic should be a high priority for inclusion.
Conclusion
Much of the debate concerning what is to be taught in the field of ESP has
centered on needs analysis, an assessment of practical requirements, but this
has a strictly limited use as it can only indicate the kinds of tasks students will
have to perform and says very little about the nature of those tasks. As
Dudley-Evans points out:
Materials writers need detailed analyses of the rhetorical and linguistic organi-
sation of the tasks if they are not to be over-reliant on their own intuition.
(Dudley-Evans 1988: 28)
REFERENCES