Native versus Nonnative English writers’ use of hedging in Linguistics Dissertations

This corpus-based study comparatively investigates the employment of hedging categories and their linguistic items in the discussion sections of linguistic PhD dissertations written by native English (NE) writers and Saudi nonnative English (SNNE) writers. Based on the analysis of the two corpora (15 PhD dissertations by NE; 15 PhD dissertations by SNNE writers), overall, findings revealed that NE writers hedge more than their SNNE counterparts. Findings also showed that both groups displayed a high degree of similarity in the use of the categories of hedging. Both groups mainly rely on lexical and downtoner hedging to lessen the certainty of their claims and arguments, and to a large extent, both groups avoid using adverbs of frequency to hedge their claims. Additionally, epistemic and possibility hedging were not primarily used by the two groups. NE and SNNE writers differ in the use of the linguistic items of hedging. It is suggested that due to the impact of culture and L1, Saudi L2 writers tend to be more committed to their claims in order to be more persuasive.