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A contrastive study of hedging in English and Chinese academic spoken discourse

ORCiD logo with link | Dalian Maritime University | Université Catholique de Louvain
 | Université Catholique de Louvain
Published online: 18 August 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.24019.dua
Abstract
This study sets out to discuss the distribution and linguistic features of hedging strategy, investigating how they are realized in L1 English, English as a lingua franca (ELF), and L1 Chinese within the academic spoken genre. To this end, a systematic procedure for identifying hedging devices was developed, applied to two languages and an international variety. Results indicate functional diversity in hedging conventions, with L1 English exhibiting a colloquial propensity compared to ELF and L1 Mandarin. Conversely, ELF speakers display the highest frequency of hedges but with less diversity. L1 Mandarin speakers show a preference for author-oriented hedges, while L1 English speakers favor audience-oriented ones. The findings are interpreted considering language differences, linguacultural practice, cognitive interpretations, and socio-pragmatic awareness within academic communities. The study also contributes to further discourse analysis and scholarly peer communication by highlighting the importance of hedging in usage-based research.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Hedging in semantics and pragmatics
    • 2.1Previous studies on hedging usage
    • 2.2Various taxonomies of hedging devices
  • 3.Data and methods
    • 3.1Empirical material
    • 3.2Operationalization of hedging
      • 3.2.1Hedging identification
      • 3.2.2Linguistic hedging classification
      • 3.2.3Functional hedging classification
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Reliability analysis
    • 4.2Data analysis
      • 4.2.1Comparisons of pragmatic-used hedging
      • 4.2.2Comparisons of linguistic hedging
  • 5.General discussion
    • 5.1Interplay between linguistic and cross-cultural attributes underlying the differences
      • 5.1.1Linguistic attributes
      • 5.1.2Cross-cultural influence
    • 5.2Sociocultural awareness: Variations between the two English language varieties
    • 5.3Cognitive-pragmatic flexibility: Observation from linguistic variations
    • 5.4Academic consensus-building: Evidence from similarities between the languages
    • 5.5Hedges in spoken genre vs. written genre
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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