1 / 13

Hedging

Hedging. COMM 200. How factual can you be?. It is often believed that academic writing, particularly scientific writing, is factual, simply to convey facts and information.

tarik-miranda
Télécharger la présentation

Hedging

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Hedging COMM 200

  2. How factual can you be? • It is often believed that academic writing, particularly scientific writing, is factual, simply to convey facts and information. • It is now recognised that an important feature of academic writing is the concept of cautious language, often called "hedging" or "vague language". • It is necessary to make decisions about your stance on a particular subject, or the strength of the claims you are making.

  3. Language used in hedging • Certain modal verbs • Certain modal auxiliary verbs • Adverbs of frequency • Modal adverbs • Modal adjectives • Modal nouns • That clauses

  4. Modal verbs • seem, tend, look like, appear to be, think, believe, doubt, be sure, indicate, suggest, assume

  5. Certain modal auxiliary verbs • May, might, could, would, will, must

  6. Adverbs of frequency • often, sometimes, usually

  7. Modal Adverbs • certainly, definitely, clearly, probably, possibly, perhaps, conceivably

  8. Modal Adjectives • certain, definite, clear, probable, possible

  9. Modal Nouns • assumption, possibility, probability

  10. That Clauses • e.g. It could be the case that … • e.g. It might be suggested that … • e.g. There is every hope that …

  11. Identify the hedges • There is no difficulty in explaining how a structure such as an eye or a feather contributes to survival and reproduction; the difficulty is in thinking of a series of steps by which it could have arisen. • For example, it is possible to see that in January this person weighed 60.8 kg for eight days, • For example, it may be necessary for the spider to leave the branch on which it is standing, climb up the stem, and walk out along another branch. • E-coli , when found in conjunction with urethritis, often indicate infection higher in the uro-genital tract. • There is experimental work to show that a week or ten days may not be long enough and a fortnight to three weeks is probably the best theoretical period.

  12. Identify the hedges • Conceivably, different forms, changing at different rates and showing contrasting combinations of characteristics, were present in different areas. • One possibility is that generalized latent inhibition is likely to be weaker than that produced by pre-exposure to the CS itself and thus is more likely to be susceptible to the effect of the long interval. • For our present purpose, it is useful to distinguish two kinds of chemical reaction, according to whether the reaction releases energy or requires it. • It appears to establish three categories: the first contains wordings generally agreed to be acceptable, the second wordings which appear to have been at some time problematic but are now acceptable, and the third wordings which remain inadmissible.

More Related