Metadiscursive Hedging in Research Articles in Applied linguistics: A Comparative Study of ‘Results and Discussion’ subgenres written by Iranian and Native English Writers

This paper reports the findings of a study which sought to investigate the probable differences between frequency and forms of hedging devices as well as their functions in the ‘Results & Discussion’ subgenre of research articles (RAs) written by Iranian writers (non-native speakers of English) versus their native English counterparts (native speakers of English). A corpus of sixty (N=60) ‘Results & Discussion’ sections taken from four journals, namely IJLLALW, IJALEL, TQ, and AL, written in English by Iranian nonnative and native English writers were randomly selected. The AntCnoc software as well as two human coders identified and coded the hedging devices found in the corpus according to the theoretical framework proposed by Varttala’s (2001) taxonomy of hedging devices and Hyland’s (1998) polypragmatic model of hedging functions. Results indicated statistically significant differences in the frequency, forms, and functions of hedging devices in the ‘Results & Discussion’ subgenres written by the two academic writer groups.