Hedges, Boosters and Lexical Invisibility: Noticing Modifiers in Academic Texts  

Oleh:

Hyland, Ken

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language Awareness (Full Text) vol. 9 no. 4 (2000), page 179-197.
Fulltext: 9.4.179-197.pdf (244.51KB)

Isi artikel

The ways that writers distinguish their opinions from facts and evaluate the certainty of their assertions is central to the meaning of academic texts, yet this is an area that secondlanguage students oftenfindextremelyproblematic. In this paper I examinethe view that the items writers use tomodify their claims, commonly referredto as hedges and boosters,may actually be unnoticed by L2 readers,a phenomenon Low (1996) calls the ‘Lexical Invisibility Hypothesis’. Data is presented from a small retrospective think-aloud study which explores how 14 Cantonese L1 undergraduates respond to hedges and boosters in an academic text. The discussion is supported by questionnaire datawhich seeks to determine learners’awarenessof the meanings of these forms. The results suggest that while the subjects generally attended to the boosters, hedges did seem to be more invisible.

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