Hedging in Scientifically Oriented Discourse. Exploring Variation According to Discipline and Intended Audience

such cases might at times give rise to ambiguity, but in my data the intended meanings of such occurrences could be ferreted out with the help of the context. 55 As Greenbaum (1969: e.g. 174 ff.) illustrates, there are also adverbs that can be placed into more than one of the syntactically determined categories (e.g. rarely as an adjunct and a disjunct). However, it seems that there is not much of a difference in the meaning of such items even though they might at times behave differently in syntactic terms. 56 Many of the items in the four subcategories established are included in what Biber et al. (1999: 557 ff.) describe as “epistemic stance adverbs”—a notion which could in fact serve as a cover term for the four types of adverb distinguished. 57 As noted above, in terms of hedging potential, the syntactic status of the adverbs is of secondary interest, but syntactic considerations may come in handy in dealing with certain problematic cases. 58 The 13 items are: apparently, arguably, likely, perhaps, possibly, potentially, presumably, probably, seemingly, supposedly, tentatively, theoretically, unlikely. 59 Naturally, some of the adverbs treated here may also be used when for instance describing precise figures presented in a table or the like, especially when providing comparisons of figures obtained (e.g. x occurred more frequently than y). Cases where adverbs are used in descriptions of precise figures cannot obviously be taken to constitute hedging. 60 It would be interesting to determine the precise motivation underlying the various instances of hedging found in the corpus in the form of expressions of indefinite frequency and the like. However, although such a project could in principle be carried out by obtaining information as to the use of each and every device of this kind from the authors of the articles scrutinized, this would apparently constitute an arduous undertaking indeed given the frequency of such devices. 61 The 11 items identified are commonly, frequently, generally, normally, occasionally, often, rarely, seldom, sometimes, typically, and usually. 62 The terminology applied to refer to adverbs is quite varied, Hyland (1998: 139) for instance describing as adjuncts the same kinds of item included in Quirk et al.’s subjuncts occurring as expression diminishers. 63 The terminology relating to adverbs of this kind and other devices with similar meanings is varied and may sometimes even be somewhat confusing. While Salager-Meyer (1994) uses the term approximator to refer to a variety of expressions involving a number of different word classes—including indefinite indications of quantity, degree, frequency, and time—the same term is elsewhere (Quirk et al. 1985, Hyland 1998) employed in a much more restricted sense to refer to a relatively narrow range of adverbs such as almost and virtually. 64 The adverb significantly cannot be seen as a hedge in all contexts. Particularly in RAs it is commonly used when discussing statistics-based probabilities, as in Educational attainment significantly altered the risk of having an infarction triggered by an outburst of anger. Figure 1 shows that the RR of MI onset decreased consistently with increasing educational attainment (P=.03) [. ]. (MED1, G, “Results”, paragraph 3 [Results]) In such instances, the adverb is in fact used with reference to specific predetermined limits as concerns statistical probability values, the adverb indicating that the results obtained conform to the limits of what may be seen as a statistically significant result. Occurrences of this kind were not counted as instances of hedging. 65 The items distinguished are: considerably, dramatically, drastically, fairly, greatly, highly, largely, mainly, markedly, moderately, modestly, mostly, partly/partially, predominantly/predominately, primarily, principally, quite, rather, reasonably, relatively, significantly, slightly, somewhat, strongly, substantially, widely. 66 The hedge in the last example, somewhat, is an interesting case where hedges are embedded within a hedge of another kind. While the entire beginning of the example might be taken as a hedge by which the authors draw attention to the limitations of their study and thus indicate that it may not be categorically correct in every sense, the adverb (as well as the auxiliary may) included in the caveat appears to tone down the negative effect involved. If the hedges toning down the caveat were omitted, the effect of the caveat would be much stronger, undermining the authors’ work to a much more considerable extent. The use of somewhat (and may), however, is a useful means of indicating that the limitations are not very grave, the indeterminacy of the hedge allowing the authors to be safely vague about the putative limitations of their research. 67 The items identified are: about, almost, approximately, around, closely, essentially, just, nearly, roughly, some, virtually. 68 In view of word-formational characteristics, it would seem more reasonable to deal with adjectives prior to discussing adverbs, many of the latter being formed from adjectives. However, as concerns the present corpus,