Taxonomy of hedges

Typically, hedging is expressed through the use of the following “strategic stereotypes”:

1. Modal auxiliary verbs (the most straightforward and widely used means of expressing modality in academic writing), the most tentative ones being: may, might, can, could, would, should:

- Such a measure might be more sensitive to changes in health after specialist treatment.

- Concerns that naturally low cholesterol levels could lead to increased mortality from other causes may well be unfounded.

2. Modal lexical verbs (or the so-called “speech-act verbs” used to perform acts such as doubting and evaluating rather than merely describing) of varying degree of illocutionary force: to seem, to appear (epistemic verbs), to believe, to assume, to suggest, to estimate, to tend, to think, to argue, to indicate, to propose, to speculate:

Our analyses suggest that high doses of the drug can lead to relevant blood pressure reduction.

3. Adjectival, adverbial and nominal modal phrases:

- probability adjectives: possible, probable, un/likely;

- nouns: assumption, claim, possibility, estimate, suggestion;

- adverbs: perhaps, possibly, probably, likely, presumably, apparently

Septicemia is likely to result, which might threaten his life

4. Approximators of degree, quantity, frequency and time: approximately, roughly, about, often, usually, somewhat:

Persistent subjective fatigue generally occurs in relative isolation

5. Introductory phrases such as I believe, to our knowledge, it is our view that, we feel that, express the author’s personal doubt or direct involvement.

6. “If” clauses, e.g., if true, if anythig

If true, then, our study contradicts the myth that fishing attracts the bravest and strongest men.

7. Compound hedges. These are phrases made up of several hedges:

1) a modal auxiliary combined with a lexical verb with a hedging content (e.g., it would appear)

2) a lexical verb followed by a hedging adverb or adjective (e.g., it seems reasonable)

On a scale from general to particular (or from university to individuality), editorials and review articles, which evaluate, persuade or argue and appeal to a broad audience, will have many hedged statements. Research papers, which both inform and argue, will be in the middle; and case reports will be at the other end of the scale.

Glossary

1. fuzzy-adj. infml – not clear in shape and sound

2. epistemic – related to ‘knowledge of the world’

3. mitigate – to lessen the seriousness of (evil, harm, pain, etc)

4. proposition.- objective information of an utterance

5. hedge – to refuse to answer directly

6. obfuscate – fml. – to confuse or make difficult to understand