The Development of the “Hedge” Concept. Application on Scientific Texts
The Development of the “Hedge” Concept. Application on Scientific Texts

Summary/Abstract: Hedging represents an absence of certainty, being used by writers to describe any linguistic item or strategy that can tone down statements, comments and opinions. This paper examines the importance of hedging in scientific discourse. The paper is structured in three parts: in the first part we discuss the development of the concepts of ‘hedge’ and ‘hedging’, presenting their widening since the 70’s when they were discussed in the context of pragmatic analysis; in the second part we discuss the concepts that are related to hedging, namely epistemic modality, evidentiality and vagueness; in the third part we make a description of the characteristics of scientific texts, followed by an analysis of the typology of hedging constructions, namely the different devices (‘strategic stereotypes’) that carry out the hedging in academic writing, such as lexical verbs, modal verbs, modal nouns, epistemic adverbs and adjectives, hypothetical constructions.

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