Academic writing across languages relies heavily on pragmatic strategies to modulate propositional force, express uncertainty, and establish interpersonal stance. Hedging—a communicative device used to mitigate the commitment of authors toward their assertions—plays a pivotal role in negotiating claims within scientific discourse. This study presents a corpus-based comparative analysis of hedging devices in academic research articles written in Uzbek and English within the field of philology. Based on a localized parallel corpus of 40 peer-reviewed research papers (20 published in Uzbek OAK-indexed journals and 20 in English SCOPUS/Web of Science-indexed publications between 2018 and 2024), this research quantifies and classifies hedges using Hyland’s taxonomy. The empirical findings reveal a significantly higher total frequency of hedging instances in English research articles (58.4 markers per 1,000 words) compared to Uzbek research articles (22.1 markers per 1,000 words). Modal verbs and epistemic verbs constitute the majority of hedging devices in English, whereas Uzbek authors rely primarily on lexical adverbs, conditional constructions, and passive voice structures. The analysis highlights distinct cultural, epistemological, and stylistic conventions governing scholarly communication in the two traditions.
A Corpus-Based Comparative Analysis of Hedges in Uzbek And English Research Articles (Hedges)
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References
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