All the Way Through the Hedges: A Corpus Analysis of Hedges in Research Articles

This study sought answers related to the context and frequency of hedges in humanities and natural sciences articles written by english and iranian research article writers. to this goal, forty research articles published in national and international journals were selected and analyzed following a combination of the existing classification of hedges. results of the analysis revealed that the difference was not statistically significant; however, differences could be found in the use of hedges in the different rhetorical sections of the articles. these differences reflect the research writers' tendency to appear objective, make claims about their own results and explore implications resulted from their studies. the implications related to the iranian writers' less use of hedges in some sections of the articles are also explored.