Page 331 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

HEDGING IN ACADEMIC TEXT IN ENGLISH 317
In addition, overstatements and exaggerations are identified not only by absence of hedging, as noted earlier, but also explicit markers such as com- pletely, extremely, strongly, and totally. Conversational hedges and exag-
geratives are also dealt with in this chapter.
ADVERBS OF FREQUENCY AND POSSIBILITY HEDGES
With the exception of always and never, which mark the extremes of the fre- quency continuum,frequency adverbs such asfrequently, often, usually, and occasionally represent one of the most common and simple hedging de- vices. In fact because these adverbs are lexically and syntactically simple, they can be accessible to most L2 learners, from those with intermediate to advanced L2 proficiency. In addition, due to their ubiquity, frequency ad- verbs can be employed to hedge the meanings of verbs or whole sentences and can be easier to use in editing than other more complex types of hedges. For instance, sometimes, often, usually, and generally are more com- mon in academic prose than, for example, ever or never, which are particu- larly rare (Biber et al., 1999).
Although frequency adverbs can be definite (e.g., hourly, daily, weekly, monthly], the indefinite frequency adverbs have the function of hedges when used in appropriate contexts. These include (in the order of declining fre- quency rates in academic text):
• frequently, often
• generally/in general, usually, ordinarily
• occasionally/on occasion, sometimes, at times,from time to time, every so often
• most of the time, on many/numerous occasions ,
• almost never, rarely, seldom, hardly ever (negative meanings)
• almost/nearly always, invariably
Adverb phrases of frequency such as on many occasions or at times can be placed at the beginnings of sentences or at the ends of short sentences. For example, a student's sentence,
Cracks propagate when loads are applied to structural components,
can be relatively easy to hedge by means of adverbial phrases of fre- quency depending on the intended meaning:
[In general/almost always/usually/on occasion/once in a while], cracks propa- gate when loads are applied to structural components.
Single-word adverbs follow the general rules of adverb placement in a sentence:
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