Page 333 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

HEDGING IN ACADEMIC TEXT IN ENGLISH 319
everyone knows in (2). These two conversational overstatement markers can simply be deleted.
In the context of academic prose, instruction should explicitly ad- dress the extent of the writer's full and unwavering commitment to the universal truthfulness, applicability, and knowledge expressed in statements such as (1) and (2). As the next step, the defensive stance and the power-reducing function of possibility hedges can be demon- strated and emphasized.
QUANTIFIERS AS HEDGES
Quantifiers refer to definite (a half, a quarter} and indefinite quantities and modify nouns. Indefinite quantifiers can function as hedges and include the following:
• all, many/much
• some, a few/a little
• a number of + noun/noun phrase
• a good/great deal of + noun/noun phrase • abit (of)
Clearly, the quantifier all would not make a very good hedging device, and its uses can make writers' claims appear somewhat overstated (e.g., All teachers worry about how their pupils learn). However, an addition of, for in- stance, many/a few and much/a little with countable and uncountable nouns, respectively, can help reduce the effect of broad generalizations in an essay about technological innovations:
[Many/Most] [PJeople have heard the concepts of facts, data, and knowledge. [Many/Some/A few] [S]dentists around the world seem to compete with each other for inventing new technology. [Many/Most/A number off [People believe that technology cannot be limited, and it will keep going forever.
Similarly, negative quantifiers such asfew/fewer with countable nouns and little/less with uncountable nouns can hedge the somewhat extreme position implicit in the uses of indefinite pronouns no oneand nobody in the following excerpt on fossil fuel consumption and passenger cars:
[Few consumers/drivers/car owners] [No one] wantfsj to return to the energy cri- sis of the early 1970s. In those days, lowfuel prices allowed consumers tofocus on vehi- cle prices, performance, and comfort, and [few individuals/drivers/engineers] [nobody] cared about thefuel economy in passenger cars.... [Totally,] [tjhis period can divided into three small periods for analysis.
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