Page 348 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

334 CHAPTER 12
4. Nobody wants any trouble in their life, and risk management is the best course of actionfor all investors.
5. We have a lot of mass media to give us a lot of information about ev- erything, so that we know what's going on in the world every day.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. In your opinion, why are overstatements and exaggerations be- lieved to be an effective means of rhetorical persuasion in non-An- glo-American discourse traditions?
2. What can be the reasons that little attention is devoted to teaching the functions and uses of hedging devices in L2 composition in- struction in some English-speaking countries?
3. How do culturally determined discourse conventions affect what is considered to be appropriate or inappropriate in various text genre (e.g., formal speaking or formal/informal)?
4. If one compares two or three different types of written prose (e.g., newspaper editorials/opinion pieces/letters to the editor vs. pub- lished academic articles), in addition to the employment of hedges, what other differences in the uses of linguistic and lexical features can be noted?
FURTHER READINGS ABOUT HEDGING
Hedges in Academic Prose
Channel, J. (1994). Vague language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Holmes, J. (1984). Hedging your bets and sitting on the fence: Some evidence for
hedges as support structures. TeReo, 27(1), 47-62.
Huebler, A. (1983). Understatements and hedges in English. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Hyland,K.(1998).Hedginginscientific researcharticles.Amsterdam:John Benjamins. Myers, G. (1989). The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles.Applied Linguis-
tics, 10, 1-35.
Myers, G. (1996). Strategic vagueness in academic writing. In E. Ventola & A.
Mauranen (Eds.), Academic writing (pp. 1-18). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Myers, G. (1999). Interaction in writing: Principles and problems. In C. Candlin & K. Hyland (Eds.), Writing texts, processes and practices (pp. 40-61). London:
Longman.
Hedging in ESL/EAP Textbooks
Hyland, K. (1994). Hedging in academic writing and EAP textbooks. Englishfor Spe- cific Purposes, 13(3), 239-256.
TLFeBOOK