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چکیده
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As far as academic writing is concerned, hedging is used as an important linguistic feature which is concerned with the connotation of tentativeness, possibility and uncertainty. Hedging is used to minimize the potential risk of a claim or prevent embarrassing situations in case one might be found to be wrong. The purpose of the current study was to compare and contrast the frequency and types of hedges in Introduction sections of medicine Research Articles (RAs) written by English Research Writers (ERWs) and Iranian Research Writers (IRWs) who write in English. In so doing, fifty English RAs (twenty-five written by ERWs and twenty-five by IRWs) in the field of medicine from 16 leading journals were selected and analyzed. The used criterion for analysis was Salager-Meyer (1994) taxonomy. Concerning the hedging categories proposed by Salager-Meyer (1994), the data analysis indicated that there was no significance difference between the use of hedging categories, namely, compounds, approximators, and emotionally-charged expressions, in Introductions of RAs written by Iranians and English native scholars in medicine. However, the findings suggested that there is a significant difference between the use of hedging, regardless of the distribution and percentages of the categories, in medical article Introductions written by Iranians and English scholars. The results of the study have implications for ESP writing pedagogy as far as instructional practice and material development are concerned. The instruction of specific rhetorical structures and particular features of the texts in a particular genre can be of great value for the development of ESP students' ability to communicate their research findings more effectively within the discourse community.
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