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Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical, Supportive and Scientific Contexts
Edited by Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni and Carla Canestrari
[Dialogue Studies 25] 2014
► pp. 273–289

Hedging and attitude markers in Spanish and English scientific medical writing

| Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain

Hedging, a sociopragmatic phenomenon that allows authors to maintain their presence in discourse, is a rather difficult strategy for non-natives scholars. In this paper, we present two studies: the first analyses hedging from cross-linguistic (Spanish and English L2) and cross-generic (Research Paper and Case Report) approaches in a corpus of 30 Medical full-texts from highly indexed research journals. Our results indicate that Spanish authors hedge more when writing in English L2 but less than an English native. The second focus on attitude markers (Affect, Judgement and Appreciation) following Appraisal Theory (Martin and White 2005) to detect cross-cultural differences in 60 Medical Book Reviews. The outcome shows that Spanish reviewers blend categories and seem more positive and direct in their assessments.

Published online: 26 November 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.25.13oli
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