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Article In: Pragmatics: Online-First Articles

The functional role of hedging in constructing scientific credibility

A pragmatic analysis of Chinese media texts on science, technology, and business

 | Harbin University of Commerce
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Abstract
The objective of the article is to determine how hedging affects readers’ perception of scientific facts. A corpus of 100 articles (150,000 words in total) from China Daily and People’s Daily, published between 2021–2022, was analyzed. This research expands the theory of scientific communication. Hedging in Chinese science journalism serves three primary functions, the first of which is the lexical calibration of certainty. Modal verbs and approximators attenuate the categorical force of assertions; readers appear to extract gradations of probability directly from the text rather than reconstructing them inferentially from the context. The second function is referential: accountability for a claim is redistributed from the author to the expert community via collective attributions and institutional citations. The third function is dialogic: hedging markers open a space for reader interpretation rather than foreclosing debate. Strictly speaking, hedging constitutes an invitation to counterargument.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Definitions and functional taxonomies of hedging
    • 2.2Hedging in journalistic discourse: Cross-cultural patterns
    • 2.3Research gaps and research questions
  • 3.Methods and materials
    • 3.1Methodological framework
    • 3.2Research design
    • 3.3Sample
    • 3.4Data analysis
    • 3.5Statistical processing
    • 3.6Ethical considerations
    • 3.7Methodological limitations
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Functional categories of hedging
    • 4.2Strategies of credibility construction
    • 4.3Cultural specificities of Chinese hedging
    • 4.4Systemic effects of hedging
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Data availability
  • References
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