Hedges and boosters in academic texts: a comparative study on English language teaching and physiotherapy research articles

Abstract

The current corpus study intended to examine and compare the use of hedges and boosters in discussion sections of English Language Teaching and Physiotherapy research articles that were published between 2020 and 2022. This study also aimed to discover the frequency and types of hedges and boosters in two disciplines. 15 research articles from each disciple were analyzed through descriptive statistics. The chi-square test was also run to analyze the data to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference in terms of the use of hedges and boosters between the two disciplines. According to the results of the descriptive statistics, the number of hedges outnumbered the boosters in both disciplines. Furthermore, findings revealed that the differences in the use of hedges between the two disciplines were significant and meaningful. On the other hand, there were no significant differences regarding the use of boosters. Some similarities and variations were found in terms of the categories of hedges and boosters used in the discussion sections of research articles in the two disciplines.