The Impact of Discipline and being Native/Non-native on the Use of Hedging Devices

Drawing upon Salager-Meyer's (1994)taxonomy, the present study compared the frequency of use of hedging devices used in Discussion part of 140 research articles (70 RAs written by native English writers and 70 by their non-native Iranian counterparts)published since 2000 in the leading journals of the three disciplines of Geography, Chemistry, and Medicine. The results of Chi-square analyses indicated there were significant differences across various disciplines in terms of the frequency of use of hedging devices adopted in the Discussion part of RAs. Moreover, the findings revealed there were significant differences between non-native (Iranian) research writers and their native English counterparts regarding the frequency of use of hedging devices adopted in the Discussion part of RAs.