Epistemic Lexical Verbs as Hedging Devices and Their Semantic Prosodies in Applied Linguistic Abstracts in Thai International Journals

Soranut Kumdee

doi:10.66947/pasaa.v72i1.1635

Authors

Soranut Kumdee Navamindradhiraj University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.66947/pasaa.v72i1.1635

Keywords:

epistemic lexical verbs, semantic prosody, hedging devices, metadiscourse, applied linguistics research article abstracts

Abstract

Under Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse taxonomy, hedging devices are extensively used by researchers to mitigate the certainty of their claims. Epistemic lexical verbs are found to be prevalent metadiscourse marker in applied linguistics research articles abstracts (RAAs). Semantic prosody refers to how the attitudinal and evaluative meanings of words are shaped by their co-occurring environments. However, semantic prosodies of epistemic lexical verbs as hedging devices in applied linguistics RAAs have not yet been explored. To fill this gap, this study explored epistemic lexical verbs as hedging devices and analyzed their semantic prosodies of each of the verbs in 300 applied linguistics RAAs in Thai English-language international journals to understand the discourse phenomena of this discourse community. The findings indicate ten epistemic lexical verbs functioning as hedging devices identified throughout the corpus. An analysis of their semantic prosody demonstrates that all the identified epistemic lexical verbs tend to exhibit neutral semantic prosody. While appear was also found in negative or neutral environments, seem can be collocated with positive, negative, or neutral contexts. Tend to appears in neutral or positive contexts. These findings yield insights into how epistemic lexical verbs are associated with their semantic prosodies in academic discourse.

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