A corpus-based pragmatic analysis of hedging in linguistics master theses abstracts written by Saudi students

الملخص EN

This pragmatic descriptive study is aimed at investigating the use of hedging by Arab speakers of English.

It is geared towards answering the question of how frequently hedging is used in the s of the Linguistics Master theses written by Saudi students enrolled in the English department at the College of Languages and Translation, Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

A corpus of 100 randomly selected Linguistics Master Theses s (27, 411 words), written between 2013 and 2016, were carefully examined quantitatively, and analyzed according to Hyland's (2000) classification of hedging words, using the online LEXICOOL text analyzer.

The results indicate that Saudi students rarely use hedging words in writing the s of their Linguistics Master theses.

The limited number of hedging words used in the corpus reflects the students' lack of pragmatic competence and cross-cultural variation.

The present study is limited to a single genre, i.

e.

, Linguistics Master Theses s.

Further studies combining both discourse analysis and qualitative interviews, focusing on the use of hedging by Arab speakers of English, with more diverse academic texts in different genres, would enhance the findings, and help explain whether pragmatic competence or cross-cultural variation affects the use of hedging by Arab speakers of English.