An Investigation of the Use of Boosters and Hedges in the Introduction Section of JCR Medical Research Articles

The present research study examined the distribution of metadiscourse markers, i.e., boosters and hedges, in the introduction section of Journal Citation Reports (JCR) medical research articles. To this end, ۳۰ research articles published in the field of medicine between ۲۰۱۸ and ۲۰۲۴ were chosen on the basis of purposive sampling. Then, the introduction sections of the selected articles were taken into consideration with respect to hedges and boosters. They were analyzed in accordance with Hyland’s (۱۹۹۸) hedge and booster taxonomy. The results of the data analysis revealed that the most frequently utilized kinds of hedges in the corpus consisted of adjectival, adverbial, and nominal modal phrases, modal auxiliary verbs, approximators of degree, quantity, time and frequency, modal lexical verbs, if clauses, introductory phrases, and complex hedges, respectively. In addition, the results of the chi-square test indicated no significant difference between the frequency of hedges and boosters in the introduction section of medical articles.

کلیدواژه ها:

Discourse ، JCR articles ، Medical research articles ، Metadiscourse ، Metadiscourse markers