| المستخلص: |
This research article discusses the notion of hedging in general and tries to identify the hedging strategies and devices used in the field of architecture in particular. In order to accomplish this goal, ten architectural research articles, comprising 62163 words and published in international architectural journals between 2008 and 2010, have been selected for the purpose of analysis. It is hypothesized that there are hedging devices and strategies used in architectural research articles. After discussing the different definitions and taxonomies of hedging, the study adopts Hyland's (1998) definition and Martin's (2008) taxonomy of hedging strategies and devices . The analysis of the data has shown that authors of architectural research articles use hedging strategies and devices in their writing. As far as the strategies are concerned, it has been shown that those authors use the strategy of indetermination extremely higher than the other two strategies when they hedge their propositions. The strategy of depersonalization has occupied the second rank, whereas the strategy of subjectivisation ranked third. As for the hedging devices, it has been shown that the main hedging devices used in the studied architectural research articles are in sequence: modal auxiliaries, approximators of degree, approximators of quantity, the use of agentless passive constructions, approximators of frequency, and the use of impersonal active constructions. The other devices, which are also used but in a rather less degree, are : epistemic lexical verbs, modal adjectives, the use of quality-emphasizing adjectival and adverbial expressions, semi- auxiliaries, approximators of time, modal adverbs and modal nouns respectively. Those are followed by the use of the first personal pronouns followed by (verbs of cognition) or (performative verbs) and finally the use of the verbs of cognition.
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