Hedges and Boosters in Undergraduate Students’ Research Articles

This study aims at investigating the use of hedges and boosters which are important in academic writing discourse as a mean of communicative strategies for increasing or reducing the force of statements. The data of this study were taken from the undergraduate students’ research ar ticles of English Department at State University of Malang and analyzed based on the taxonomy of Hyland (1998a) and Hinkel (2005). The result showed that there were five types of hedges and three types of boosters. Moreover, the students used greater hedges than boosters in their research arti cles as a way of reducing the risk of opposition, as a mean of being polite and as a way to obscure their authorial identity while advancing their opinion. However, the writers also used boosters to show their research originality and when they were quite sure that their claims share some universal understanding. Furthermore, the misused hedging devices by the students showed that they lack of knowledge of English rhetoric.