Cambridge Grammar of English Hardback with cd-rom a comprehensive Guide

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539 Glossary for any unfamiliar terms

Grammar and academic English | 281

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[English literature lecture]

Okay. You 

should be able to see the connections already and hopefully you can

see what Anderson is saying in this extract. 

Hedging: other expressions

146c

Hedging in academic texts is often carried out by the use of a range of adverbial

and prepositional constructions (plus some other types of expression). Their full

effect can often best be observed by removing them from the example sentences

quoted here.

Common hedging expressions include adverbs such as:

It was, 

arguably, the strongest leadership the department had ever had and it

used its resources well.

They are both from 

roughly the same period in the middle of the sixteenth

century.

Yet, 

seemingly for Bakhtin, though material forces no doubt exist, what

determines that we know about them at all are intersubjective human

relations.

Common prepositional phrases and other expressions used as hedges include:

Survey researchers have 

as a rule understandably preferred to make use of

established diagnostic categories, rather than have to develop their own new

ones and then try to persuade clinicians to accept these.

[critique of a collection of political essays]

Thus the essays were, 

in a sense, out of date when they appeared, yet the

cultural tradition which they articulate and to which they contribute remains a