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9.1 Why and when to hedge
Hedging entails anticipating possible opposition by your referees and readers by
not saying things too assertively or directly. A hedge was originally a fence or
boundary delimiting an area of land – it was thus a form of protection from
outsiders. Today, hedge has a metaphorical meaning – you protect yourself against
some adverse risk. In your case, the risk is criticism by referees and other research-
ers. The idea is that you express yourself with honesty, precision and caution, and
you are diplomatic in any criticisms you make of other authors.
If you learn how to hedge, it may help you on the way to gaining acceptance in your
field. On the other hand, if you seem to be too sure of yourself, you might alienate
the referee and potential readers.
Hedging does not mean that you should be vague. In fact, you must be precise as
possible. It is simply that you express this precision in an open-minded way that
encourages other authors either to agree with your hypotheses or to postulate their
own.
Here are two examples of what some referees (particularly British) might consider
to be rather arrogant.
S1. *Although many authors have investigated how PhD students write papers, this is the first
attempt
to systematically analyze all the written output (papers, reports, grant proposals,
CVs etc.) of such students.
S2. *Our results demonstrate that students from humanistic fields produce longer written texts
than students from the pure sciences and this is due to the fact humanists are more verbose
than pure scientists.
Some referees might interpret these as being arrogant because the authors leave no
room for doubt. In S1 can they be sure that this is the first attempt? Have they read
all the literature from all the world? In S2 they are only talking about their interpre-
tation of their results that came from their sample – they cannot be sure that other
researchers will not have a different interpretation or draw different conclusions
from a different sample. Also, this is due to the fact gives the idea that this is the
only possible explanation, whereas in such a subjective area there will certainly be
other interpretations.
Not all referees will interpret S1 and S2 as being too assertive. In fact scientists
from many parts of the world write like this in their native language. So they are
unlikely to criticize it when they see it in English. In addition, not all scientists are
in favor of hedging, particularly as it is a very culture-driven device (see extract by
Alistair Wood in Sect.
10.2
).
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9 Hedging and Criticising
However, it is not difficult to hedge your propositions. Hedging is unlikely to
compromise the publication of your paper and in most cases will increase it, as
illustrated in S3 and S4 (which are revised versions of S1 and S2):
S3. Although many authors have investigated how PhD students write papers, we believe / as
far as we know / to the best of our knowledge
this is the first attempt to systematically
analyze all the written output (papers, reports, grant proposals, CVs etc.) of such
students.
S4. Our results would seem to demonstrate that students from humanistic fields produce more
written work than students from the pure sciences and this may be due to the fact that
humanists are generally more verbose than pure scientists.
Obviously you don’t need to ‘hedge’ every time you use the verbs show, demon-
strate, reveal
etc. So for example, you can say: Table 2 shows that X had higher
values than Y
.
You only need to consider ‘hedging’ when you are making a big statement that
could be open to interpretation or contention. In S5 the author is making a claim
that goes against currently accepted knowledge (or myth) that cats are smarter than
dogs.
S5. *Our results prove that dogs are more intelligent than cats.
S5 would be better rewritten as one of the following:
S6. Our results would seem to indicate that dogs are more intelligent than the cats.
S7. A possible conclusion would be that dogs …
S8. Our results may be a demonstration that dogs …
S9. At least in terms of our sample, dogs appeared to be more intelligent …
The examples in this subsection highlight that hedging often simply involves:
adding a few words before making your claim: e.g.
•
we believe
(S3), would seem to (S4,
S6)
adding an adjective or adverb: e.g.
•
possible
(S7), generally (S4)
replacing verbs that indicate 100% certainty, for example
•
prove, demonstrate is
(and other
forms of the verb to be) with may be (S4, S8).
Of course, there are more subtle ways of hedging. An example of a very famous
hedging statement is when James Watson and Francis Crick presented the structure
of the DNA-helix in their famous 1953 paper. They wrote:
It has not escaped our notice that
the specific pairing we have postulated immediately
suggests a possible
copying mechanism for the genetic material.
As a non-native speaker, you cannot be expected to write in such a subtle way. But
at the same time, if you are not already well established in your field, you cannot
afford to state as one of your findings that:
This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest.
The above quotation is again from the same paper by Watson and Crick.
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9.2 Highlighting and hedging
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