Hedging and Boosting Criticism in Dissertation Thesis Reviews

Magda Sučková; Petra Zmrzlá

doi:10.4312/elope.22.2.25-45

Authors

Magda Sučková Brno University of Technology
Petra Zmrzlá Brno University of Technology

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.22.2.25-45

Keywords:

dissertation review, reviewer, hedging, boosting, criticism, facework

Abstract

Dissertation thesis reviews within the Czech academic context are, unlike journal article peer reviews, non-blind, non-anonymous, publicly available texts. The key feature of these reviews is evaluation, and they require a substantial amount of facework aimed at both the direct and the potential indirect participants. The present paper focuses on the critical comments, their content, strength, directness, and manner of formulation in a corpus of 32 reviews of technical university dissertations. All instances of criticism were analysed in terms of the use of hedges and boosters as important interactional metadiscoursal devices. These were then further scrutinized with regard to their lexical and syntactic properties. The results indicate that the reviewers are highly aware of the face-threatening nature of the genre and tend to shy away from direct criticism. The main aim of the present research is to enhance the awareness of the genre itself and the linguistic and metalinguistic evaluative features.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Belcher, Diane D. 2007. “Seeking acceptance in an English-only research world.” Journal of Second Language Writing 16 (1): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2006.12.001.

Bourke, Sid. 2007. “Ph. D. thesis quality: The views of examiners.” South African Journal of Higher Education 21 (8): 1042–53. https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-high-v21-n8-a3.

Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge University Press.

Diani, Giuliana. 2017. “Criticism and politeness strategies in academic review discourse: A contrastive (English-Italian) corpus-based analysis.” Kalbotyra 70: 60–78. https://doi.org/10.15388/Klbt.2017.11188.

Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga. 2016. “Cross-cultural variation in the use of hedges and boosters in academic discourse.” Prague Journal of English Studies 5 (1): 163–84. https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2016-0009.

Fortanet-Gómez, Inmaculada, and Miguel F. Ruiz-Garrido. 2010. “Interacting with the research article author: Metadiscourse in referee reports.” In Constructing Interpersonality: Multiple Perspectives on Written Academic Genres, edited by Lorés-Sanz, Rosa, Pilar Mur-Dueñas, and Enrique Lafuente-Millán, 243–54. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Giannoni, Davide S. 2009. “Negotiating research values across review genres: A case study in applied linguistics.” In Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings, edited by Hyland, Ken and Giuliana Diani, 17–33. Palgrave Macmillan.

Gosden, Hugh. 2003. “‘Why not give us the full story?’: Functions of referees’ comments in peer reviews of scientific research papers.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 2 (2): 87–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1475-1585(02)00037-1.

Hewings, Martin. 2004. “An ‘important contribution’ or ‘tiresome reading’? A study of evaluation in peer reviews of journal article submissions.” Journal of Applied Linguistics 1 (3): 247–74. https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v1.i3.247.

Holbrook, Allyson, Sid Bourke, Terence Lovat, and Kerry Dally. 2004. “Investigating PhD thesis examination reports.” International Journal of Educational Research 41 (2): 98–120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2005.04.008.

Hyland, Ken. 1996. “Nurturing hedges in the ESP curriculum.” System 24 (4): 477–90. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0346-251X(96)00043-7.

—. 1998a. “Boosting, hedging and the negotiation of academic knowledge.” Text 18 (3): 349–82. https://doi.org/10.1515/text.1.1998.18.3.349.

—. 1998b. Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. John Benjamins.

—. 2004. Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing. The University of Michigan Press.

Hyland, Ken, and Giuliana Diani. (2009). “Introduction: Academic evaluation and review genres.” In Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings, edited by Hyland, Ken and Giuliana Diani, 1–14. Palgrave Macmillan.

Itakura, Hiroko, and Amy B. M. Tsui. 2011. “Evaluation in academic discourse: Managing criticism in Japanese and English book reviews.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (5): 1366–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.10.023.

Johnston, Sue. 1997. “Examining the examiners: An Analysis of examiners’ reports on doctoral theses.” Studies in Higher Education 22 (3): 333–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079712331380936.

Kouřilová, Magda. 1998. “Communicative Characteristics of reviews of scientific papers written by non-native users of English.” Endocrine Regulations 32: 107–14.

Lakoff, George. 1973. “Hedges: A study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts.” Journal of Philosophical Logic 2 (4): 458–508. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30226076.

Larina, Tatiana, and Douglas M. Ponton. 2020. “Tact or frankness in English and Russian blind peer reviews.” Intercultural Pragmatics 17 (4): 471–96. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2020-4004.

—. 2022. “I wanted to honour your journal, and you spat in my face: Emotive (im)politeness and face in the English and Russian blind peer review.” Journal of Politeness Research 18 (1): 201–26. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2019-0035.

Lillis, Theresa, and Mary J. Curry. 2015. “The politics of English, language and uptake: The case of international academic journal article reviews.” AILA Review 28 (1): 127–50. https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.28.06lil.

Lovat, Terence, Allyson Holbrook, and Gavin Hazel. 2002. “What qualities are rare in examiners’ reports?” In AARE 2001 Conference Papers, Freemantle, 2–6 December 2001. Australian Association for Research in Education. https://ogma.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:9618.

Malášková, Martina. 2009. “Hedges in academic writing: Focus on research article introductions.” In Exploring Cohesion and Coherence in English Discourse, edited by Hůlková, Irena and Renata Jančaříková. Masarykova univerzita.

Mungra, Philippa, and Pauline Webber. 2010. “Peer review process in medical research publications: Language and content comments.” English for Specific Purposes 29 (1): 43–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2009.07.002.

Nobarany, Syavash, and Kellog S. Booth. 2014. “Use of politeness strategies in signed open peer review.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 66 (5): 1048–64. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23229.

Paltridge, Brian. 2017. The Discourse of Peer Review. Palgrave Macmillan.

Starfield, Sue, Brian Paltridge, Robert McMurtrie, et al. 2017. “Evaluation and instruction in PhD examiners’ reports: How grammatical choices construe examiner roles.” Linguistics and Education 42: 53–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2017.07.008.

Swales, John M. 1996. “Occluded genres in the academy: The case of the submission letter.” In Academic Writing: Intercultural and Textual Issues, edited by Ventola, Eija and Anna Mauranen, 45–58. John Benjamins.