درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Despite the importance of hedging in academic productions, its use in different disciplines and genres has been given little attention (Hyland, 1998; Crystal, 1995). More precisely, the role of different genders as contributors to this social phenomenon (i.e., research articles) has been taken as neutral, as if gender is inconsequential in identity construction. The studies done in English suggest that females’ language is proportionately more hedged. So hedging has been claimed to be a strategy that is used mostly by female writers than male writers. To examine the role of gender in text construction, we investigated the linguistic realizations of the identities reflected in male and female authors’ preferences for hedging words in the research articles in applied linguistics. To this end, 130 single-authored research articles written in the field of applied linguistics were examined. The results revealed significant differences between two sets of articles in using hedges. Statistical analysis revealed that female authors’ articles were significantly (i.e., p-value of 0.000) more hedged as compared with those of males. Furthermore, it is suggested that the hedging words that are used in these articles could be used as an index through which gender of the author is identified.

A significant share of classroom interaction occurs between teachers and language learners. Therefore, the individual characteristics of teachers could play facilitative or impeding roles thus encouraging or discouraging learners from getting engaged in interaction and meaning negotiation attempts when interacting with their teachers. Surprisingly however, this area has attracted scant attention. Therefore, this study aimed at exploring students’ perceptions of their teachers’ socio-communicative style and nonverbal immediacy in relation to their engagement in classroom teacher-learner interaction and frequency of meaning negotiation attempts in their interactions. To this aim, 72 students were randomly assigned to six classes of 12 taught by six teachers. Richmond, McCroskey and Johnson’s (2003) nonverbal immediacy scale and McCroskey and Richmond’s (1996) socio-communicative style scale were administered to students to tap into their perceptions of these two qualities of their teachers. Then the total amount of time the students were engaged in active interaction with the teachers and the number of meaning negotiation attempts employed by them were computed. The results of Correlations and Regression Analyses revealed significant relationships between teacher nonverbal immediacy, the two dimensions of socio-communicative style (Assertiveness and Responsiveness) and the students’ willingness to engage in interaction and meaning negotiation with their teachers.