¿Es la escritura académica odontológica hispanoamericana un discurso matizado? Estudio de la atenuación en artículos de investigación

Abstract

This paper is part of a wider research project which studies the academic writing of the dental Hispano-American community. It aims to describe and to analyze which hedging strategies are used and for what purpose in 40 dental research papers published in Hispano-American journals (1 Venezuelan, 1 Cuban and 2 Spanish) between 1999 and 2005. The frequency of use of hedges in the different rhetorical sections of the dental papers is analyzed: introduction, method, results, discussion and conclusions. In addition, we compare the use of hedging strategies according to the section, journal and nationality. It was found that impersonal constructions and approximators predominated, followed by shields. However, deictics and the compound hedges reported less frequency. Introduction and discussion were the most heavily hedged sections. Nevertheless, hedges were also registered, mainly impersonal type, in method and results sections. Conclusion was the least hedged section. Shields, deictics and compound hedges were found mainly in the introduction and the discussion sections. On the other hand, approximators, shields and impersonal constructions were used in all the sections. The comparisons of our results show statistically significant differences in the use of hedges according to the rhetorical section, and the nationality; we also found differences between the frequencies of use of the five hedging strategies. Hedging is a very frequent strategy in the dental Hispanic RP; therefore, we propose its formal teaching in the dental academic writing courses.