The Use of Linguistic Signals in English Researches: Myanmar University Context

Researchers employ key interactional devices such as hedges and boostersexpressing their believability and degrees of commitment to opinions andclaims and adjusting the truth-value of the knowledge. The aim of theresearch was to explore the contributions of hedges and boosters, categoryof metadiscoursal markers in rhetorical sections (Findings, Discussion, andConclusion) of researches from the Journal of the Myanmar Academy ofArts and Science Vol. XVIII, No.7. The objectives intended to analyze thesignificant use of hedges and boosters in the selected English researches andto investigate what category of overall occurrences of hedge and booster isdominantly employed in the researches. The quantitative research design isused to uncover the writers’ attitude to the result of research articles withthe contribution of two linguistic signals- hedges and boosters- in academicresearch. The theoretical concept of Holmes’ (1988) classification, expression of doubt, and certainty focused on types of modal verbs, lexicalverbs, adverbs, adjectives, and nouns. Findings revealed that the occurrenceof hedges in rhetorical sections of researches 1, 2, 3, and 4 is significantlyhigher than the use of a booster. However, the occurrence of hedges used inRA 5 is the same number of boosters. The use of lexical verb and the modalverb is significantly higher than other devices of overall occurrences in theselected researches. This study makes a contribution to the use of linguisticsignals in writing academic papers in the Myanmar universities context.