The academic text is nowadays increasingly understood as
dialogical where the author and the addressee are involved
in an academic discourse governed by certain conventions;
the author’s and the addressee’s ‘voices’ are recognisable
from the use of specific techniques, including hedging. It is
generally assumed that hedging and boosting “help
academics gain acceptance for their work by balancing
conviction with caution” (Hyland 2000: p179), and confirm
the scientist’s membership in the academic community. In
ELT contexts, it is important that learners acquire the
‘right kind of language’ adequate not only for expressing
their ideas in the selected field (the propositional content)
but also for bearing pragmatic, cognitive and rhetorical
value which contributes to the overall meaning of the text.
This ‘non-propositional’ language manifests the degree of
the confidence of the author in her/ his proposition which
is, according to Crompton (1997: p281), “not only the
confidence the author has, but also the confidence s/ he
feels appropriate to display”.