English and acknowledged researchers in both hard and
soft sciences (cf. Hyland 2006). Quite surprisingly, the
figures seem to coincide: 1.45 hedges per 100 words in the
present investigation and 14.5 per 1000 words in Hyland’s
study. However, when the frequency of hedging is
compared between fairly proficient L2 students of English
writing research papers in linguistics, one of the ‘soft’
sciences, and competent users of English writing papers in
applied linguistics, the latter appear to use hedging more
frequently (see Hyland 2006).