Hedging in Medical Articles from Two Pandemics

Abstract

As academic and scientific disciplines continue to evolve, it remains essential for scholars to present their claims with caution. Hedging, a vital linguistic tool, is pervasive in academic writing, although its boundaries are not strictly defined. This research tracks the changes in the use of hedging within medical literature, underpinning the idea that linguistic patterns reflect societal changes. Our study focuses on the analysis of hedging devices within a corpus of 30 medical articles, spanning two distinct pandemic periods: the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic and the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic. A comprehensive review, involving contextual analysis, was conducted for each article to identify hedging instances. Types of hedges were documented and their frequency was calculated, while ambiguous cases were clarified through in-depth discussions and consistency checks. Our analysis confirms that contextual conditions influence both the frequency and types of hedges used. The results show a significant decrease in overall hedging frequency between the two pandemic periods, with approximators declining sharply while shields remained stable. This shift, along with a reduction in the variety of hedging devices used, suggests an evolution towards more precise quantification and a more formulaic style in scientific writing, while maintaining caution in knowledge claims. The conclusions drawn in this paper contribute to our understanding of scientific discourse and its evolution.