The Rhetoric and Pragmatics of Hedging

This study reveals many interesting cases of rhetorical variation across four samples of scientific writing involving Arabic, Arab-English, French, and English. It is suggested that the considerable variation in the tone of rhetorical manoeuvring observed reveals differences in the unspoken values governing the mother discourse communities of these groups of researchers with respect to the notion of academic competition and the handling of academic face phenomena. The possible causes of this rhetorical variation are attributed to specific variables which cater for socio-pragmatic disciplinary culture values as well as the writer's personal judgement and initiative, rather than linguistic or national/cultural determinism of the type claimed by Kaplan (1966-1989), which reflects a clearly broad and rather vague concept of culture and rhetoric. It is further concluded that the deterministic view of such a conception of culture and language tends to overlook a) the more important constraints imposed by the genre culture and b) the importance of the writer's socio-cognitive processes and his/her active role as a generator of rhetorical intentions.