Hedging praise in English and Japanese book reviews

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Journal of Pragmatics 45 (2013) 131--148 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Hedging praise in English and Japanese book reviews Hiroko Itakura * Department of English Language and Literature, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Received 27 December 2011; received in revised form 7 November 2012; accepted 8 November 2012

Abstract Hedging generally refers to linguistic expressions such as ‘I think’, ‘maybe’ and ‘possible’, which qualify statements as opinion rather than fact and reduce their force. Previous studies have shown the importance of hedging in academic writing and have highlighted crosslinguistic and disciplinary differences. Drawing on previous studies, the paper investigates praise in book reviews, an under-investigated area of research. It specifically explores how praise is hedged differently in English and Japanese and the relevance of syntactic devices in the analysis of hedging. The study has shown that praise was hedged more frequently in Japanese book reviews and that, although syntactic devices per se did not appear to significantly qualify as hedging, a combination of lexical terms and syntactic devices appeared to manifest different interpersonal strategies in each language. The study suggests that the higher frequency of hedging in praise and impersonal syntactic structures found in Japanese book reviews may be related to Japanese norms of politeness and writers’ wishes to remain non-committal as evaluators. On the other hand, in English writing, the lower frequency of hedging in praise and the tendency to use personal syntactic structures may be related to positive politeness and writers’ willingness to take responsibilities as evaluators. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Hedging; Praise; Politeness; Language of evaluation; Japanese

1. Introduction Hedging generally refers to linguistic expressions such as ‘sort of’, ‘maybe’, ‘possible’ and ‘I think’, which are used to reduce the force of statements by expressing uncertainty, possibility and imprecision (e.g., Biber et al., 2002:457; Holmes, 1990:185; Hyland, 1996:433, 1998a:3--5, 2004:87--88; Salager-Meyer, 1994:153--154; Skelton, 1997:124). The notion of hedging was originally introduced into linguistics by Lakoff (1973). Lakoff (1973:458--461) described hedging as linguistic expressions that express fuzziness which are used to modify the truth value of the proposition. For example, ‘sort of’ as in ‘Penguins are sort of birds’ is described as making the proposition fuzzier as it conveys the speaker’s tentativeness in assigning the category membership of penguins based upon his or her world knowledge. A number of studies have subsequently discussed pragmatic functions of hedging devices (e.g., Brown and Levinson, 1987:144--173; Crompton, 1997:281; Holmes, 1990:185--191; Hyland, 1996, 1998a,b, 2004:87--103; Myers, 1989; Salager-Meyer, 1994; Varttala, 2001:11--24). In a pragmatics approach, more focus is placed on the effects of hedging devices on the speaker, the addressee(s) and their interpersonal relationship. For example, Brown and Levinson (1987) elaborate on functions of hedging as politeness strategies to protect ‘face’. In their view, hedging is primarily linked to a negative face protection of the addressee, as it enables the speaker to indicate his or her wish not to impose upon the addressee’s desires or beliefs. The two functions often overlap, however, and not easily distinguishable (e.g., Hyland, 1996:437--439, 2004:88--89; Skelton, 1988a:38; Varttala, 2001:11--12, 34; Vold, 2006:80--82). Drawing on the previous

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studies on hedging, the present paper broadly views hedging as linguistic devices that reduce the level of force of the proposition by qualifying the proposition as opinion rather than a fact. Hedging has attracted a great deal of attention from researchers in the field of academic discourse and its crucial role in the writing of academic articles is now widely acknowledged (Crompton, 1997; Hyland, 1996, 1998a,b, 2004, 2006; Hyland and Tse, 2005; Myers, 1989; Salager-Meyer, 1994; Skelton, 1997; Varttala, 2001). For example, Hyland (1996:432--434) has explained two main functions of hedging devices. On the one hand, they enable scientists to represent their research claims with accuracy and caution. On the other hand, they facilitate acceptance from readers for the proposed knowledge claims. This is because presenting scientific claims categorically with full force is likely to encounter rejection from other researchers and also runs the risk of being proven wrong. In order to make their statements more acceptable, scientists need to hedge, thereby opening a discursive space to engage in dialogues with other researchers and construct knowledge in the relevant academic discipline. As the importance of hedging in academic writing is widely acknowledged, especially in relation to English, an increasing number of studies have investigated the use of hedging from a contrastive perspective, for example, to compare its use among academic disciplines in English or to compare English and other languages (e.g. Abdollahzadeh, 2011; Hyland, 1998a, 2004; Hu and Cao, 2011; Rizomilioti, 2006; Salager-Meyer et al., 2003; Salager-Meyer and Alcaraz Ariza, 2004; Varttala, 2001; Vold, 2006). In the majority of such contrastive studies, a quantitative analysis was conducted on the basis of corpora of different sizes. These studies generally compared frequency counts of lexical items typically viewed as hedging, such as modal verbs (e.g. ‘could’ and ‘might’), epistemic verbs (e.g. ‘to indicate’, ‘to appear’ and ‘to seem’), and adverbs and their derivative adjectives (e.g. ‘probably’ and ‘possible’), between different academic disciplines or cultural contexts. The results were then used as a basis of interpreting possible factors that might have accounted for the observed differences. While previous contrastive studies have provided valuable insights into different uses of hedging devices and possible contextual factors, in general less attention has been paid to syntactic aspects of hedging. For example, although impersonal syntactic structures such as agentless passives, impersonal it, and existential there have been included as examples of hedging devices in some of the previous studies (e.g. Hu and Cao, 2011; Hyland, 1994, 1996, 1998a, 2004, 2006; Skelton, 1988b), it does not seem to be entirely clear in what contexts they function as hedging. Additionally, impersonal structures have been excluded from the majority of contrastive studies mentioned above. Where they were included, they were not given the same significance as lexical terms. For example, in a contrastive study of academic writing in English and Chinese, Hu and Cao (2011) analysed the hedging devices in the following table (based on Hu and Cao, 2011:2800), which placed syntactic devices such as impersonal it with a that-clause under the category of ‘miscellaneous’ together with other expressions without making distinctions (Table 1). The relative lack of attention to syntactic analyses might reflect the difficulty of accommodating syntactic analyses into key word searches in corpus based analysis (see Varttala, 2001:48--49 for a discussion on the difficulty of including passives in quantitative analyses). It also may reflect an apparently common assumption among researchers that lexical items constitute the core of hedging devices in English. For example, in conducting corpus based analyses of hedging in English teaching material, Hyland (1994:245) has stated that lexical markers (such as the modal and epistemic verbs mentioned above) represent the most frequently used means of expressing tentativeness for native speakers of English (also see Varttala, 1999:183; Vold, 2006:80). While epistemic lexical items may be the primary means of hedging devices in English and possibly in other languages as well, it still seems necessary to discuss, in more detail, the use of syntactic devices to suppress writer agency, to hedge, and the potential relevance and significance of this for cross-linguistic research. Drawing upon classifications and methods adopted in previous studies, the paper compares, by focusing on praise in academic book reviews, the use of lexical hedging devices in English and Japanese. Next, the paper explores whether syntactic structures -- with regard to signalling or suppressing the writer’s agency -- might need to be considered more fully in contrastive studies of hedging devices. For this latter purpose, the paper conducts two kinds of analyses. First, it investigates whether the review writer is referred to explicitly or implicitly, or is suppressed, to similar or different degrees, when lexical items are used as hedging in English and Japanese book reviews. Second, it examines to what extent impersonal structures which are not used with epistemic lexical items may be related to hedging. The study on which the Table 1 Hedging devices from Hu and Cao (2011). Hedges

English exemplar

Modal auxiliaries Epistemic lexical verbs Epistemic adjectives and adverbs Miscellaneous

Might, could, would Seem, assume, suggest Perhaps, likely, mainly In general, assumption (that), impersonal it with that complement

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paper is based analysed, for English, some of the impersonal structures discussed as hedging in previous studies including agentless passives, existential there and impersonal it (e.g., Hu and Cao, 2011; Hyland, 1994, 1996, 1998a, 2004, 2006; Skelton, 1988b). For Japanese, the passive voice and other related voices and the optionality of the grammatical subject in Japanese (see section 5) were chosen as the main focus. Book reviews were chosen as the baseline data set as they present an interesting case for research on hedging because the genre is explicitly evaluative and interpersonal (Hyland, 2004:44; Hyland and Diani, 2009:1--2; Moreno and Suárez, 2008:16, 2009:161--162). Book reviews thus enable us to study how researchers hedge their evaluation by negotiating interpersonal relationships and maintaining membership in the academic community. Previous studies on hedging devices in book reviews and other review texts have tended to focus on how criticism is ameliorated by various linguistic devices in order to reduce the face threat to the reviewed book’s author (Hyland, 2004; Itakura and Tsui, 2009, 2011; Myers, 1989; Johnson, 1992; Johnson and Roen, 1992; Salager-Meyer et al., 2003, 2007). In contrast, hedging devices used for praise have drawn little attention, possibly because, as a positive speech act, praise is considered less problematic. However, hedging in praise in book reviews deserves our attention as praise is an essential part of evaluation and may also pose a face-threat. Although in face-to-face conversations, praise is given explicitly to the addressee as a positive politeness strategy with the aim of forming close relationships (Brown and Levinson, 1987:101--105; Holmes, 1988:462), in book reviews published in academic journals (which are a public forum with multiple audiences including the reviewed book author and other academics), praise is potentially a face threatening act to ‘self’ (the review writers), as the review may be judged unfavourably or as controversial by other audience members. The level of face-threat of praise in book reviews may also show cross-linguistic differences. For example, it may pose a more serious face-threat in Japanese than in English as English is often characterised as positive politeness culture in which praise is used to consolidate solidarity (Hyland, 2004:45--55; Johnson, 1992:66--67; Johnson and Roen, 1992:30-33). On the other hand, in Japanese, a negative politeness strategy is said to be more salient (Haugh, 2007:661; Leech, 2007:187, 196; Matsumoto, 1988:424). Hedging in praise in book reviews therefore presents an interesting case for a cross-linguistic study of politeness strategies. 2. Hedging across disciplinary and linguistic contexts Previous studies have investigated the distribution and preferred forms of hedging devices across different academic and ethnic cultures (Hyland, 1998a,b, 2004, 2006; Rizomilioti, 2006; Salager-Meyer and Alcaraz Ariza, 2004; SalagerMeyer et al., 2003; Vold, 2006). For example, Rizomilioti (2006) analysed hedging devices in biology, literary criticism and archaeology and discussed the links between different frequencies of hedging and the nature of each academic discipline. Similarly, Hyland (1998a, 2004) has suggested that preferred forms of hedging devices may be specific to each academic sub-discipline. In addition, contrastive studies of hedging across different cultural contexts have suggested that hedging conventions may be specific to each cultural context (Hu and Cao, 2011; Vold, 2006). For example, examining both cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary differences regarding the use of hedging in research articles in the fields of medicine and linguistics in English, French and Norwegian, Vold (2006:79--80) has suggested that cultural differences are more significant than disciplinary differences. Vold (2006:80--83) has further suggested the higher frequency of hedges found in the English and Norwegian articles may reflect more humble and cautious styles among writers in Germanic languages and cultures compared to French-speaking writers. Similarly, Hu and Cao (2011) found that fewer hedging devices were used in Chinese-medium applied linguistics journal abstracts than in English-medium journals from the same field. Hu and Cao (2011:2804--2806) suggest the different frequencies of hedging use may be related to the epistemological trends in different socio-cultural backgrounds. For example, Chinese scholars are expected to be authoritative, announce knowledge and assert truth, while Anglo-American scholars anticipate more counterarguments and are oriented towards constructing knowledge. Hu and Cao also suggest that different rhetorical conventions in the use of hedges may interfere with the acquisition of English hedging strategies by Chinese academics. 3. Book reviews and evaluation Book reviews have been identified as an important and unique sub-genre of academic discourse (e.g. Hyland, 2004:42--44; Hyland and Diani, 2009:2; Moreno and Suárez, 2008:16, 2009:161; Salager-Meyer et al., 2007:1760--1761). Hyland (2004:43), for example, has stated that book reviews support the manufacture of knowledge by contributing to the dissemination and evaluation of research while providing a public forum in which reviewers can set out their views. Evaluation is the most significant function of book reviews, praise and criticism being their central elements (Bhatia, 2004:91; Hyland, 2004:44). Hyland (2004:45) observes that although reviewers are encouraged to explore the merits and weaknesses of the book and thus to contribute to knowledge in the relevant academic field, they need to strike a balance

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between conveying cognitive judgments and maintaining harmonious relationships with the book’s author and with other readers in the academy. In their evaluations, therefore, reviewers fulfil both ideational and interpersonal functions (Johnson, 1992:51; Salager-Meyer et al., 2007:1760--1761). Cross-linguistic studies on how evaluation is conveyed in book reviews have tended to focus on criticism. For example, in one of the few contrastive studies currently available, Salager-Meyer and Alcaraz Ariza (2004) made a trilingual comparison of negative evaluation in medical book reviews in English, French and Spanish. They found that while French reviewers tended to adopt a more authoritative and expert voice, Spanish reviewers tended to use more sarcastic language and English reviewers were found to make direct criticisms with few mitigation devices. Itakura and Tsui (2011:1376--1377) report that criticisms are mitigated more frequently in Japanese than in English. They have discussed how shared cultural values, in terms of both ethnic and disciplinary cultures, can be thought of as possible factors leading to a more frequent use of mitigated criticism in Japanese. Compared to the emerging number of cross-linguistic studies on how criticism is mitigated in book reviews, little is known as to how praise may be specifically related to hedging across different languages. Below I discuss how praise is used to negotiate interpersonal relationships differently in English and Japanese. 4. Praise and politeness strategy across cultures According to Brown and Levinson (1987:103--104), a compliment is a positive politeness strategy that addresses the hearer’s positive face or demonstrates the speaker’s desire to gain approval from others and to have his or her goals thought of as desirable by others. Paying a compliment serves to consolidate solidarity between the speakers. Previous empirical studies have shown that praise is one of the most effective politeness strategies to build and enhance solidarity and intimacy between writer and audience in review genres in English (Alcaraz Ariza, 2009; Hyland, 2004; Johnson, 1992; Johnson and Roen, 1992). For example, Hyland (2004:52--55) has pointed out that a book review is potentially a facethreatening act as the genre as a whole calls for criticism or identification of weaknesses in the book. Writers of reviews therefore often use praise as a strategy to maintain harmonious interpersonal relationships. Hyland’s research on evaluative language in book reviews in English has shown that praise in English book reviews is generally fulsome and even lavish. He has observed that using praise to open an English book review is an effective way of mitigating subsequent criticisms as it forms a conventional basis for upcoming critique. He has further pointed out that closing a book review with praise protects the positive face of the book author as it helps to reaffirm solidarity by repairing the adverse effects of the review writer’s earlier criticisms. Similarly, Johnson (1992) and Johnson and Roen (1992) have examined the use of praise as a strategy to negotiate interpersonal relationships in peer review texts in English. Previous studies have thus suggested that solidarity is highly valued in academic communities and praise is frequently used as an effective positive politeness strategy in evaluating other academics’ contributions. However, the data used by these studies are from English-speaking academic communities. In other communities, positive politeness strategies may not be used to the same extent in evaluative genres and their realisations may be different. For example, it has been suggested that a negative politeness strategy is especially salient in Japanese cultural contexts (Brown and Levinson, 1987:179, 210, 278--279; in passim) and modesty, formality, and restraint are frequently used as politeness strategies (Haugh, 2007:661; Leech, 2007:196; Matsumoto, 1988:424). A contrastive study of evaluative language in book reviews in linguistics journals in English and Japanese by Itakura and Tsui (2009, 2011) has shown that, while praise was frequently used in the opening and closing sections of the English book reviews, praise was used less frequently and tended to be used in combination with apology and self-denigration in opening and concluding Japanese book reviews. Itakura and Tsui (2011:1377) have suggested that this might be because politeness based on the modesty principle is more important in Japanese in the discipline of linguistics. In addition to studies on academic discourse, studies of compliments in spoken language are informative as to different uses of praise across different languages. For example, Barnlund and Araki (1985:14--15, 22) have suggested that Americans tend to use compliments more frequently and explicitly than Japanese. On the other hand, by analysing compliments collected from TV talk shows and ordinary conversation, Terao (1996:88) has suggested that Japanese speakers normatively respond to compliments by avoidance, in order to show modesty. Although these studies are not directly related to the review genre in academic contexts, they are informative for the present study as they point to the possibility that Japanese book reviewers might use praise less frequently and explicitly than in English. If so, it would be interesting to investigate what kind of linguistic resources are used to hedge praise. Below I briefly describe some prominent features of Japanese grammatical structure which can contribute to such hedged praise. 5. A brief description of Japanese grammatical structure The grammatical structure of Japanese is different from English in some major ways. For example, the subject is usually required in English sentences. Writers therefore sometimes need to use a grammatically ‘empty’ element in the

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subject position to make their sentences grammatical, such as existential there and impersonal it (Biber et al., 2002:413-418; Sinclair, 2005:411--417). In contrast, the subject is frequently absent from Japanese sentences as long as it is assumed to be understood (Maynard, 1990:5, 29; Maynard, 1997:104--105; Shibatani, 1990). Shibatani (1990) points out that the ellipsis of the subject in Japanese is one of the main grammatical differences between English and Japanese. The voice systems in the two languages also present some prominent differences. While English has the two voice system consisting of the ‘active’ voice and the ‘passive’ voice, Japanese has four voices consisting of ‘active’, ‘passive’, ‘potential’ and ‘spontaneous’ (Shibatani, 1985, 1990). In both English and Japanese, passives are frequently used when the agent is absent for some reason; for example, when mention of the agent is impossible or unimportant because it is unknown, obvious, or irrelevant (Keenan and Dryer, 2007; Shibatani, 1985, 1990:235--333). In the passive, the potential and the spontaneous voices in Japanese, the agent is marked by cases other than the nominal case, and therefore is made less prominent than in the corresponding active voice. For example, in the passive voice, the agent is indicated by an adverbial phrase. Similarly, in the potential voice, which expresses that ‘an agent can do something (see below)’, the agent is marked by the choice of dative case. As for the spontaneous voice, the concept of agency does not exist at all (Maynard, 1990:218; Shibatani, 1985:823, 1990:333).The ‘passive’, ‘potential’ and ‘spontaneous’ voices are constructed by attaching the particles, -(r)areru and -reru at the end of the verb stem. According to Shibatani (1985:846, 1990:333) and Teramura (1982:272--273) the passive, the potential and the spontaneous voices are historically related and the common meaning is that the agent is de-focused. The following sentences illustrate these effects of -(r)areru and -reru in the passive voice (ib) and in the potential voice (iib) by contrasting them with the corresponding active voice (ia and iia, respectively): (ia) The active sentence Sensei ga Ken o shikar-u. Teacher NOM Ken ACC scold. ‘The teacher scolds Ken’. (ib) The passive sentence Ken ga sensei ni shikar-areru. Ken NOM teacher by scold-PASS ‘Ken is scolded by the teacher’. (iia) The active sentence Ken ga eigo o hanas-u Ken NOM English ACC speak ‘Ken speaks English’. (iib) The potential sentence Ken ni eigo ga hanas-eru Ken DAT English NOM speak-POTEN ‘Ken can speak English’ or ‘It is possible for Ken to speak English’. Example (ia) is in the active voice. Shikar-u means ‘to scold’. The agent sensei (teacher) is in the nominative case, indicated by the particle -ga. In the corresponding passive voice, Example (ib), -areru is attached to the verb stem of skiaru, that is, shikar-, which makes the passive verb form shikar-areru (be scolded). Sensei (teacher) is marked by an adverbial phrase with the particle -ni, which means ‘by’ [someone] in (ib). Example (iia) is in the active voice. Hanas-u means ‘to speak’. The agent Ken is in the nominative, indicated by the particle -ga. In the corresponding potential form in Example (iib), -eru is attached to the verb stem of hanasu (to speak), that is, hanas-, and Ken is marked by the dative case and is accompanied by the particle ni, (for [someone]))’. In both the passive and potential voices, the agent is made less prominent than in the corresponding active voice in the sense that it is not marked as nominative case. According to Teramura (1982:272--273), the spontaneous voice is frequently used with mental verbs. The spontaneous voice indicates that an action or event described in the sentence has happened naturally without any involvement of the will of an agent. Shibatani (1990:333) gives the following example of spontaneous forms: (iii) The spontaneous sentence Mukashi no koto ga shinoba-re-ru. Old time of thing NOM recall - SPON ‘An old time (spontaneously) comes to mind.’

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According to Shibatani (1990), the use of the spontaneous form in this example projects the spontaneous recall of an old time without specifying the agent. Teramura (1982:271--272) states that the most important aspect of the spontaneous form is that either the existence of the agent is not questioned or the writer is unaware of the agent. Below, I investigate how ellipsis of the subject, voice structure, and other grammatical features might lay the grounds for hedging in Japanese. 6. The study Following, Holmes (1988:446), Hyland (2004:44) and Johnson (1992:55--56), praise in book reviews is defined as a positive comment that explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to the author of the book for some valued characteristic, skill, etc. The study discussed here addressed the following questions: (1) What kind of lexical items are used as hedging with praise in English and Japanese book reviews? (2) To what extent are syntactic structures related to hedging in praise in English and Japanese book reviews? The first question is addressed by comparing frequency counts of some of the typical epistemic lexical hedging devices used in English and Japanese book reviews. The second question is addressed by analysing syntactic structures used as epistemic lexical devices to hedge praise and further by analysing the impersonal structures mentioned above in contexts other than with epistemic lexical items. 6.1. Data The data set for the present study consisted of two sub-data sets, one in English and the other in Japanese, of book reviews in academic journals. Comparability of the two sub-data sets was achieved by ensuring that, as far as possible, the book reviews were in the same academic discipline and were published within the same period of time, and the book authors were all well respected researchers in the field (Connor and Moreno, 2005; Moreno and Suárez, 2008). The data set for this study therefore consisted of book reviews in four linguistics journals, two in English, Language and Linguistics, and two in Japanese, Nihongo no kenkyuu (Study of Japanese language) and Nihongo bunpou (Japanese Grammar). These journals were chosen as they are regarded as reputable in their respective academic communities. Twenty English and twenty Japanese book reviews were selected from the period 2002--2007. The size of the sub-data sets is approximately 35,800 words for English and 130,540 characters for Japanese. It was assumed that the reviewers in both sub-corpora were native speakers of their respective languages. This was because the level of linguistic control required to be able to read, introduce, and evaluate the books under review, as well as the language displayed in the final reviews, was of native speaker level. However, because of the nature of the study, this could not be determined. Two additional criteria were used to select the book reviews. First, book reviews written by a single reviewer were chosen. This was to eliminate stylistic differences between individual reviewers. Second, book reviews were on singleauthored books rather than on edited books involving multiple authors. This is because edited books and single-authored books are likely to differ with respect to the spectrum of criticisms provided in the reviews. 6.2. Method of analysis First, instances of hedging devices used with praise throughout the data set were identified and counted, mainly by drawing on insights and classifications adopted in some of the major previous studies on hedging in academic writing (see above). The present study follows the approach that it is not possible to draw up an exhaustive list of items as hedging devices and yet there are some typical lexical items (referred to as ‘core’ in Hyland, 1996:438, passim; ‘prototypical’ in Salager-Meyer, 1994:152; ‘typical’ in Varttala, 1999:182--183; ‘central’ in Varttala, 2001:25--26 and 31; also see Brown and Levinson, 1987:146). For example, Salager-Meyer (1994:152) has stated that hedges are ‘first and foremost the product of a mental attitude which looks for prototypical linguistic forms. . . for its realisation’. Drawing on such an approach, the present study analysed instances of lexical items including modal verbs, epistemic verbs, adverbs and adjectives. In addition, it analysed first person pronouns and other related expressions used in prepositional phrases (e.g., ‘in my view’) used to refer to the review writer, under the category of ‘personal attribution’ (Hyland, 1996:447--450, 2004:57; Myers, 1989:16; also called ‘authors’ personal doubt and direct involvement’ in Salager-Meyer, 1994:154) (for the list of items analysed in the present study see Appendix). In analysing the lexical items, it was necessary to take into consideration the contexts in which they were used and their multiple functions (e.g., Hyland, 1996:437--439, 2004:88--89; Skelton, 1988a:38; Varttala, 2001:1--12, 34; Vold,

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2006:80--82). One of the typical examples to illustrate the polysemous nature of hedging expressions would be modal verbs. For example, ‘may’ has two distinct meanings. It can be used epistemically to express tentativeness or nonepistemically with a deontic meaning to convey permission and obligation (Lyons, 1977:791). Below I describe linguistic items included in the scope of the present study. Included were, firstly, epistemic modal verbs that express the writer’s judgement and tentativeness about the possibility of the proposition, such as ‘could’, ‘may’ and ‘might’ (Coates, 1983:131--168; Eggins, 2004:172--176; Hyland, 1998a:105--119, 2004:87--91) and, secondly, epistemic verbs, full verbs that reduce assertiveness by expressing the writer’s speculation, including ‘to think’, ‘to believe’ ‘to seem’ and ‘to appear’ (e.g. Hyland (1998a:119--129); Varttala, 2001:118--120). Although previous studies have tended to include similar lists of verbs, the studies differ with regard to ways in which epistemic verbs have been sub-classified,1 indicating the difficulty and complexity of sub-classification. In the present study epistemic verbs were broadly categorised as one group, as fine syntactic or semantic subclassifications were deemed not essential for contrastive purposes involving different languages such as English and Japanese (see Abdollahzadeh, 2011:292; Hu and Cao, 2011:2800, for a similar approach). Thirdly, epistemic adverbs were included. These cover both modal adverbs that concern possibility such as ‘perhaps’ and ‘possibly’ (e.g. Hyland, 1998a:134, 2004:188--189; Lyons, 1977:796; Salager-Meyer, 1994:154; Varttala, 2001:127-128) and those that are related to imprecision, such as ‘quite’, ‘sort of’ and ‘relatively’ (referred to as ‘downtoners’ in Biber et al., 2002:210; Hyland, 1998a:135--136; Quirk et al., 1985:597--598; and as ‘approximators’ in Salager-Meyer, 1994:154). Fourthly and following the same principle as adverbs, epistemic adjectives included adjectives that concern the possibility of the proposition, often in the derivative form of adverbs, such as ‘possible’ and ‘probable’, and those that express imprecision such as ‘close’ and ‘approximate’ (Hyland, 1998a:130--131; Salager-Meyer, 1994:154; Varttala, 2001:135--139). The fifth and last category, personal attribution refers to the use of first person pronoun or other lexical terms to refer to the review writer in prepositional phrases. Examples included ‘in my view’ and ‘for the reviewer’. They are described as hedging since they project subjectivity and personalise the proposition thereby mitigating its universality and generalisability (Hyland, 1996:447--450, 2004:57; Myers, 1989:16; also see Halliday, 1985:333). Previous studies have suggested that the hedging devices described above inherently indicate writer agency but vary with respect to forms and to levels of subjectivity. For example, Halliday (1985:332--340) has suggested that, while modality essentially expresses the writer’s angle towards the proposition, certain linguistic forms convey subjectivity more strongly than others. He has suggested that epistemic verbs make an explicit reference to the writer as the source of judgement in the clause-like structure with first person pronoun ‘I’ used as subject (e.g. ‘I think’). They therefore explicitly encode the writer’s subjectivity (also see Eggins, 2004:175; Hyland, 2004:93). Similarly, ‘personal attribution’ is characterised as explicitly encoding the review writer as the source of proposition (Hyland, 2004:93--04; also see Halliday, 1985:333; Lyons, 1977:797). On the other hand, when epistemic verbs are used in agentless passive sentences, (e.g. ‘The book is thought to be good’), the writer agency is suppressed and only implicitly recoverable. Such instances can be viewed as conveying a lower level of subjectivity (Biber et al., 2002:168). In the case of modal verbs, adverbs and adjectives, the writer agency is implicitly signalled even when explicit reference is not made to the writer as the source of proposition (Eggins, 2004:174; Halliday, 1985:340; Lyons, 1977:796-797). In certain contexts, writers may add additional phrases to refer to themselves explicitly as the source of proposition thereby reinforcing the subjectivity (e.g., ‘I think the book may be good’) (Coates, 1983:137--138; Halliday, 1970:331; Lyons, 1977:797). In sum, epistemic lexical items have been described as important hedging devices, which are essentially interpersonal strategies and convey the writer’s judgement. To this extent, in English, suppression of the agency is not possible when epistemic lexical terms are used, unless a passive sentence with an epistemic verb is used. On the other hand, when sentences are produced without modality (e.g., ‘The book is good’), the level of assertiveness of the proposition is increased (Eggins, 2004:175--176; Goatly, 2000:90; Halliday, 1985:340; Lyons, 1977:797).2 While epistemic lexical terms thus generally reduce the force of praise, there seems to be an option of the writer referring to him- or herself as the source of the proposition, or more specifically, as the implicit or explicit agent of praise, or, in the case of epistemic verbs, suppressing the source of the proposition. Different forms of reference to the writer agency

For example, Hyland (1998a:119--129) sub-classified epistemic verbs into ‘judgement(al) verbs’ that express the writer’s speculation (e.g. ‘to think’ and ‘to believe’, which are referred to as mental verb in Biber et al., 2002:107--108) and ‘evidential verbs’ that refer to the evidences of writer’s senses and perceptions (e.g., ‘to appear’, ‘to seem’), which are referred to as linking verbs (Biber et al., 2002:174) (see Varttala, 2001:120 for a critical view of Hyland, 1998a). 2 According to Eggins (2004:175--176), any use of modal expressions makes the given statement tentative, while statements without such modal expressions (e.g., ‘The book is excellent’) represent the statement with certainty (also see Goatly, 2000:90; Halliday, 1985:340; Lyons, 1977:797). 1

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Table 2 Non-hedged and hedged praise. Instances

Non-hedged praise

Hedged praise

Total

English Japanese

153 (89.5%) 129 (68.3%)

18 (10.5%) 60 (31.7%)

171 (100%) 189 (100%)

can be seen as related to different levels of subjectivity or personal commitment. Below I analyse the forms in which the review writer is referred to when epistemic lexical items are used to hedge praise in English and Japanese book reviews, in order to see if there are any differences with regard to the level of signalling writer agency. 7. Findings 7.1. Hedged and non-hedged praise In total, 171 and 189 instances of praise were found in the English and Japanese book reviews, respectively. Around 90% of the examples in the English data (153 out of 171 instances) were of praise unaccompanied by hedges, for example: (1) NSS is an excellent description of aspects of Navajo sound structure. On the other hand, only around 68.3% of the Japanese examples (129 out of 189 instances) were without hedges. The results in both languages are summarised in Table 2. In the following sections, I analyse the data set with regard to the different types of linguistic devices used to hedge praise. 7.2. Types of linguistic devices used to hedge praise The numbers and types of linguistic expressions used to hedge praise in English and Japanese are summarised in Table 3: All sub-types of hedging devices included in previous studies were used in both the English and the Japanese book reviews. Among the four types, epistemic verbs were used frequently in both languages. Below I analyse each type of hedging device with regard to whether the review writer’s role as the provider of evaluation was signalled or removed. I begin the analysis with epistemic lexical verbs. 7.3. Using epistemic verbs to hedge praise 7.3.1. English Examples of epistemic verbs found in the English data set included ‘to believe’, ‘to think’ and ‘to find’ (one instance each), and three instances of ‘to seem’. The former three were used in the active voice and followed the grammatical structure of ‘I (subject) + epistemic verb + evaluation [praise]’: (2) . . .I think that NSS fills an important gap as a descriptive theory. (3) . . . I believe this book serves to advance the status of pragmatics. . . (4) . . .I found particularly convincing the presentation of the extension of metaphor. . .

Table 3 Types of hedges used for praise in English and Japanese book reviews.

English Japanese

Modal verbs

Epistemic verbs

Adverbs and adjectives

Personal attribution

Total

1 (5.6%) 14 (23.3%)

6 (33.3%) 29 (48.3%)

8 (44.4%) 10 (16.7%)

3 (16.7%) 7 (11.7%)

18 (100%) 60 (100%)

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In the examples above, when using epistemic verbs to hedge praise, the writers referred to themselves by using ‘I’ as the grammatical subject. On the other hand, ‘to seem’ was not necessarily used to refer to the review writer explicitly by using personal attribution (e.g., ‘seems to me’ or ‘seems to the reviewer’): (5)

. . . it (i.e. the book author’s model) does seem to work quite well. . .

(6)

. . . they (i.e. the book author’s arguments) seem irrefutable.

Only in (7) below does the review writer refer to himself as the provider of hedged praise. (7)

. . .it seems to me that the validity of this point ought to be obvious to all linguistics. . ..

Example (7) contains two instances of hedging devices, that is, an epistemic verb and personal attribution. In the other two examples, the verb was used without explicitly encoding the review writer as the evaluator. 7.3.2. Japanese Twenty nine instances of epistemic verbs were found to hedge praise in the 20 Japanese book reviews. Among them, 3 (omou; to think), (kangaeru; to think or to consider), (kanjiru; to feel) and (miru; to see or to judge) were used frequently (7, 6, 4 and 3 times, respectively). The instances of epistemic verbs found in the Japanese data set consisted of three sub-categories according to their grammatical structure: those used in the active voice without grammatical subjects (7 instances), those used in the passive, potential and spontaneous voices with the particles -(r) areru and -reru (20 instances), and those used in causative sentences (2 instances). In the vast majority of the cases, the reviewers’ agency as the evaluator was not mentioned as the grammatical subject of the active evaluative sentences nor as the agent of passive, potential, spontaneous or causative sentences. I analyse the grammatical contexts of these uses in detail in the following sections. 7.3.2.1. Using epistemic verbs to hedge praise in active and causative sentences. Epistemic verbs were frequently used to hedge praise in the active voice without specifying the reviewer as the subject. For example, (8) Kore wa fukubun this TOP complex sentences yuueki-na mondai-teiki de-aru useful issue-raising COP

kenkyuu ni - totte research for to kangaeru. that think

English translation: (I) think that this raises a useful point for research on complex sentences. In this and other examples of epistemic verbs used in the active voice, praise was given directly in the embedded clause. For example, in the above example, the praise (‘. . .this raises a useful point for. . .’) was given directly without hedges in the embedded sentence. However, the positive evaluation was hedged with the use of an epistemic verb in the main clause, that is, (‘(I) think that. . .’), which, since the evaluative sentences were without a grammatical subject, implicitly frames the asserted evaluation as the reviewer’s opinion. Praise was therefore hedged in two ways: (1) by using an epistemic verb to represent positive evaluation as the reviewer’s personal opinion rather than a fact; and further (2) by omitting the reviewer as the subject. Thus, although the proposed evaluation is hedged as an opinion, it is made vague as to whose opinion is presented. This use of epistemic verbs in active sentences without mentioning the subject as found in the Japanese data set is not found in the English data set because omitting the subject in epistemic verbs such as ‘to think’ ‘to believe’ and ‘to find’ in the active voice -- for example, ‘*Think that this raises a useful point’ -- leaves the sentence ungrammatical in English. In contrast, in Japanese, a subject is often omitted with epistemic and other types of verbs when it is implicit in the context (Maynard, 1990:5, 9, 1997:104--108).

3 omou and kanageru are similar in that both mean ‘to think’ but they are different in that the former has alternative meanings such as ‘to wish’, ‘to feel’ and ‘to desire’ (Daijisen dictionary).

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In addition, in two out of four instances of

(kanjiru; ‘to feel’), the causative structure was used, for example:

(9) Meishi-ku ni kanshin no aru kenkyusha dake dewa naku, Noun phrases in interest of have researchers only COP not dare ni mo ichi-doku o susume tai to anyone to also one reading ACC recommend want that kanji- saseru yuen de-aru. feel- CAUS reason COP English translation: This is why (this book) makes (me? readers in general?) feel (I? readers in general?) would like to recommend (this book) not only to researchers interested in noun phrases but to everyone. Similar to subjectless active sentences, the causative sentence with kanjiru did not specify the reviewer as the evaluator. It was therefore made vague to the reader whether the reviewer claimed the positive evaluation as his own judgement or suggested that it should be the feeling shared among readers in general. In addition, the use of causative structure in conveying praise in the example above indicates that the book is the agent and the reviewer the causee. That is, the reviewer is represented as having been forced to feel some positive evaluation towards the book. The review writer’s agency in presenting evaluation is therefore made implicit and passive through multiple processes. 7.3.2.2. Using epistemic verbs to hedge praise in passive, potential and spontaneous sentences. As well as the active and causative structures discussed above, epistemic verbs were also used in the Japanese book reviews in the passive, potential or spontaneous voice. The following verbs were accompanied by the particles -(r)areru and -reru: , omou (to think), 7 examples; , kangaeru (to think), 3 examples; , miru (to see), 3 examples. That is, they were used , omowa-reru, derived from omou; , kangae-rareru, derived from kangaeru, and , in the form of mi-rareru, derived from miru. Below, by focusing on , omowa-reru, I analyse how these epistemic verbs were used to hedge praise. As the meaning of the particles of -(r)areru and -reru are ambiguous, (omow -areru) has three potential meanings corresponding to each voice (Iwasaki, 2002; Shibatani, 1985:846, 1990:333; Teramura, 1982:272--272). Below are examples of the three possible meanings ((a)--(c)): (10) Honsho wa nihongo-shi kenkyuu ni-oke-ru kachiaru juuyoubunnken this- book TOP Japanese-history research for valuable important-reference to-shi-te takaku hyouka- sareru beki mono de-aru as highly value- PASS should thing COP to omow-areru. that think-PASS/POTEN/SPON English translation: (a) It is thought (by me? by readers in general?) that this book should be valued highly as a valuable reference book for research on the history of Japanese language. (b) ‘(I? readers in general?)’ can think or ‘it is possible for (me? readers in general?) to think’ that this book should be valued highly as a valuable reference book for research on the history of Japanese language. (c) It is thought (spontaneously) or thinking comes to mind from somewhere that this book should be valued highly as a valuable reference book for research on the history of Japanese language. While the passive and potential forms of the epistemic verbs implicitly suggest that the reviewer is the evaluator, in the spontaneous form the idea of attributing an evaluation to a particular person as the agent is completely absent; rather, it suggests that the evaluation was formed on its own and came to the review writer’s awareness (Iwasaki, 2002; Maynard, 1990:216--218; Shibatani, 1985:846, 1990:333; Teramura, 1982:272--274; also see Makino and Tsutsui, 1995:325--328).

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7.4. Modal verbs, adverbs, adjectives and personal attribution 7.4.1. English The only example of modal verbs found in the English data set was ‘may’. Examples of epistemic adverbs and adjectives found were expressions that evidenced the writer’s uncertainty about the possibility of the proposition such as ‘probably’, ‘perhaps’, and ‘likely (to)’or reservations about the precision of the truth value of the proposition such as ‘quite’, for example: (11)

. . .the use of various experimental procedures . . .may inspire the therapist in his or her daily diagnoses.

(12)

Chs. 2 and 3 are perhaps the most significant contribution of this book.

None of the examples of these types were accompanied by explicit reference to the reviewer as the agent of evaluation but implicitly expressed the speaker or writer’s involvement (see above). In ‘personal attribution’, the review writer’s agency as the evaluator of the reviewed book was explicitly mentioned in the prepositional phrase with the first person pronoun in the English data set: (13)

Ch. 10 is for me the most fascinating_chapter in this volume.

(14)

In my experience, Chs. 1 and 10 are especially well-suited for this purpose.

No examples were found in the English data set in which reviewers were found to hedge praise by referring to themselves using lexical expressions such as ‘for the reviewer’. 7.4.2. Japanese The analysis of modal verbs in the Japanese data in the present study examined auxiliary verbs that are close equivalents of modal verbs in English that express the writer’s uncertainty towards the truth of the proposition. Examples of these included , darou, , dearou and , you, which broadly mean ‘probably’ (Makino and Tsutsui, 1986:100--102, 1995:599--602; Sakakura, 1985:266--269). Examples of adverbs mostly consisted of the writer’s judgement of imprecision such as , hobo (almost) and , hikakuteki (relatively). Below are some of the typical examples of modal verbs and adverbs: Modal verb (15) Bunsho shiryou ni -yoru gengo kenkyuu no houkou-sei o Documents data by linguistics research of direction ACC koto wa hon-sho no mottomo shimeshi-ta demonstrate -- PAST that TOP this book of most ooki-na kouseki de arou great contribution COP AUX (probably) English translation: It would probably be the greatest achievement of this book that it has shown the direction of linguistics research on the basis of written documents. Adverb (16) Dai- kyuu shou de wa . . . hikakuteki meikai dearu. Ninth chapter in TOP relatively clear COP English translation: In Chapter 9 (the explanation is) relatively clear. Similar to English, in all examples of auxiliary verbs and in the vast majority of adverbs used to hedge praise, the review writer’s agency was not explicitly encoded.

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As for the examples of ‘personal attribution’4 found in the Japanese data set, interestingly a limited number of examples were found where the review writer referred to himself or herself personally (‘in my opinion’). In six out of seven cases, reviewers referred to themselves formally by their academic roles as ‘the reviewer’ or ‘a reader of the reviewed book’: Personal attribution (17) Sono naiyou wa hyousha ni --totte- wa shougekiteki datta. the content TOP reviewer for astonishing COP - PAST English translation: The content was astonishing for the reviewer 7.5. Removing agency and hedging The analysis presented above has suggested that while similar lexical items were used as hedges in both English and Japanese, epistemic verbs were used differently in that, in Japanese, they were used in sentence structures which removed the review writer’s agency as the provider of evaluation (praise). In English, a passive structure was not adopted to suppress the writer’s agency when giving praise. Below I examine to what extent some of the impersonal sentence structures might be used to hedge praise in contexts other than in relation to epistemic lexical items. 7.5.1. English For verbs other than epistemic verbs, several instances of agentless passive forms were used to convey praise but none of them was used to suppress the reviewer, for example: (18)

(researcher’s names) are appropriately quoted (by the reviewed book author)

(19)

what is done is done well (by the reviewed book author), but there are omissions.

In addition, a small number of instances of impersonal it and existential there were used to convey praise in the English data set. However, it was unclear if they were used to hedge praise. Apart from the example of impersonal it with ‘to seem’ (example 7, see above), two examples of impersonal it were found: (20)

It is a great service to the student to show such common problems because these things come up so frequently and are such a deterrent to students.

(21)

It’s interesting that the discussion starts with cases of . . .conventional implicatures. . ..

In example (21), ‘interesting’ in this context appeared to be used as praise, although the word may also be an indirect criticism conveyed politely. Neither example above seems to present a clear case of hedging. Although an impersonal structure is used, the sentences do not seem to significantly reduce the force of the praise. This may be partly because the structure might have been used for stylistic reasons such as to follow the ‘end-weight’ principle (Sinclair, 2005:319--320). Similarly, the examples of existential there found in the data set did not seem to project hedging, for example: (22) There are many other interesting issues and findings in this useful volume, which space prevents me from rehearsing here. . . 7.5.2. Japanese A limited number of subjectless active sentences were found, in addition to those containing epistemic lexical verbs.5 Apart from the frequent use of passive sentences used with epistemic verbs discussed above, a number of agentless

As there is no grammatical category of prepositions in Japanese, ‘personal attribution’ analysed in the Japanese data set was found in adverbial phrases. 5 The examples were mostly sentences that included verb phrases consisting of the main verb and an auxiliary adjective of desire, for example: ((I) would like to make a special note that the author develops his argument very sincerely and fairly at all times). In this example, tokkisuru (‘make a special note’) is the main verb, oku is an auxiliary adjective (‘do something for the future’) and tai is an auxiliary adjective (‘would like to’) (Makino and Tsutsui, 1986:441--445). 4

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passive sentences were used with other types of verbs. However, similar to the examples of English discussed above (see examples 18 and 19), these passives were used to omit the book author, and not to remove the review writer as the evaluator. They did not appear to be used to hedge praise. On the other hand, a number of instances of the potential form of , i-eru, (of , iu; to say) were found. In all of the examples of , i-eru, the reviewer’s role as the provider of evaluation was made vague, for example: (23) Honsho wa kokorozashi no takai kenkyuu de-aru to i-eru. this-book TOP ambition in high research COP that say-POTEN English translation: ‘(I? readers in general?) can say’ or ‘it can be said’ that this book is an ambitious study. , naru, were found. , naru, suggests that [an evaluation] naturally arises In addition, a number of examples of without human agent involvement (Kitahara, 2009; Maynard, 1990:403). Although this is a lexical item and not strictly a syntactic device per se, it is interesting that the expression is mostly used in the form of ‘(-to) natteiru (in the stative form), attached to a noun phrase to convey that [an evaluation] has naturally emerged/arisen, for example: (24) - - - sono naiyou mo kyoumi-bukai mono to natte-iru. the content also interest-deep thing that become-ASP English translation: . . . it has (spontaneously) emerged that the content is also_interesting. , natteiru is the stative form of , naru, which expresses that some state ‘comes into being’, ‘forms itself’ In (24), or ‘emerges’ naturally without the writer playing any role in its formation. In this and other examples, therefore, the praise (i.e. ‘the content is interesting’) is presented as naturally having come into the mind of the review writer or as having formed itself, rather than being derived from the writer’s cognitive activity (Ikegami, 1991, 1999; Maynard, 1990:403). 8. Discussion In this section, I explore the extent to which syntactic features may be related to hedging by summarising and discussing findings of the present study with regard to: syntactic features adopted to use epistemic verbs as hedging and the use of impersonal structures in contexts other than with epistemic verbs. I then discuss the pragmatic functions of hedging in praise in the review genre and how these functions compare with hedging in criticism. (i) Comparison of syntactic aspects of epistemic verbs used to hedge praise in English and Japanese The use of hedging devices in English and Japanese book reviews showed both similarities and differences. In both languages, review writers used a range of lexical devices to present praise by expressing uncertainty and tentativeness. Agency as the evaluator of other academics’ books was not always explicitly encoded grammatically. However, English and Japanese book reviews were different with regard to the syntactic features used in relation to epistemic verbs, which constituted a large part of the lexical devices examined for both sets of book reviews, but especially for Japanese. In English, epistemic verbs were used in the active voice with a grammatical subject, specifying the review writer as the provider of praise (e.g. ‘I think’, ‘I believe’). No example of passive forms of those verbs was found (e.g. ‘it is thought’; ‘it is believed’), which would have given reviewers a choice not to explicitly specify themselves as the evaluators. Chafe (2000) states that the grammatical structure of ‘I + think (or other related epistemic verbs) + that’ is the typical grammatical pattern in which to use this type of verb. It seems that the use of passives with epistemic verbs is considered inappropriate in evaluating others in academic writing in English. On the other hand, in Japanese book reviews, epistemic verbs were predominantly used in subjectless active sentences and in the passive, potential and spontaneous voices, which suppressed the agent. In some cases, causative sentences were used which implicitly indicated that the review writer was the causee who was caused, by the book, to feel a positive evaluation. In these structures, praise was conveyed by the use of epistemic verbs that implicitly signalled that evaluation was the review writer’s opinion and yet concealed his or her involvement in the evaluation through syntactic devices. In the case of the spontaneous voice, the writer agency as an evaluator was completely non-existent.

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Both languages therefore appeared to provide reviewers with options for explicitly signalling and for suppressing their agency as evaluators, when using epistemic lexical verbs. However, the two languages were different with regard to the range of syntactic devices available and to the extent that they were chosen to signal or suppress agency. Reviewers writing in English could be seen as more willing to take responsibility for their evaluations. (ii) Impersonal structures, hedging, and politeness Apart from agentless passives used with epistemic verbs, little evidence was found which suggested that impersonal structures functioned as hedging devices for praise in English. Agentless passives, impersonal it and existential there on their own did not appear to be used to hedge praise in the present data set. The Japanese data set was similar in that no example was found where agentless passives were used to hedge praise, except with epistemic verbs. However, the Japanese data set was different in that a number of examples were found where the use of impersonal structures was extended to verbs other than epistemic verbs to blur the review writer’s agency. As shown above, the potential voice was used in , iu, (to say). In addition, naru, which conveys the idea that an evaluation has arisen naturally and is not attributable to any human agency, was frequently used. The analysis therefore supports previous studies which have suggested that hedging is primarily lexical (Hyland, 1994:245; Varttala, 1999:183). When impersonal structures were used on their own, they did not seem to reduce the force of statements. However, the use of different syntactic features (personal or impersonal) when combined with epistemic lexical terms appeared to influence different interpretations of lexical hedging, for example, with regard to the level of politeness. For example, when personal structures are used in combination with epistemic lexical terms to hedge praise (e.g., ‘I think the book is good’), the hedged evaluations may be interpreted positively as appropriate in a positive politeness culture, such as English, which tends to emphasise close interpersonal relationships. In addition, to the extent that writers in academic English writing are expected to be clearly responsible and committed to their statements (e.g. Swales and Feak, 2000:131--132), personal hedging may be judged appropriate as this indicates the writer’s willingness to take responsibility and be committed to statements made. In this kind of linguistic context, impersonal hedging (e.g., ‘The book is thought to be good’) may be judged negatively as overly vague and elusive. On the other hand, in Japanese, where negative politeness is more salient, impersonal hedging may be viewed as polite as it constructs writers as non-imposing and humble. As the subject of sentences is normally omitted in Japanese, personal hedging with ‘I’ as the grammatical subject may be seen inappropriate as it portrays writers as overly present in the text. Syntactic analyses therefore can be useful for contrastive studies of hedging as they may enable a more detailed investigation into how the choice of hedging devices may be derived from cultural norms of politeness. It can therefore be suggested that it is the combination of syntactic structures and epistemic lexical devices, rather than syntactic structures per se that need to be investigated more closely in future research on hedging. While findings thus indicate that removing the agent in epistemic verbs may play a more important role in hedging than previously thought, it could be also argued that removal of the agent is a general trait in Japanese (compared with English) and not specifically linked to a difference in hedging strategies. However, it would still be necessary to examine to what extent the general trait is observed in specific contexts, as, for example, the degree of agent removal when hedging praise versus criticism may not be similar (see below). It would be also important to know which syntactic forms are chosen, in what contexts, with which epistemic lexical items they are combined and how these influence the interpretation of the linguistic devices and their politeness levels. (iii) Pragmatic functions of hedging praise in the book review genre As described above, around 10 and 30 percent of instances of praise were hedged in the examined English and Japanese book reviews, respectively. While these figures were relatively low, it is interesting to note that positive comments were hedged more frequently in Japanese. While such hedging may have occurred for an ideational function, that is, to represent review writers’ reservations in relation to the positive quality of the book, in this section I focus on interpersonal factors. Unlike face-to-face conversation where praise is frequently given primarily in order to nurture solidarity with the addressee, in book reviews, praise is given to fulfil the task of the reviewer -- as an academic with expertise in that field -- of providing sound evaluation of the book. Praise in book reviews may therefore be hedged to protect review writers’ negative face as they may wish to limit their commitment to their proposed evaluation so as to avoid potential impositions on their own views in the form of the other readers’ criticisms and disagreements with their evaluation. Hedging therefore facilitates review writers to dissociate themselves from their evaluation and maintain face despite possible critical comments from other readers on that evaluation. In addition, review writers may hedge praise to protect their positive

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face. That is, as a positive evaluation of the reviewed book may not be shared by other readers, review writers might decide to soften their praise so as to avoid disagreements and maintain harmonious relationships with other academics. Praise in book reviews is therefore similar to criticism. While they are opposed in terms of providing positive or negative evaluation, praise and criticism are similar to the extent that both are publicly put forward, i.e. facethreatening. Hedging therefore enables review writers to protect their face for both praise and criticism. However, criticism obviously poses a more serious face threat to addressees and this might account for the low frequency of hedged praise (see Itakura and Tsui, 2011, for an analysis of mitigated criticism in the English and Japanese book reviews.6 The finding that praise was hedged more frequently in Japanese may be derived from a higher level of face-threat in praise as perceived by Japanese reviewers. For example, Japanese culture tends to emphasise negative politeness and encourages distant social relationships and modesty to a higher degree than in English (see above). In addition, the Japanese review writers may have been more inclined to ensure that group harmony would be maintained by avoiding conflict (Mey, 2004:42). Moreover, the higher frequency of hedging in Japanese praise could be accounted for by the shorter history of the book review genre in Japan (see Itakura and Tsui, 2011) That is, as the reviewers’ role as a critical evaluator is less clearly established in the Japanese academy, Japanese review writers might have been less willing to assume the role of evaluator. 9. Conclusion The present study has shown firstly that English and Japanese book reviews used a similar range of lexical items to hedge praise by presenting statements as opinion rather than accredited fact. The study has also suggested that hedging in praise in book reviews is similar to hedging criticism in that both are used to reduce face-threatening acts, to protect face, and to negotiate interpersonal relationships. The study furthermore supports previous studies showing that hedging is primarily lexical but suggests that the combination of lexical and syntactical features in relation to expressing or suppressing writer agency deserves further attention, especially in cross linguistic studies. This is because different syntactic features used in combination with epistemic lexical items may constitute different degrees of writer willingness to take responsibility or to remain non-committal, in accordance with cultural norms of politeness. Both different frequencies of lexical hedging devices and different types of syntactic devices (personal or impersonal) used in combination with lexical devices appeared to be derived from different levels of face-threat of praise and the needs to follow particular types of politeness strategies to protect face and negotiate interpersonal relationships within individual cultural contexts. For example, it appeared that praise posed a more serious face-threat for Japanese reviewers and they therefore tended to use, as negative politeness strategies, impersonal hedging to present themselves as non-committal, non-imposing and humble. On the other hand, review writers in English appeared to use, as positive politeness strategies, lexical hedging less frequently and personal hedging more frequently to present themselves as personally involved and clearly responsible and also to meet expectations for academic writing in English. By choosing the appropriate level of lexical hedging and the appropriate type of syntactic structures, writers appeared to be attempting to maintain in-group membership within their respective academic communities. The question remains uncertain as to whether tendencies to take responsibility or remain non-committal may be shaped by different grammatical structures across different languages. In the present data set, Japanese reviewers appeared to have available, and to fully use, a broader range of syntactic devices to suppress writer agency, such as subjectless active sentences, agentless passives, potential, spontaneous, and causative sentences. In addition, a number of examples were found where evaluation was presented as emerging naturally, not attributed to a human agent at all (‘ ’ or naru, to emerge). On the other hand, although English review writers also appeared to have options to use certain impersonal structures such as agentless passives, impersonal it and existential there, these structures did not seem to be used extensively. However, a more comprehensive analysis will be needed to investigate this issue. The present study is based on a small amount of data collected from a specific discipline, linguistics. The findings therefore need to be substantiated by further studies on a larger scale encompassing book reviews from different academic sub-disciplines. In addition, the list of hedging devices covered is not exhaustive. In a future study, it would be important to include a more comprehensive list of lexical and syntactic devices used as hedging and to examine similarities and differences in their use across different languages. Moreover, quantitative analyses would have to be complemented by an ethnographic approach that could include interviews with individual reviewers on their attitudes towards the act of evaluating others. Despite these limitations, I hope the study is able to contribute to future discussion and research on hedging, especially for cross-linguistic analysis.

6 An analysis of criticism by Itakura and Tsui (2011) in the same data set of English and Japanese book reviews as in the present study has found that approximately 64 and 75 percent of the instances of criticisms in the English and Japanese book reviews, respectively, were mitigated.

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Acknowledgements I am indebted to two anonymous reviewers for extremely useful comments and encouragement on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to express my thanks to Frantisˇ ek Kratochvíl for his numerous valuable comments on the earlier draft of the paper. I would also like to express my gratitude to Phoenix Lam and Lian Hee Wee for discussing the paper, and to Constance Ellwood and Wu Suet Kei, Shirley for their editorial help. All weaknesses in this paper are the author’s. Appendix. Hedging devices analysed: English lexical expressions and their close equivalents in Japanese A. Modal verbs  may      B. Lexical verbs  to believe  to find  to seem  to think       C. Adverbs and adjectives  likely  perhaps  probably  quite  relatively      D. Personal attributions  for me  in my experience  to me      References Abdollahzadeh, Esmaeel, 2011. Poring over the findings: interpersonal authorial engagement in applied linguistics papers. Journal of Pragmatics 43, 288--297. Alcaraz Ariza, María Ángeles, 2009. Complimenting others: the case of English-written medical book reviews. Fachsprache 1 (2), 50--65. Barnlund, Dean C., Araki, Shoko, 1985. Intercultural encounters: the management of compliments by Japanese and Americans. Journal of CrossCultural Psychology 16 (1), 9--26. Bhatia, Vijay K., 2004. Worlds of Written Discourse. Continuum, London, New York. Biber, Douglas, Conrad, Susan, Leech, Geoffrey, 2002. Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Pearson Education, Harlow.

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