模糊限制语使用的历时对比——以1990-1994年与2005-2009年英语医学论文中模糊限制语使用为例

摘要

To investigate if occurrence frequency of hedging changes in response to the progress of time, we have compared hedging in 50 medical research articles from SCI journals （IF≥20）, 25 from 1990-1994 （Corpus A） and 25 from 2005- 2009 （ Corpus B）. Compared with Corpus A, Corpus B shows an overall decline in the use of hedging. Hedging used in the Introduction, Result and Discussion sections decreases to some extent whereas hedging used in the Method section increases despite the overall decline. In addition, we have found some changes in the use of different types of hedges. For example, there is a decrease in the use of shields, personal-involvers, emotionally-charged intensifiers and compound hedges. On the other hand, there is a slight increase in the use of appmximators. Conclusively, we argue that there has been less hedging in medical discourse due to the advances in medical apparatus, improved accuracy and determinacy in medical assessment and clinical treatment techniques, which, in turn, may result in less indeterminacy in diagnosis and judgment in medical research and clinical diagnosis. The result of this reduced indeterminacy may finally be reflected in language, namely, less vagueness and more confidence in medical discourse and, thus less hedging as well. Therefore, medical researchers would rather Choose to minimize the distance between themselves and the reader, as well as the editors by using less hedging. However, despite the improved accuracy, determinacy and more confidence, medical writers still use a lot of appmximators to make their data and conclusions more convincing.%为调查模糊限制语的使用是否具有历时性的变化，本文将1990-1994年（语料库A）和2005-2009年（语料库B）跨度为10年的英语医学论文分为两个语料库，对其中的模糊限制语的使用情况进行了对比分析。语料均为SCI收录的国际核心医学期刊（IF≥20）英语医学论文50篇。研究结果发现，与语料库A相比，语料库B中医学论文中的模糊限制语的频次整体上呈一定程度的减少。其中，除方法部分的模糊限制语有所增加外，其余三个部分的均有所减少。另外，语料中各个类型的模糊限制语使用也有所变化：缓和型，个人参与型、情感加强型和复合型模糊限制语的使用频次均有所下降，而变动型模糊限制语的使用则有所增加。这一结果表明，随着生物医学技术的进步和影像技术精确度的不断提高，医学工作者判断和诊断的确定性较以前有一定的提高，而这一趋势势必体现在医学话语中，具体表现之一便是减少了的模糊性和增加了确定性和自信度，从而导致模糊限制语使用的减少。当然，尽管不确定性在不断减少，研究者还是会使用大量的变动型模糊限制语使得其观点、主张和结论更具有说服力。