| Acknowledgements | 第1-5页 |
| Abstract | 第5-10页 |
| Chapter One Introduction | 第10-14页 |
| ·Underlying rationales | 第10-12页 |
| ·Organization of the paper | 第12-14页 |
| Chapter Two Literature Review: Exploring the Concept of Hedging | 第14-27页 |
| ·Fuzziness and hedging | 第14-15页 |
| ·Hedging in linguistic literature: From semantics to pragmatics | 第15-25页 |
| ·Hedging as a semantic phenomenon with an ideational function | 第17-21页 |
| ·Hedging increases fuzziness | 第18-19页 |
| ·Hedging decreases fuzziness | 第19-21页 |
| ·Hedging as a pragmatic phenomenon with an interpersonal function | 第21-25页 |
| ·Hedging as an interpersonal strategy | 第22-24页 |
| ·Contexts and interpretations of hedging | 第24-25页 |
| ·Preliminary taxonomies of hedging | 第25-27页 |
| Chapter Three Hedging in Academic Discourse | 第27-33页 |
| ·Social nature of knowledge and academic writing | 第27-29页 |
| ·Knowledge claims and hedging | 第29-31页 |
| ·Claims: objectivity vs. collective agreement | 第29-30页 |
| ·Hedging a claim | 第30-31页 |
| ·Hedging in academic writing across culture | 第31-33页 |
| Chapter Four The Research Procedure | 第33-38页 |
| ·Motivations and aims | 第33-34页 |
| ·Empirical materials | 第34-36页 |
| ·Method of analysis | 第36-38页 |
| Chapter Five A Contrastive Study of Hedging in NES and CEL Academic Writing | 第38-75页 |
| ·Overall incidence of hedges in two academic corpora | 第38页 |
| ·Categories and interpretations of hedges in two academic corpora | 第38-65页 |
| ·Lexical hedges | 第39-61页 |
| ·Modal auxiliaries | 第39-47页 |
| ·Adverbs, adjectives | 第47-55页 |
| ·Epistemic verbs | 第55-59页 |
| ·Nouns | 第59-61页 |
| ·Sentence hedges | 第61-64页 |
| ·Clausal elements | 第61-63页 |
| ·Questions | 第63-64页 |
| ·Passive voice | 第64页 |
| ·Other hedges | 第64-65页 |
| ·Distribution of hedges in RA sections in two academic corpora | 第65-66页 |
| ·Findings of the research | 第66-68页 |
| ·Discussions | 第68-75页 |
| ·Pragmatic categorizations of hedging | 第68-70页 |
| ·Functions of hedging in academic writing | 第70-71页 |
| ·Reasons to encourage and discourage hedging | 第71-75页 |
| ·Reasons presumed to encourage hedging | 第71-73页 |
| ·Reasons presumed to discourage L2 hedging | 第73-75页 |
| Chapter Six Implications and Conclusion | 第75-80页 |
| ·Implications | 第75-79页 |
| ·Implications for pedagogy of hedging in ESI | 第75-78页 |
| ·Hedging awareness | 第75-77页 |
| ·Hedging use in writing process | 第77-78页 |
| ·Implications for future research | 第78-79页 |
| ·Conclusion | 第79-80页 |
| References | 第80-85页 |
| Appendix Ⅰ | 第85-86页 |
| Appendix Ⅱ | 第86-87页 |
| Appendix Ⅲ | 第87-88页 |
