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recently attracted the interest of numerous researchers, with research on this field devoting much of its attention to the analysis of linguistic features of research articles. As the opening section and condensed summary of academic articles, the introduction and conclusion to a research article play a crucial role in making readers to grasp the main idea and look at the article from a macro view quickly and accurately. Readers can get familiar with the latest development of academic research from reading the introduction or conclusion section, without referring to the whole article. They can make decision on whether it is necessary for them to get further information on the issue discussed in the paper. So the quality of introductions and conclusions of research articles directly determines whether the research achievements can be accepted by the discourse community and whether the articles can be published.

Although much work in hedges has been done across different disciplines and cultures, little of it has focused on hedges in particular section of research articles. As key components in the academic articles, the introduction and conclusion mostly attract much of reader’s attention. As the opening section of academic articles, the introduction section often identifies the topic, provides essential context and indicates particular focus. Most importantly, it engages readers' interest in the whole article. As for conclusion, it often provides a sense of closure to the article while placing the concepts that have been discussed in a somewhat wider context. The conclusion will also, in some instances, add a stimulus to further thought. Both of these two sections play a key role in the whole article, but at the same time, they respectively have different roles in communicative purposes. Therefore, analysis of hedges in these sections of research articles will present a clear understanding of how authors engage the readers and reach agreement from their colleagues in the same academic community. The present research aims to discuss similarities and differences between hedging in introduction and conclusion sections of the same journal articles by using a quantitative research method, and to suggest possible reasons for writers’ different use of hedges in academic writing. Specifically, 21 pairs of introduction and conclusion sections selected from the Asian Journal of TEFL in 2011 will be analyzed. The study attempts to answer the following research questions:

(1) What are the overall similarities and differences between introduction and conclusion sections in using hedges?
(2) Are there any differences in the distribution of hedges in introduction and conclusion sections?
(3) What are the possible reasons for the different use of hedges in introduction and conclusion sections?

2 Literature review
2.1 Definition of hedges and their functions
Hedges, as an important category of interactional metadiscourse strategies, enable the writer to express uncertainty about a proposition or to weaken commitment to a position and open or close dialogue with the reader (Holmes, 1984; Millan, 2008). This metodisursive device clearly illustrates the authors’ opinions on the subject they are analyzing and attitude towards the intended readers they are facing. Researchers hold a common view that the importance in academic discourse lies in the function in expressing author’s stance and本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。