Hedges and boosters in plenary speakers’ conference abstracts vs. novice researchers’ conference abstracts

Abstract

Conference abstracts are essential components of
 academic studies as potential participants decide to attend the session based
 on what they get from the content of the abstracts. However, conference
 abstract writing has received relatively less attention compared to research
 article and thesis abstracts. Representing and summarizing the whole
 presentation in a limited space requires competence.  In writing a conference abstract, one should
 take an academic speaking position by claiming significance, credibility and
 novelty. In academic conferences, there are two or three invited plenary
 speakers who are very experienced, full -fledged academics and in the
 concurrent sessions, many novice researchers who are often at the very
 beginning of their academic studies. Novice researchers’ abstracts are being
 assessed by scientific committees while plenary speakers’ abstracts are exempt
 from this review process. Academics, whether they are experienced or novice,
 make use of lexical hedging  and boosting
 strategies that show their degree of confidence in the truth of their
 statements but also reveal their opinions and attitudes to the reader. In this
 small scale study, 10 plenary speakers’ conference abstracts and 10 novice
 researchers’ conference abstracts are chosen randomly from different
 conferences and the aim is to analyze if there is any variation between plenary
 speakers’ conference abstracts and novice researchers’ conference abstracts in
 the use of hedging and boosting strategies with regard to frequency counts on
 lexical bases.