A corpus-based comparison of use of hedges and boosters by Turkish ELT MA and PhD students

In the path of academic writing, authors accomplish certain interactions with their readers through the means of meta-discourse markers such as hedges and boosters. There have been many studies that dwell on the function of meta-discourse markers (Abdi, Rizi, & Tavakoli, 2010; Crismore, 1984; Hyland, 1999, 2000, 2001; Longo, 1994). However, the ones that focus solely on hedges and boosters and comparison of the level of students such as MA versus PhD in a specific field of study are not as many. Therefore, the present corpus-based study investigates the possible reasons for changes of frequencies of hedges and boosters from MA to PhD level Turkish EFL students who proceed on their academic journey in the field of English Language Teaching. The discussion parts of ten MA theses and ten PhD dissertations were selected, written by the same students to be able to compare the possible improvements between levels. The texts were analyzed with the concordance program AntConc 3.5.7.0. The investigation revealed that the frequency of the occurrences of boosters was higher in PhD than in MA level, whereas the students used more hedges in their MA theses than in PhD dissertations. These findings may imply an increase in students’ self-confidence while conveying ideas and discussing their findings from MA to PhD level, based on a broader academic experience and expertise having been gained in time by PhD students, as well as a certain degree of unawareness by both levels of students as to the use of meta-discourse markers and academic writing styles.