A Corpus-Based Metadiscourse Analysis of Hedges in Research Articles in English by Turkish-L1 and English-L1 Writers

Abstract

This study aims to examine whether there are differences between native and non-native speakers of English in their use of hedges in research articles and across article sections such as the Introduction, Discussion, and Conclusion. With this purpose, a total of 200 research articles in the field of English language teaching, comprising 100 articles by NSs and 100 by NNSs covering the years 2020 through 2024, were analyzed based on the Hyland’s taxonomy (1998). After collecting the data, the researchers created a corpus of the selected articles via Sketch Engine and analyzed both descriptively and statistically. The Log-likelihood ratio was utilized for statistical analysis. The findings showed significant differences between NSs and NNSs both throughout the articles and in the Introduction, Discussion, and Conclusion sections. According to the LL values, NSs overused hedging devices in terms of Modals, Adjectives, Adverbs, Quantifiers, and Nouns. The analyses showed that NNSs overused only Verbal Hedges. Considering the sections, NSs mostly overused hedges in the Introduction, Discussion and Conclusion sections. Based on the findings, implications and further studies were recommended.    Received: 05 June 2026 / Accepted: 17 August 2026 / Published: September  2026