Hedging in the peer review process (on Academic L2 writing courses) Research Question: How do affective factors (i.e. praise and mitigation) influence the peer review process? Roger Yallop PhD Student University of Tartu

What is Peer Review (and implementation of comments)? Example Ann reads Bob’s introduction She writes review comments i.e., ‘you need to add more references’ Bob decides to implement (or not) these comments in his next draft.  Subsequent texts are improved

What is hedging? Linguistic device Makes things ‘fuzzier’ Politeness strategy Threat minimizing strategy Crompton (1997) Example from a reviewer’s comment: Add a reference (no hedging) You should add a reference (hedging)

Study Rationale Hypothesis Relationship between the reviewer and writer is critical! The more trust in the relationship, the more likely the writer will implement the reviewer’s comments.  Need reliable taxonomy to measure affective factors (Salager-Meyer 1994)

Taxonomy of Hedges: Salager-Meyer (1994) 1.Shields: ‘fuzziness’ in relationships (pragmatics)  should, seem, probably, suggest  2. Approximators: ‘fuzziness’ in proposition (semantics)  roughly, quite, often

Taxonomy of Hedges: Salager-Meyer (1994) 3. Authors personal doubt and direct involvement  I believe …, I think … 4. Emotionally-charged intensifiers: emotionally charged words to project the reviewers’ reactions  extremely interesting, surprising

Taxonomy of Hedges: Salager-Meyer (1994) 5. Double shields: extreme fuzziness’ in relationships (pragmatics)  It could possibly be …

The Context Two PhD students (Ann and Bev) Academic Writing Course Writing an academic article Small group (4 persons) Discipline specific Three-month course  Group Bonding

Methodology Lectures Online Material Reviewer Training Focus on Global Changes No Teacher Intervention  Strongly Constructivist

Procedure (1) 1. Ann and Bev write an introduction 2. Ann comments on Bev’s introduction 3. Bev comments on Ann’s introduction 4. Face-to-face meeting

Procedure (2) 5. Ann revises (or not) her text based on Bev’s comments. 6. Bev revises (or not) her text based on Ann’s comments. 7. Seven drafts in total (IMRAD structure)  Only Ann-Bev interactions investigated  Other interactions NOT CONSIDERED

Data Analysis Reviewer’s comments coded into two categories (Lui and Sadler, 2003): 1. Revision-Oriented Comments: I think the last paragraph could be developed more. (direct change to text proposed) 2. Non-Revision-Oriented Comments: The overall structure is good. Well done! (no direct change to text proposed, i.e., praise)

Revision-Oriented Comments (1) Implemented comments are coded into two categories (Faigley and Witte, 1981): 1. Global Comments (meaning changes to text): I think the last paragraph could be developed more. 2. Local Comments (surface level changes to text ): The use of comma when listing things.  Subsequent drafts examined for implementation  % implementation of reviewer’s comments calculated (‘reviewer effectiveness’)

Revision-Oriented Comments (2) Ann 6 stages (280 words) 40 words /stage 15 comments Bev 5 stages (401 words) 80 words/stage (2x more) 13 comments

Revision-oriented Comments (3)

What does this show? Ann seems to be a more effective reviewer than Bev?  Why is this? Comments coded for mitigation using (Salager-Meyer 1984) Data examined for patterns to explain the phenomena  Follow-up with Qualitative Analysis (i.e., Interviews)

Revision-Oriented Comments (Hedging)

Non-Revision-Oriented Comments (2) Ann 4 comments (78 words) 19.5 words/comment Bev 17 comments (178 words) 10.5 words/comment

Non-Revision Comments (Hedging)

Data Interpretation (sample) Ann Less hedging (revision-oriented comments) No double shields Much less non-revision-oriented comments (i.e. praise)  Does Bev over-use affective language from Ann’s perspective?  Use qualitative analysis (i.e. interview Ann) to investigate

References (1) Crompton, P. (1997). Hedging in academic writing: Some theoretical problems. English for Specific Purposes, 16/4: Faigley, L., & Witte, S. (1981). Analyzing revision. College composition and communication, Leijen, D. and Leontjeva, A. (2012). Linguistic and review features of peer feedback and their effect on implementation of changes in academic writing: A corpus based investigation. Journal of Writing Research, 4/2: Liu, J., & Sadler, R. W. (2003). The effect and affect of peer review in electronic versus traditional modes on L2 writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2(3), Salager-Meyer, F. (1994). Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse. English for specific purposes, 13(2),

Any questions? Roger Yallop