محمود علی نیا

Several research studies have been carried out in the past few decades dealing with Metadiscourse and its markers, in this case hedges and boosters, investigating this issue from various points of view in different academic genres, in this case the research article. No matter how many studies have been done on this subject, it is so vast that it always has more room for investigation. One of the perspectives from which very little research has been conducted is a diachronic one. This type of research provides insight into changes and trends in discourse communities. However, most research studies have dealt with Metadiscourse synchronically i.e. at one point in time. Another important factor is the part of the research article under study. Most past studies investigated the article as a whole or studies the discussion and conclusion sections since they express the authorial voice to the greatest extent. However, research seemed inadequate regarding abstract and especially methodology sections. The present study aimed to diachronically investigate the use of hedging and boosting devices, in terms of both frequency and most frequent devices, in the abstract and method sections of applied linguistics research articles from ۲۰۰۱ to ۲۰۲۰. It also attempted to detect any significant relationships between the use of hedges and boosters over the course of this ۲۰-year period. To this end, a corpus of ۲۰۰ research papers (۱۰ papers per year) was collected from ۵ prestigious international journals in the field of applied linguistics and a corpus design was applied. The abstract and method sections were extracted and the software program Lancsbox was used to obtain normalized frequencies, identify the most frequent devices, and find words in context. Furthermore, Jonckheere-Terpstra Test was run using    and p-values were obtained to detect any significant relationships. The results revealed a number of trends. For instance, there was a fall in the use of hedges in abstract sections, while the use of boosters in this section increased. In addition, both hedges and boosters experienced a downward trend in methodology sections. Moreover, the significant trend was the decreasing use of boosting devices in method sections. The results of this study can help academic writers of the field to modify their practices, EAP instructors to adjust their syllabi according to the latest trends in their discourse community, and journals to update their principles.