Recent research has emphasized the close connections between writing and the construction of an author's identity. While academic contexts privilege certain ways of making meanings and so restrict what resources participants can bring from their past experiences, we can also see these writing conventions as a repertoire of options that allow…

Although sometimes considered to be only marginally related to the key academic goals of establishing claims and reputations, acknowledgments are commonplace in scholarly communication and virtually obligatory in dissertation writing. The significance of this disregarded "Cinderella" genre lies partly in the opportunities it offers students to…

Defines "hedging" as linguistic strategies that qualify categorical commitment to express possibility rather than certainty. Suggests that hedging is central to effective argument in scientific writing. Identifies the major forms, functions, and distribution of hedges in a corpus of 26 molecular biology research articles and describes the…