Abstract

The research abstract is a compressed scholarly genre in which authors must communicate findings without overstating their certainty. This paper develops a pragmatic framework for analysing hedging and authorial stance in English-language research abstracts. Drawing on genre analysis, metadiscourse theory and research on epistemic mitigation, it distinguishes the grammatical realization of a hedge from the rhetorical work it performs. The proposed model connects modal verbs, evidential expressions, approximators and attribution structures with the abstract moves in which they occur. Constructed examples illustrate how the same form may signal justified caution, a limitation of evidence or an attempt to manage a disciplinary audience. The contribution is a replicable coding procedure and a set of writing principles, not a claim to new corpus-based frequency results. The approach supports comparative philological analysis and the teaching of responsible academic writing.