Hedging and boosting criticism in dissertation thesis reviews

Sučková, Magda (author), Zmrzlá, Petra (author)

Dissertation thesis reviews within the Czech academic context are, unlike journal article peer reviews, non-blind, non-anonymous, publicly available texts. The key feature of these reviews is evaluation, and they require a substantial amount of facework aimed at both the direct and the potential indirect participants. The present paper focuses on the critical comments, their content, strength, directness, and manner of formulation in a corpus of 32 reviews of technical university dissertations. All instances of criticism were analysed in terms of the use of hedges and boosters as important interactional metadiscoursal devices. These were then further scrutinized with regard to their lexical and syntactic properties. The results indicate that the reviewers are highly aware of the face-threatening nature of the genre and tend to shy away from direct criticism. The main aim of the present research is to enhance the awareness of the genre itself and the linguistic and metalinguistic evaluative features.

• Language: English
• Keywords: dissertation review, reviewer, hedging, boosting, criticism, facework
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 01.01.2025
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 22-45
• Numbering: Vol. 22, no. 2
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-180414
• UDC: 801.73:378.245(437.31)
• ISSN on article: 1581-8918
• DOI: 10.4312/elope.22.2.25-45
• COBISS.SI-ID: 270868739
• Publication date in RUL: 09.03.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: ELOPE. English language overseas perspectives and enquiries
• Shortened title: ELOPE
• Publisher: Slovensko društvo za angleške študije, Slovensko društvo za angleške študije, Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani, Založba Univerze v Ljubljani
• ISSN: 1581-8918
• COBISS.SI-ID: 212890112

Licences

• License: CC BY-SA 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
• Description: This Creative Commons license is very similar to the regular Attribution license, but requires the release of all derivative works under this same license.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Title: Blažitev in krepitev kritike v ocenah doktorskih disertacij

Abstract

Recenzije doktorskih disertacij v češkem akademskem kontekstu so, za razliko od recenzij člankov v strokovnih revijah, javno dostopna besedila, ki niso podvržena slepi in anonimni recenziji. Ključna značilnost teh recenzij je ocenjevanje, zato zahtevajo precejšnjo mero jezikovne previdnosti do neposrednih kot tudi potencialno posrednih udeležencev. Ta članek se osredotoča na kritične pripombe, njihovo vsebino, moč, neposrednost in način formulacije v korpusu 32 recenzij doktorskih disertacij tehniških univerz. Vsi primeri kritike so bili analizirani z vidika uporabe izrazov za ublažitev (ang. hedges) in okrepitev (ang. boosters) kot pomembnih interakcijskih metadiskurzivnih sredstev. Ti so bili nato nadalje preučeni z vidika njihovih leksikalnih in sintaktičnih lastnosti. Rezultati kažejo, da se recenzenti zelo zavedajo značilnosti tega žanra, ki lahko ogroža ugled, in se zato izogibajo neposredni kritiki. Glavni cilj te raziskave je povečati ozaveščenost o samem žanru ter o jezikovnih in metajezikovnih vrednotenjih.

• Keywords: ocena disertacij, ocenjevalec, blažitev, poudarjanje, kritika, jezikovna previdnost