Hedging is an important component of vague language. This paper retrieves high frequency expressions of hedgingby using medical English corpus. Pragmatic functions of hedging are analyzed
which can be summarized as politeness principle
authors' self-protection
avoidance of the absolute
pursuit of objectiveness as well as conversational implication. To medical researchers
it is necessary to cultivate the awareness of hedging and learn how to adopt it in their research papers.