Written Communication Apr 1988

Readers' Learning from Prose

AVON CRISMORE ; WILLIAM J. VANDE KOPPLE

Abstract

Hedges, which signal writers' tentative assessments of referential information, were added to a passage from both a science and a social studies textbook. The hedges appeared in either personal or impersonal voice; in the first half, second half, or both halves of the passages; and in either a low-intensity condition or a high-intensity condition. A measure of what subjects learned from reading the passages showed that they learned most when the hedges appeared in personal voice, the second half of a passage, and low intensity. Some extensions of the implications of this work to practices in composition classes—particularly practices of evaluating whether or not material should be hedged—are recommended in order to broaden students' critical-thinking abilities and their views of language.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
1988-04-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088388005002004
Open Access
Closed
Topics
voice and style

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (7)

  1. Cramer et al. (2014)
    Examining Readers’ Evaluations of Objectivity and Bias in News Discourse
    Written Communication
  2. Paul et al. (2001)
    Moving beyond the Moment
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  3. Allen (1994)
    Women and authority in business/technical communication scholarship: An analysi…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  4. CRISMORE et al. (1993)
    Metadiscourse in Persuasive Writing
    Written Communication
  5. Crismore et al. (1990)
    Rhetorical contexts and hedges
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Show all 7 →
  1. Crismore et al. (1989)
    Mr. Darwin and his readers: Exploring interpersonal metadiscourse as a dimensio…
    Rhetoric Review
  2. BEAUVAIS (1989)
    A Speech Act Theory of Metadiscourse
    Written Communication

Cites in this index (2)

  1. KOPPLE (1985)
    Sentence Topics, Syntactic Subjects, and Domains in Texts
    Written Communication
  2. Rawlins (1980)
    What's so Wrong with "In My Opinion"?
    College English
Also cites 10 works outside this index ↓
  1. 10.1037/0022-0663.75.2.271
     ↗
  2. 10.1080/0022027840160306
     ↗
  3. 10.1080/03626784.1978.11075578
     ↗
  4. 10.1177/003368828201300202
     ↗
  5. 10.2307/377157
     ↗
  6. Lakoff, G.
    Metaphors we live by
     ↗
  7. 10.2307/796066
     ↗
  8. 10.2307/357843
     ↗
  9. 10.1037/0022-0663.72.2.204
     ↗
  10. 10.2307/357609
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 31 View in citation network →

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