1 Introduction

Academic discourse plays an important role in the academic community, not only showcasing academic achievements, but also promoting interaction between authors and readers. Fuzzy restrictive language, as a key interactive resource in academic writing, helps authors express their views cautiously and enhance persuasiveness. Existing research has focused more on modal hedging, while there is less research on phrase and strategy hedging. This study is based on the corpus of the discipline of ship and ocean engineering, using quantitative and qualitative analysis methods to explore the use and pragmatic functions of hedging. The aim is to enrich related research, increase scholars' attention and application of hedging, improve the quality of academic terminology, and have a positive impact on the academic publications and identity building of Chinese scholars.

2 Literature Review

Explored in depth the definition, classification, and importance of hedging in academic discourse. Fuzzy restrictive language originated from Lakoff's definition, which refers to words that make things vague or less vague. The research extends from semantics to pragmatics and discourse analysis, and Hyland's classification divides hedging into lexical hedging and strategic hedging, providing operability for the study. The research on fuzzy restrictive language in academic discourse focuses on its communicative role, especially in the field of medicine, but also involves applied linguistics, environmental studies, sociology, and so on. Vague restrictive language helps to improve interpersonal relationships between communicators and enhance the accuracy of language expression. The research features include exploring the differences in fuzzy restrictive language across different disciplines, as well as focusing on the study of modal fuzzy restrictive language. However, there has been limited exploration of engineering disciplines such as shipbuilding and ocean engineering, and a deeper exploration of the pragmatic functions of hedging is needed. The aim of this study is to explore the use and function of fuzzy restrictive language in the field of ship and ocean engineering through a large-scale academic English corpus, in order to improve the quality of academic terminology.

3 Research Design

This chapter aims to explore the use and pragmatic functions of vague restrictive language in the scientific terminology of ship and ocean engineering. The study is based on the Ship and Ocean Engineering sub library of the Academic English Corpus of Beijing Foreign Studies University, randomly selecting 30 research papers as the corpus with a total of approximately 180000 words. The study adopts manual annotation method, combined with contextual judgment, to identify and annotate fuzzy restrictive language to ensure the accuracy of the research results.

4 Results statistics

Using AntConc software to conduct search statistics on fuzzy restrictive phrases, the results are expressed as frequency per thousand words, rounded to two decimal places. The specific frequency is shown in Table 1.

5 Discussion and Analysis

In the scientific terminology section of ship and ocean engineering, the frequency of using fuzzy restrictive language is 10/thousand words, which is lower than other disciplines. Fuzzy restrictive language is divided into three categories: vocabulary, phrases, and strategies. Among them, lexical fuzzy restrictive language is the most frequently used, including modal verbs, cognitive verbs, adverbs, nouns, and adjectives. Modal verbs and cognitive verbs are used to express uncertainty and self-protection, cognitive adverbs modify experimental data and phenomena, and cognitive nouns and adjectives are used to improve the reliability and accuracy of discourse. Phrase hedging includes both quantitative and degree categories. Quantitative categories such as "range from... to" and "between... and..." are used to limit numerical ranges, while degree categories such as "as... as possible" and "to some extreme" are used to modify the degree of experimental processes or results. Although strategic hedging is rarely used, it helps to emphasize the scientific, innovative, and practical significance of research. The use of these vague restrictive phrases reflects the author's cautious attitude and respect for objective facts in academic writing.

6 Conclusion

This study reveals that the frequency of using fuzzy restrictive language in the scientific terminology of ship and ocean engineering is relatively low, which is related to the discipline's tendency to use data and experimental steps to express research results. Vague restrictive language contributes to the rigor of expression and the self-protection of scholars in pragmatics. Phrase hedging is more common in this corpus, mainly used to limit the scope of data and research results to avoid overly absolute expressions. The use of strategic vague restrictive language is relatively low, reflecting scholars' cautious attitude when expressing academic viewpoints. The study emphasizes the interactive role of hedging in academic discourse and the importance of enhancing pragmatic awareness of hedging to improve the quality and international influence of academic discourse.