雖然退讓詞(hedges)早已在學術上被廣泛的研究，然而我們仍舊不清楚是否它與性別這個課題有無任何關聯，特別是在研究寫作領域方面。本研究試圖透過蒐集語料庫的方法，從學術論文寫作中來檢視性別與退讓詞的關係。資料分析來源為學術期刊TESOL Quarterly當中的17到35期共41篇論文。研究結果顯示男性作者普遍比女性作者使用較多的退讓詞，此結果和之前許多研究論文相反一先前結果顯示女性在說話時較有禮貌，不肯定；而男性則是在自我表達上較為堅定。除了比較兩性退讓詞的數量之外，本研究也發現雖然整體而言男女作者在使用退讓詞模式上很類似，但有些詞語的使用偏好仍有性別上的不同。

The notion of hedging has received considerable attention in sociolinguistic research. However, it is still largely unexplored whether the issue of gender might play a role in a writer's use of hedges, particularly in the area of academic writing. The present study sought to examine the relationship between gender and hedging in academic research writing through a corpus-based method. The data for analysis consisted of 41 articles (volumes 17 to 35) from one research journal, the TESOL Quarterly. The results of the study reveal that male authors used a significantly greater amount of hedges than their female counterparts. This contradicts evidence presented in a number of studies in which women are more polite and tentative in speech while men are firmer in expressing themselves. In addition to the number of hedges being used, the study has also found that although in general both the female and male groups of writers exhibited a similar pattern of hedging use, several hedging words were found to be favored by one gender group.