Indexing Academic Identity: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Variations in Hedges and Boosters in BS (Hons) Assignments of Stylistics Code 9062 in Relation to Research Rabbit Use

This study explores how undergraduate students in a Stylistics course (Code 9062) at AIOU index academic identity through interactional markers, specifically hedges and boosters in their assignments. It aims to examine the variation in the construction of academic identity through the implication of hedges and boosters by distance based education learners. A corpus is made of eight assignments of course stylistics and the corpus-based analysis is made on the basis of Silverstein’s (1976) theory of indexicality. The integration of Research Rabbit, an online citation mapping tool, is examined as a variable influencing these discourse strategies. Findings reveal significant variation in hedges and booster usage tied to disciplinary conventions, computer mediated discourse analysis highlighting the dynamic integration between digital tools and the construction of academic identity.