Rhetorical Choices: The Use Of Hedging In Human Development

As a Human Development major, we explore the developmental process throughout a human’s lifestyle choices. Some developmental processes that are studied are biological, cognitive, interpersonal, and sociocultural. As humans continue to develop alongside with society, we impact the world in many ways such as creating technology, using a variety of teaching methods, finding different ways of communicating, and so forth. Through our writing and the rhetorical choices we use, we are able to convey our goals to any reader.
In this community, we connect our values and goals to the way we write in our field. We create a bond with any person who gets their hand on our journal articles because of the multiple disciplines we draw our work from. We then

Because it involves so many fields, the Human Development community needs to reach out and convince others that all these areas of expertise matter in one’s development. The way in which we write tries to prove and convince the reader that the findings as a whole are valuable and should be considered together rather than apart.
The first rhetorical choice, hedging, is considered vague language. The researchers use hedging to draw in readers to make their research more relatable to any reader by showing uncertainty in an outcome. The use of hedging in the Human Development community is usually found in the introduction and discussion sections of a research paper. These sections discuss the purpose of the experiment and the potential real-life impact on the results and how it is possible to affect our lives. The purpose of this rhetorical strategy is to connect with all the readers who come in contact with the writer’s work. By creating this vague language, it gives multiple options to relate to the reader directly or indirectly. The research could impact the reader or someone the reader personally knows in their life. An example in this journal article, “Advertising claims that baby sign will reduce parental frustration…..are valid reasons

The third rhetorical choices are the transitional use between active to passive voice. The use of both passive and active voice raises awareness on the actions taken, and the person doing the actions. As a part of the Human Development it is important to show the relationship between the actions and the person doing it because as a person, we are defined by our actions which dictate our development. We connect with the audience that both the person and the action matters through the way we write to build a stronger connection with the reader. To show that the person and the actions were taken are important in a Human Development paper we use active voice in the introduction and discussion sections and passive voice in the methods and results sections of the paper. Here is an example of active voice being used in the introduction, “...parents who want the best…” (Howlett et al., 2011). The main focus of this sentence is the parents. Using active voice directs our writing toward the reader to reflect who they are as a person, the roles they have, and what they want. There are multiple aspects a person considers when they think, they think about all the relationships that tie them to this world. As a Human Development major, we want to bring awareness to the reader and the control they have in this world so we transition to using