We are pleased to announce that the Master’s thesis of our member, Dominik Gęgotek has just won the main award in the competition for the best dissertation on equality and social diversity defended at the University of Silesia in Katowice. The title of the thesis is Hedge phrases in feedback: a linguistic analysis of code reviews in free software projects. It focuses on the communication in free software projects. Special attention is given to the prevalent use of hedging expressions, such as ‘I think’, ‘it might be better to’, ‘it seems’, etc. in the analysed discourse, and how those expressions shape the interaction between volunteers and coordinators from different cultures. The thesis focuses especially on the manner in which hedge phrases and pronouns are used to convey criticism or praise. The review comments are also analysed as face-threatening acts. The analysis shows that this threat may be managed by the use of hedges and tentative language.

The work has also shown that the communication in free software projects is not only understudied but also worth analysing linguistically. Because of that, Dominik Gęgotek continues to work on this discourse along with Agnieszka Ziora in their PhD dissertations. These dissertations will address some limitations of the study, increase the corpus size and analyse other aspects of the communication, such as values and sentiment, and focus more on their effect on continuous collaboration.

The full awarded thesis can be accessed after email contact at: dominik.gegotek@us.edu.pl.