Abstract
This study was an attempt to investigate the functional role of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers in English and Persian Economic news reports. To this end, 10 news articles, 5 in each language, were randomly selected from the Economic sections of the leading newspapers published in 2013-2014 in Iran and the United States. Based on Kopple’s (1985) taxonomy, the type and frequency of metadiscourse markers used in the texts were analyzed to find out their functions in the text. The findings revealed that the textual markers used by Persian authors were considerably more frequent than those employed by the American writers. Interestingly, unlike the Persian writers, the American authors enlisted a larger number of interpersonal markers, which made their angle of the subject treatment different. It is evident that the differential use of metadiscourse markers by nationally different authors could be attributed to culture-specific norms governing the development and organization of discourse.
Highlights
Metadiscourse, a relatively new concept in the area of discourse analysis, refers to the ways speakers and writers address and communicate with their audience
The results revealed that interpersonal metadiscourse markers were present in both sets of corpora, but there were significant differences between the two groups regarding the occurrences of interpersonal markers, especially in the case of Commentaries
The results indicated that metadiscourse markers were frequently utilized in Persian news reports and the number of textual metadiscourse markers was much higher compared with interpersonal metadiscourse markers
Summary
Rather than only representing their ideas and information through language, writers need to consider the expectations and requirements of their receivers so as to engage them in the reading process and affect their understanding of the discourse produced This view, as Dafouze-Milne (2008) maintains, is based on the assumption that writing is a social and communicative process and, in this regard, metadiscourse is used to organize and create a given text by involving the reader and expressing the author’s inputs and stances. While ideational function refers to the information the writer or speaker communicates, interpersonal function is concerned with the way language establishes, maintains, and signals relations among people. ALLS 5(2):59-66, 2014 according to Vande Kopple, primary discourse is primarily concerned with the ideational function, whereas metadiscourse is related to the textual and interpersonal functions of language
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
