Abstract
To extend the relatively neglected line of cross-linguistic research on metadiscourse in research articles (hereafter RAs) in Chinese and English languages and cultures, this article, adopting the reflexive approach, investigated the use of metadiscourse in Chinese and English RA introductions and discussions. Based on manual discourse analysis of 60 Chinese and English RAs in sociology, it is found that more impersonal than personal metadiscourse was deployed and the distribution of the impersonal subcategories displays similarity in both Chinese and English introductions and discussions. However, English sociologists tend to include more metadiscourse as a whole, and the respective personal and impersonal metadiscourse, particularly personal metadiscourse and in the discussion section in their RAs, than their Chinese colleagues. Furthermore, the gap between impersonal and personal metadiscourse use was notably more salient in Chinese than in English in both sections. Linguistic features, sociocultural factors and rhetoric functions may be responsible for these differences.
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