Metadiscourse Features Research Articles

Dynamicity of interaction in academic discourse: Evidence from a corpus-based study

Metadiscourse features are the rhetorical devices that serve to maintain the writer-reader and speaker-audience interaction. The way metadiscourse features are utilized in spoken and written modes may differ given the nature of these two modes of communication. For this reason, the present study set to unpack the distributional pattern of metadiscourse features as well as investigate the construction and maintenance of writer-reader and speaker-audience interaction in academic written and spoken English. To achieve this goal, two corpora of The British Academic Written English Corpus and British Academic Spoken English Corpus were utilized as the data gathering resources. To categorize the metadiscourse features, Hyland's taxonomy was selected. The quantitative analysis of the data showcased that the written corpus was more interactive oriented despite the fact that the spoken corpus showed a propensity towards the interactional category of metadiscourse features. On the other hand, the analysis of the concordance lines illustrated that academic conventions differed significantly in spoken and written academic English which resulted in a dynamic interaction between writer-reader as well as speaker-audience. The results of the study at hand may have implications in such lines of research as corpus linguistics, contrastive analysis and genre studies.

English research articles versus MA theses in applied linguistics: comparing the move structure and metadiscourse features in the results and discussion sections

Abstract This study compares the move structure and metadiscourse features of the results and discussion sections in English research articles and MA theses in applied linguistics. We collected 31 results and discussion sections in English research articles by expert writers and 31 MA theses in English by Chinese students. The quantitative analysis found notable differences in opening and closing moves, move frequency, move sequence, and the distribution of metadiscourse markers across moves. For example, M3S2 (comparing results with literature) and M3S3 (accounting for results) occurred more frequently in research articles. Frame markers occurred more frequently across M2 (reporting results) in MA theses. We also employed the qualitative approach to demonstrate the differences between these seemingly similar genres based on the textual analysis of data. The following possible reasons behind the differences were identified: the writing requirements, purposes, the writers’ prior learning and writing experience, English proficiency, and genre knowledge as well as the audiences. The findings not only provide insights into the interaction between move and metadiscourse, but also have implications for the learning and teaching of academic writing.

Metadiscoursal Realisation of Pragmatic Strategies @ResearchProject Twitter Accounts

To ensure the global communication and visibility of their investigations, international research projects leverage online settings and endorse specific digital academic practices. Twitter as a Social Medium for Research Purposes has become an effective outlet to widely disseminate their project development, knowledge production and research findings. To meet these aims, research groups display pragmatic strategies responding to three overarching communicative intentions –informative, interactional and promotional– as well as metadiscursive markers to establish links through their texts with the audience. This paper analyses these practices by looking into the metadiscoursal realisations of a taxonomy of twenty-seven data-driven pragmatic strategies in ten Horizon2020 research project Twitter accounts. First, we revisit metadiscursive adjustments for the digital environment of Twitter. Then, we identify salient metadiscourse features instantatiating the pragmatic strategies using NVivo. In general, interactional metadiscursive features predominate over interactive ones, being attitude markers, self-mentions and directives characteristic markers in informative, promotional and interactional strategies, respectively. Moreover, some metadiscourse categories are found to rely on non-verbal markers for their realisation. The analysis expands the understanding of complex digital discursive practices developed by researchers to disseminate their results, account for their funding, make themselves visible and engage multiple audiences.

A corpus-based study of metadiscourse features in Chinese-English simultaneous interpreting.

Metadiscourse markers have been observed to be frequently employed by simultaneous interpreters as interpreting strategies in the process of interpretation. However, the realm of inquiry into this phenomenon remains relatively underexplored. This study aims to rectify this gap by conducting a systematic analysis of metadiscourse features in the context of Chinese-English simultaneous interpreting. The analytical framework for this study is rooted in Hyland's interpersonal model of metadiscourse. By comparing the frequency and distribution of various metadiscourse markers in the source language (Chinese), target language (English), and original English speeches in simultaneous interpreting events, the research seeks to offer a quantitative description, qualitative analysis, and explanation of the causes of these metadiscourse features. To facilitate this analysis, the authors have compiled a Chinese-English Simultaneous Interpreting Parallel Corpus and a Comparable Original English Corpus based on ten international economic conferences, totaling 161,068 tokens. The findings reveal significant differences in interlingual and intralingual comparisons. Professional interpreters demonstrate a strong awareness of metadiscourse by employing various "metadiscourse interpreting strategies," including explicitation/simplification, emphasis/weakening, and visibility/invisibility. Moreover, interpreted English displays distinct metadiscourse features including explicitation of textual logic, objective modal tendency, and audience orientation, as compared to the original English speeches. The observed differences in the study can be attributed to a range of factors, including contextual factors, source language features, and the cognitive psychology of the interpreter. This study provides an in-depth analysis of metadiscourse characteristics in Chinese-English simultaneous interpreting, contributing to fine-grained inquiries into our understanding of the linguistic features of interpreted texts within the context of corpus-based interpreting studies.

Interactional metadiscourse in expert and student disciplinary writing: Exploring intrageneric and functional variation

Recent critical inquiries in metadiscourse research call into question the functional inadequacy of a word-based lexical approach. To account more fully the functional affordances of metadiscoursal features in academic writing, this paper examines the Interactional Metadiscourse, namely hedges, boosters, attitude markers and self-mentions based on a 2.64-million-word corpus of L1-English expert and L1-Chinese student writing in Agricultural Science. Through an intra-generic lens, we found a significant effect of part-genre on the use of all four target categories for both writer groups; and L1-English experts employed significantly more hedges than L2 students while L2 students used significantly more boosters and attitude markers. Functionally, both groups shared a largely similar deployment of functional subtypes across part-genres with L1-English experts outperforming L2 students only in one function: ‘stating a goal or purpose’ in self-mentions. Subsequent qualitative discourse-functional analyses at part-genre level between two writer groups explained some student-produced discipline-inappropriate metadiscoursal choices. This paper concludes with resources for a rigorous coding development, and implications for teaching metadiscourse to disciplinary writers with an emphasis on using available discipline-specific corpora to understand how functional taxonomizations of IM interface with socio-rhetorical contexts in disciplinary writing.

Associating biological context with protein-protein interactions through text mining at PubMed scale

Inferring knowledge from known relationships between drugs, proteins, genes, and diseases has great potential for clinical impact, such as predicting which existing drugs could be repurposed to treat rare diseases. Incorporating key biological context such as cell type or tissue of action into representations of extracted biomedical knowledge is essential for principled pharmacological discovery. Existing global, literature-derived knowledge graphs of interactions between drugs, proteins, genes, and diseases lack this essential information. In this study, we frame the task of associating biological context with protein-protein interactions extracted from text as a classification task using syntactic, semantic, and novel meta-discourse features. We introduce the Insider corpora, which are automatically generated PubMed-scale corpora for training classifiers for the context association task. These corpora are created by searching for precise syntactic cues of cell type and tissue relevancy to extracted regulatory relations. We report F1 scores of 0.955 and 0.862 for identifying relevant cell types and tissues, respectively, for our identified relations. By classifying with this framework, we demonstrate that the problem of context association can be addressed using intuitive, interpretable features. We demonstrate the potential of this approach to enrich text-derived knowledge bases with biological detail by incorporating cell type context into a protein-protein network for dengue fever.

Representation of interactional metadiscourse in translated and native English: A corpus-assisted study.

The present study aimed to investigate the differences between translated and non-translated English texts with regard to interactional metadiscourse features, which are crucial in engaging readers in the reasoning process and establishing the credibility of a proposition. Despite numerous studies investigating lexical and syntactic differences between translated and non-translated language, little research has been conducted on the textual level in terms of metadiscourse use. To address this gap, we conducted a comparative analysis of six interactional markers across two comparable multi-genre corpora, namely, FLOB (Freiburg-LOB Corpus of British English) comprising native English and the English subset of COCE (Corpus of Chinese-English) containing translated English. Our ANOVA analyses revealed that translated English exhibited a tendency to underuse stance features, such as hedges, boosters, and attitude markers, compared to native English. Furthermore, our post-hoc analysis revealed that genre modulated the use of metadiscourse features in both translated and native texts. Importantly, we found that there was greater cross-genre variation in the use of interactional metadiscourse in translated English than in native English. Our study highlights the unique characteristics of translation and emphasizes the importance of taking into account metadiscourse in the field of translation studies.

Approaches to the Analysis of Metadiscourse Features in Political Discourse

Metadiscourse features play a decisive role in the attainment of persuasion in different discourse domains and genres. Political genres, generally linked to the formal expression of viewpoints by national and international leaders, displays a vast amount of metadiscourse features aimed at persuading large audiences. This article offers a critical review of some important approaches to the study of metadiscourse traits in political discourse. The paper is organized as follows: (1) an introduction to the concept of metadiscourse and its potential as an analytical framework for the study of persuasion; (2) a description of contemporary political discourse, highlighting some current characteristics of political genres; (3) a discussion of the main approaches to the examination of political genres from a metadiscoursal perspective; and (4) conclusions on the strengths and shortcomings of the abovementioned approaches as regards the exploration of persuasive aspects in contemporary political talk.

A Study of Interactional Metadiscourse Features in Chinese University Students' Prepared English Speech

Speech is an activity in which speakers convey their message to listeners continuously. A coherent, logical argument must be made by the speaker, and audience participation is essential for a successful speech. The majority of prior research on English Public Speaking (hence referred to as EPS) from the Critical Discourse Analysis (hereinafter referred to as CDA) perspective focused on political or academic speech. Although the speech of English language learners (also known as EFLs) has caught the interest of academics. There has not been much study of the interactional metadiscourse characteristics of EFLs' EPS. In this study, we investigate how the usage of metadiscourse influences speakers' performance and the ways presenters engage with their listeners. We do this by drawing on Hyland's stance and engagement framework from 2005. Based on a corpus of 90 prepared speech scripts from high-scoring and low-scoring groups, the results suggest that explicit mentions of oneself and listeners are the most frequent elements, whereas stance markers are employed more frequently than listener engagement markers. Additionally, this study found a positive correlation between the usage of hedges and speech scores and a marginally negative correlation between speech scores and the use of self-mentions. In terms of technique, the interactional metadiscourse analysis on investigating EPS is provided by this study, while in terms of pedagogy, it emphasizes the significance of interactional metadiscourse in EPS instruction.

Engaging with readers: Students’ metalinguistic understanding of the use of pronouns in building reader-writer relationships

Students’ metalinguistic understanding of the written academic argument is important both to increase writer independence and inform writing instruction. This article draws on a study which investigated undergraduate students’ metalinguistic understanding of the metadiscourse features in their own written arguments. The specific focus of the paper is to determine what metalinguistic understanding students express about the use of pronouns in written argument as engagement or stance markers to build a relationship with the reader. The analysis indicates many students believed the use of reader pronouns were inappropriate in written argument, often because this was what they had been taught. Students’ metalinguistic understanding was shaped more by notions of formality and objectivity than by understanding of how pronouns play a role in reader engagement. The article argues that greater emphasis on the function of pronouns rather than the form, drawing on metadiscourse theory, and on generating metalinguistic understanding of the differing ways that pronouns function in written argument might better support writers in agentic linguistic decision-making.

Metadiscourse Features in Risk Management Reports by Local and International Banks in Malaysia

Metadiscourse Features in Risk Management Reports by Local and International Banks in Malaysia

Hedges in English and Arabic Metadiscourse Utility in Academic Writing: A Contrastive Analysis

This current study has increased the amount of studies on metadiscourse features in English and Arabic, as well as cultural groupings, by examining the usage of hedging in linguistic research articles published in English and Arabic. The technique was qualitative, with a corpus of 40 articles from six linguistics journals used. This study aimed to identify similarities and differences in the use of hedges in native English and native Arabic linguistics research publications. Hyland's taxonomy of metadiscourse markers was used to analyze the language categories. The contrastive analysis of English and Arabic in this article was a systematic investigation of language pairs to uncover differences and similarities. Arabic articles are not more dominant than English articles in the Hidges structure. The result showed that hedges in English is greater than in Arabic research articles. From those findings, it might have a substantial influence on the teaching and learning of Arabic as a foreign language in English context.

A Corpus-Based Study of Metadiscourse Features Across Pctb Textbooks at Primary and Secondary Levels

Metadiscourse markers (MMs) are linguistic features that scholars use to express their messages compellingly and persuasively. Metadiscourse not just aides the peruser to comprehend the essential message of the message through construction and content, rather its suggest the peruser with the specific inclinations and points of view in the essential talk.The basic purpose of this study is to explore metadiscourse markers division and frequency designed by Pakistani authors Punjab curriculum textbook board at primary and secondary level students for the academic year 2018-2019. And also try to encompasses appropriate and inappropriateness as well. An adhock corpus comprises at primary and secondary levels Punjab textbook board English language books. Ken Hyland’s taxonomy Metadiscourse (2005) was selected to investigate the frequency of metadiscourse features though famous AntConc 3.5.8 software is used for text analysis. According to obtained results, interactive metadiscourse features has more frequently used rather interactional metadiscourse features in Punjab curriculum textbook board English language books.The total numbers of interactive markers are 10,429 likewise interactional metadiscourse markers total numbers are 94,91. The research indicates the worth of metadiscourse features in Punjab curriculum textbooks board English language books and opens the door for syllabus designers and researchers that they should considered the worth of metadiscourse in pedagogical perspective.

Interactional Metadiscourse Analysis of ESL Learners’ Essays

This study analysed interactional metadiscourse markers on 40 expository essays by ESL learners from hard and soft science courses based on metadiscourse table of Hyland (2005). The study aimed to examine whether both groups used the same amount and type, and whether learners in different course groups differed in their selected metadiscourse. There were some differences in the amount and types used by both groups. Soft science learners produced more metadiscourse features and they were more interpretative meanwhile hard science learners were very assertive in their writings. This study indicates the importance of using metadiscourse in ESL writings

Automated and Human Interaction in Written Discourse: A Contrastive Parallel Corpus-based Investigation of Metadiscourse Features in Machine-Human Translations

The rise of the internet has generated a need for fast online translations, which human translators cannot meet. Statistical tools such as Google and Baidu Translate provide automatic translation from one written language to another. This study reports the descriptive comparison of the machine-translation (MT) with human translation (HT), considering the metadiscoursal interactional features. The study uses a parallel corpus consisting of 79 texts translated from Chinese to English by professional human translators and machine translations (Baidu translate & Google translate) and a comparable reference corpus of non-translated English text. The statistical analysis revealed no statistically significant difference between Baidu and Google translate regarding all types of metadiscoursal indicators. However, the findings of this study demonstrate significant disparities in the interactional characteristics of various HT and MT groups. Compared to the metadiscourse features in non-translated English political texts, human translators were found to outperform machine translations in the use of attitude markers. In contrast, the distribution of directives in machine-translated texts is more native-like. In addition, MT and HT have utilized a significantly smaller number of hedges, self-mention, and readers than non-translated texts. Our results indicate that the MT systems, though still calling for further improvement, have shown tremendous growth potential and may complement human translators.

Writers’ Awareness of Metadiscourse Features in Malaysian Business News

Metadiscourse is an important linguistic resource in business news because it guides readers throughout the text. Business news is vital to keep people abreast of how the economy affects job opportunities, how high or low interest rates may go, and whether layoffs are imminent in local industries. However, it is the news that people read the least because it is not engaging to them. The study aims to investigate The Star Online and Focus Malaysia business news writers’ awareness on the use of metadiscourse features. Metadiscourse Awareness Test was given to 10 business news writers from The Star Online and Focus Malaysia respectively. The findings showed that sequencers had the lowest mean score (M=2.334) for textual metadiscourse, while certainty markers had the lowest mean score (M=2.667) for interpersonal metadiscourse. Although The Star Online and Focus Malaysia writers exhibited the lowest mean score in identifying sequencers and certainty markers, they still demonstrated a high awareness in identifying all the categories of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse. The findings revealed the importance of metadiscourse features for the business news writers to fully utilise them in the news industry.

‘This study aims to …’

Abstract Using Swales’ (1990) CARS model and Hyland’s (2005) interpersonal model of metadiscourse, this study takes a pragmatic approach to explore the rhetorical structure and metadiscoursal features of research article introductions in a comparable corpus of 40 introductions from applied linguistics and chemistry. Specifically, this article reports on a rhetorical analysis of introduction moves and an identification of metadiscourse markers and discourse functions they were conveying and focuses on the mapping of the markers most pervasively used to signal the moves. Results showed disciplinary differences regarding both move structure and metadiscourse use which could be attributed to the susceptibility of rhetorical practices and preferences to socio-rhetorical conventions in each community. In addition to their pedagogical implications, the results of this study could be of use for novice research article writers and/or students in applied linguistics and chemistry in order to better consolidate their credence and socialisation in their community through publication.

The metadiscourse of Arabic academic abstracts: A corpus-based study

Research on metadiscourse and rhetorical features in modern Arabic academic writing is scarce both in quantity and in scope. Abstracts, in particular, are a severely understudied academic register. This study aims to fill a gap in the study of academic abstracts in Arabic by providing a more comprehensive analysis of metadiscourse in Arabic academic abstracts. The data for the study includes a corpus of 400 Arabic abstracts, which have been labeled according to two variables: (a) abstract type (journal or dissertation); and (b) author gender (male, female, mixed gender). The analysis follows the theoretical framework proposed by Hyland (2019), as the data has been annotated for both textual metadiscourse (transition markers, frame markers, evidentials, endophorics and code glosses) and interpersonal metadiscourse (hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagement markers and self-mentions). Results show that Arabic academic abstracts are rich in both types of metadiscourse features. Transition and frame markers have the highest frequency in the textual domain, while boosters and self-mentions are highly frequent in the interpersonal domain. Endophoric markers and hedges are the least used types of metadiscourse in the data, but engagement markers are surprisingly more frequent than previously thought.

A Cross-Linguistic Study on the Reflection of Metadiscourse Markers in the Acknowledgements of the Iranian and Native English Dissertations

The acknowledgement section in a thesis or dissertation expresses gratitude for the people who have helped the author in the process of conducting the research and writing the paper. The study sought to explore the extent to which metadiscourse markers have been employed in the dissertation acknowledgements. Excluding the rhetorical moves, emotional tones and cultural backgrounds, the research has primarily contrasted dissertation acknowledgements written by Iranian EFL doctoral graduates and English native speakers at an identical level. Hyland’s metadiscourse model features and his four-tier main obligatory thanking move was applied to determine and interpret the features predominantly used in the thesis acknowledgements. A qualitative analysis of the results revealed that except for a meaningful difference in attitude markers, Iranian acknowledgements were consistent with the model and not any noticeable difference detected in using interactive metadiscourse features between Iranians and native speakers when writing their dissertation acknowledgements.

‘We Are a Global Community’: Communicating Knowledge through Moocs and Teacher Training Platforms

A socio-rhetorical discourse community consists of a group of people who come together to pursue objectives that predate those of socialization and solidarity, and who aim to develop and maintain their own discoursal characteristics. We have examined MOOCs (Massive Open Online courses) and teacher training educational platforms in order to ascertain whether and to what extent they may be identified as networked learning tools and discourse communities characterized by a commonality of goals, mechanisms and procedures of intercommunication, exchange of knowledge, information, as well as specialized genres and their terminology. MOOCs and learning platforms have dramatically changed the way people learn. Starting from ongoing research, we analyze the metadiscoursal features of an ad hoc corpus of online filmed lectures drawn from two MOOC providers (FutureLearn and Coursera). We look at both interactive and interactional resources (to guide the listener through the texts and to involve the listener in the subject), in order to discover how these features are used to control, evaluate and negotiate the communicative goals and impact of the ongoing exchanges. The quantitative and qualitative analysis shows a significant use of metadiscourse markers in the video lectures with a higher frequency of interactional features such as self-mentions, engagement markers, hedges and boosters, rather than interactive ones. These commentaries in the lectures signal the instructors’ attitudes towards the texts and their listeners. Additionally, they were found to perform a rhetorical function since they persuasively reinforce the instructors’ attitude and stance. Thus, their use engages the participants as members of a digital community, where commitment, dedication, and common goals seem to be fundamental features.