Metadiscourse Features Research Articles

Interfaces of Macro and Microstructure in Academic Writing: The Case of Research Article Abstracts

Abstract Although flourishing research has been devoted to research on article abstracts, more studies are needed to unpack the relationship between rhetorical moves and their associated linguistic and rhetorical features (e.g., metadiscourse). To underpin this relationship, the current study analyzed a total of 60 research article abstracts written in English by two cultural groups in three disciplines . The first stage identified the rhetorical structure of the abstracts based on Hyland’s (2000) move pattern. Then, the metadiscourse features prototypical of each move were determined, following Hyland’s (2005a) interpersonal model. We found diverse move patterns in both cultural groups. In the Anglo-American group, the abstracts tend to be more compatible with Hyland’s (2000) move structure, whereas the Iranians prefer to omit some of those moves. The results also revealed that there was a close relationship between the communicative function of moves and metadiscourse choices per move. This finding suggests that meadiscourse features can be manipulated effectively to fulfill the communicative intentions of moves. This study has rewarding pedagogical implications for ESP/EAP context, especially in writing courses. Key words: Move structure; metadiscourse; abstract; rhetorical feature

Interacting with Readers: Metadiscourse Features in National University of Lesotho Undergraduate Students’ Academic Writing

This study examines the use of metadiscourse in National University of Lesotho [NUL] students’ academic writing. Focusing on final year undergraduate students’ research reports, the study identifies metadiscourse expressions used by the students and their apparent intentions in using such expressions Data for this study were the discussion sections of the students’ research projects. The analysis involved identifying and quantifying instances of metadiscourse, as well as interpreting the functions of the used metadiscourse expressions. The manual analysis was supported by a computerized text analysis program, Wordsmith Tools. The model used for the analysis was proposed by Hyland and Tse (2004) and further developed by Hyland (2005). Findings reveal that NUL students are more concerned with producing coherent texts than explicitly intruding into their texts and engaging the readers. This was seen in the high frequencies of interactive metadiscourse and considerably low frequencies of interactive metadiscourse (1688 as against 395). Students generally avoided self-mentions (typically first person pronouns) and engagement markers to directly address readers. This seems to have been a direct influence of the instruction they received in the compulsory first year course on Communication and Study Skills.

The Impact of Metadiscoursal Features on Online Reading Ability of EFL Learners

The internet has become essential in the education of learners of all ages across the world but it has become particularly significant in the reading development of EFL learners. The present study aims at investigating the role and importance of metadiscourses in online reading comprehension of EFL learners. To meet this purpose, a questionnaire of Metadiscourses was developed and given to all subjects. Also, all participants were required to take part in an online reading comprehension test named as DIALANG Diagnostic Language Testing Online. The findings of the study illustrated that about 75% of the variation in online reading ability can be explained by taking their level of metadiscourse awareness into account. Therefore; metadiscourse awareness is making a significant contribution to the prediction of online reading ability.

A Contrastive Study of Metadiscourse Elements in Research Articles Written by Iranian Applied Linguistics and Engineering Writers in English

This study seeks to investigate the use of interactive and interactional metadiscoursal features in two disciplines, applied linguistics and engineering. The analysis is based on a corpus of eight research articles from the engineering discipline and eight from applied linguistics. The selected corpus was analyzed through the model suggested by Hyland (2005). Results of the study showed that both disciplines used interactive and interactional features in their research articles. In both groups, writers used an interactive metadiscourse more than an interactional one. Also, there were significant differences on the overall frequency of metadiscourse features as well as on the particular occurrence of some categories in interactive and interactional features.

A Comparative Analysis of Interactive Metadiscourse Features in Discussion section of Research Articles Written in English and Persian

The purpose of the present study is to examine the interactive metadiscoursal features in the discussion section of the English and Persian sociological research articles. The analysis is based on a corpus of 20 research articles from sociological discipline; 10 from English-written articles published in international journals, and 10 from Persian-written articles published in national journals. Results of the study showed that English research articles use more overall interactive features than Persian articles in Sociological discipline. The only subcategory that Persian research articles showed more frequency was Endophoric markers. It seems that linguistic and cultural contexts are reflected in the written texts of these two languages.

An intercultural analysis of metadiscourse features in research articles written in English and in Spanish

In the last few decades the interpersonal nature of academic communication has been stressed in English for Academic Purposes literature. Taking metadiscourse as the analytical framework, this paper focuses on the cross-cultural analysis of interpersonally driven features in research article writing in a single discipline, Business Management. It aims at analysing to what extent the different contexts (i.e. the US international and the Spanish national) influence the strategic use of metadiscourse features in this discipline. The analysis is based on a corpus of 24 research articles from this discipline: 12 of them written in English by scholars based at North-American institutions and published in international journals, and another 12 written in Spanish by Spanish scholars and published in national journals. Significant differences are reported on the overall frequency of metadiscourse features as well as on the particular incidence of some categories in the two sub-corpora. The particular linguistic/cultural contexts of publication seem to influence scholars’ rhetorical choices when writing their research articles. New knowledge appears to be interpersonally negotiated in different terms in research articles in the two cultural contexts within this disciplinary domain.

Cooperative or collaborative literacy practices: Mapping metadiscourse in a business students' wiki group project

<span>Although wikis have been used successfully in collaborative learning in higher education, there is a lack of research investigating wikis in business module assessment tasks. Little research to date has been conducted on how wikis formatively develop international English as a second language (ESL) in business students' academic discourse. In this case study, students' use of a wiki in an assessment task in the </span><em>Intermediate Financial Reporting</em><span> (IFR) module is examined. This study is framed by Hyland and Tse (2004) and Hyland's (2005, 2010) models for the analysis of metadiscourse markers in IFR discourse. The findings of the interviews showed that although students collaborated and cooperated together to do the task, they favoured cooperative over collaborative learning. The linguistic analysis findings showed that the use of interpersonal metadiscourse features varied in the wiki discussion pages versus the report, indicating the students' awareness of their audience and the different genres, although the textual features of the wiki discussion pages resembled those of the report. The study is significant as it is the first to explore wikis' epistemological effects on Master of Commerce students' learning and it could potentially assist in the enhancement of wikis as a learning tool in profession-related courses, particularly those with high numbers of international, ESL students.</span>

A pragmatic approach to the macro-structure and metadiscoursal features of research article introductions in the field of Agricultural Sciences

Using Swales’ (1990, 2004) Create-A-Research-Space model (CARS) as an investigative tool and Hyland’s (2005) model of metadiscourse, this article reports on a pragmatic two-level rhetorical analysis of the constituent moves and steps of research article introductions and focuses on the identification and mapping of the metadiscoursal features most frequently employed to signal such moves. Findings reveal that the application of Swales’ CARS models shows no radical departure from the traditionally prescribed M1 + M2 + M3 rhetorical pattern, and unveil the existence of particular step combinational patterns to achieve different communicative purposes. On the one hand, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the metadiscourse in the moves indicates that evidentials, transition markers and code glosses are the most pervasive interactive categories. On the other hand, interactional metadiscourse is best reflected through the use of hedges and boosters. It is through a balanced combination of these two types of metadiscoursal features that writers manage to guide readers through the argumentative nature of the introduction to position themselves within the wider research context while abiding by the politeness conventions that underlie academic writing. This study has pedagogical implications for the writing practices of native and non-native researchers and contributes to the widening of current research on the genre of the RA.

Free Model of Sentence Classifier for Automatic Extraction of Topic Sentences

This research employs free model that uses only sentential features without paragraph context to extract topic sentences of a paragraph. For finding optimal combination of features, corpus-based classification is used for constructing a sentence classifier as the model. The sentence classifier is trained by using Support Vector Machine (SVM). The experiment shows that position and meta-discourse features are more important than syntactic features to extract topic sentence, and the best performer (80.68%) is SVM classifier with all features.

Logical markers in L1 (Spanish and English) and L2 (English) Business research articles

A great number of cross-cultural analyses of academic written genres have shown that there are cultural differences in the use of certain rhetorical and metadiscoursal features in texts produced in English and other languages. Intercultural studies of L2 (English) academic texts are more scarce. They tend to point out that these texts occupy a mid-position between those produced in the two L1s. The present research analyses logical markers in L1 research articles (RAs) in Spanish and English and L2 RAs in English in a specific discipline to try to unveil whether the use made of these metadiscoursal features by Spanish scholars in their English RAs resembles that in L1 English or Spanish texts. The use of additive, contrastive and consecutive logical markers is found to be rather different in the English and Spanish RAs and, in turn, their use in the English RAs written by Spanish scholars resembles that in RAs written by Anglo-American peers. Thus, no transfer process seems to occur from L1 (Spanish) RAs into L2 (English) texts. It is hypothesized that some rhetorical and metadiscoursal features may be more likely than others to undergo this transfer in academic genres, a hypothesis which shall be confirmed by future research. The possible reasons for these results are also discussed as well as their pedagogical implications.

‘Robot Kung fu’: Gender and professional identity in biology and philosophy reviews

In academic writing the construction of an authorial identity is constrained by different social, biographical and academic factors as writers bring their diverse personal experiences to a text. One of these factors is that of gender, although this has been far less studied in published academic writing than in other forms of social interaction. In this paper, we explore the issue of gender in academic interactions by analyzing a corpus of academic book reviews and interviews with academics from Philosophy and Biology. Focusing on metadiscourse features, we examine the similarities and differences in the rhetorical practices of male and female academics in their construction of a disciplinarily appropriate identity. Our findings show while there is no one-to-one relation between gender and language, gender and discipline identities cross-cut each other in significant ways in the context of professional self-conception and personal preferences.

The use of metadiscourse in good and poor ESL essays

A text is composed of two parts: propositional content and metadiscourse features. Metadiscourse features are those facets of a text which make the organization of the text explicit, provide information about the writer's attitude toward the text content, and engage the reader in the interaction. In this study, we analyze the metadiscourse in persuasive essays written by English as a second language (ESL) university students. Half of the essays received good ratings and half received poor ratings. Differences between the two sets were found in the number of words, number of T-units, and density of metadiscourse features. When features were analyzed as a proportion of number of T-units, differences were found in all categories. Furthermore, the good essays showed a greater variety of metadiscourse features within each category than the poor essays. It is proposed that skilled writers have an awareness of the needs of their readers and control the strategies for making their texts more considerate and accessible to the reader. Poor writers, on the other hand, are not able to generate considerate texts.