Use Of Metadiscourse Research Articles

Using metadiscourse in making persuasive attempts through workplace request emails

This paper reports on and discusses the way professionals use metadiscourse in an attempt to achieve persuasion through workplace emails. Drawing upon the interpersonal model of metadiscourse, a total of 659 workplace request emails collected from professional contexts in Hong Kong were analyzed. The type and abundance of the various metadiscourse categories used in this computer-mediated communication genre were first identified and then compared with those found in non-computed mediated ones that also aim to persuade others. The results suggest (1) email offers professionals a convenient channel to persuade colleagues to comply with requests by appealing to rationality, credibility and emotions; (2) persuasive attempts made via email differ from those made via other channels in terms of the pattern of use of metadiscourse; and (3) there may be a preferred pattern of use of persuasive strategies in different moves of the workplace request email genre.

Dimension of Experience: Metadiscourse in the Texts of Novice Non-Native, Novice Native and Expert Native Speaker

Metadiscourse is essential in establishing pragmatically effective academic written communication. However, little is known about how metadiscourse is used in written texts produced by tertiary level second language learners. This corpus-based linguistic research study aims to explore the frequencies and usages of metadiscourse markers in student essays written by Turkish learners of English and investigate the divergences from native speaker norms. As reference corpora, British Academic Written English (BAWE) and British National Corpus (BNC) were used. We found that in academic discourse, regardless of experience in writing (novice or expert) and L1 language background, interpersonal metadiscourse markers are used more frequently than textual metadiscourse markers. The commonalities between novice non-native and expert native writers together with differences between two native speaker groups suggest that pragmatic competence, particularly metadiscourse use, develops by experience regardless of L1 background.

УЧЕТ ОСОБЕННОСТЕЙ АРАБСКОЙ АРГУМЕНТАТИВНОЙ РИТОРИКИ ПРИ ОБУЧЕНИИ СТУДЕНТОВ ВОСТОЧНОГО ФАКУЛЬТЕТА АРАБСКОЙ РАЗНОВИДНОСТИ ДЕЛОВОГО АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА

The article examines the specific features of business Arabic rhetoric. The authors highlight the characteristic features of the Arabic argumentative discourse and justify the need to take them into account when teaching the Arabic version of business English to students of the Oriental faculty. Basing on the analysis of the materials of the Arabic political leaders’ speeches, the strategies peculiar to this linguistic culture are highlighted: the indirect presentation of the material, the application of cross-cutting arguments, the use of parallel structures and the use of metadiscourse and allegories from the Koran.

You, our shareholders: metadiscourse in CEO letters from Chinese and Western banks

AbstractAs China internationalizes its own banks more and more, and the Chinese are an expanding market in Western banks, the linguistic specificities of communication strategies may be understood and applied in the professional environments of banks. The present comparison is based on the key features of metadiscourse markers in the Chinese English-version CEO letters and the Western English-version CEO letters in banking annual reports. Metadiscourse in business genres is an under-represented topic, particularly across cultures; this study invites further inquiry. This paper applies corpus-based contrastive analysis to CEO letters in English from Chinese and Western banks. Comparing distribution patterns of metadiscourse markers, we found that both interactive and interactional metadiscourse was more frequently used in the Western letters. This suggests that Western CEO letters tend to use more credibility and affective appeals, while Chinese CEO letters are based more on rational appeals. Variation in use of metadiscourse is discussed with a focus on the interplay of linguistic and cultural features. This study contributes to the fields of Chinese English professional written communication, and cross-cultural writing in workplaces.

The use of metadiscourse and persuasion: An analysis of first year university students' timed argumentative essays

This study attempts to obtain a better understanding of the way first-year university students construct persuasive arguments in writing by exploring their pattern of use of metadiscourse. A total of 181 argumentative essays produced by first-year university students while completing a timed writing task were analyzed by drawing upon the interpersonal model of metadiscourse as the analytical framework. The findings indicate that, while writers of low-rated essays differ significantly from those of high-rated ones only in the use of a few metadiscourse markers, they have problems using metadiscourse in constructing convincing arguments. Our study suggests that direct and explicit teaching and learning of metadiscourse should be implemented at both secondary education and at the early stage of tertiary education to enable students to use metadiscourse effectively in creating convincing arguments in English academic writing.

Young Researchers Writing in ESL and the Use of Metadiscourse: Learning the Ropes

Young Researchers Writing in ESL and the Use of Metadiscourse: Learning the Ropes

Variation in Metadiscursive “You” Across Genres: From Research Articles to Teacher Feedback

This article takes the theme of metadiscourse across genres as a point of departure. To illustrate variation in the use of metadiscourse, reflexive uses of second person “you” are examined in diffe ...

ʻWhat I’m Speaking is almost English…ʼ: A Corpus-based Study of Metadiscourse in Englishmedium Lectures at an Italian University

This paper deals with the use of metadiscourse by Italian university lecturers who teach through the medium of English (EMI, English-Medium Instruction). The objective is to verify whether, irrespective of possible shortcomings in their mastery of the language, lecturers demonstrate sensitivity to the situational demands of the EMI classroom, paying attention to the needs of the audience. A small, specialised corpus of undergraduate university lectures in the fields of Physical Sciences and Technology will be analysed. In particular, the focus will be on references to the discourse, the code, the lecturer as speaker and the students as listeners. I will investigate what discourse functions metadiscourse markers perform, what form-function associations can be identified, and whether signs of dysfluency and non-standard forms can be found in relation to metadiscourse. The pedagogical implications of the findings will be considered and suggestions provided on how to incorporate metadiscourse in teacher training programmes. The paper will conclude with some methodological reflections on how to investigate metadiscourse in university lectures.

Stylistic Differences between Closely Related Disciplines: Metadiscourse in German Linguistics and Literary Studies

The disciplines of linguistics and literary studies are often considered similar, as they are for instance part of one common study program. However, there are many differences between the two disciplines that concern not only the object of study, but also research methods and writing styles. Consequently, students of, for example, German Studies need to adapt to two academic languages at once. Therefore, we aim to describe the stylistic differences between the languages of the two disciplines. Our study is based on a data-driven n-gram analysis of German PhD theses that reveals a more intense use of metadiscourse in linguistics when compared to literary studies. In the light of these results, we carry out a more in-depth study of metadiscourse in the two disciplines, focusing on the expressions im Folgenden (“in the following”) and zusammenfassend (“summarizing”). We find that literary scholars use both of the above expressions less frequently than linguists. We suggest that this might be due to different aesthetic demands and more influence of English academic language on German linguistics. Also, a higher proportion of the instances found in literary studies turned out to be intertextual rather than metatextual. We therefore argue that it is important to inspect the data behind quantitative results in detail.

Metadiscourse Analysis of Pakistani English Newspaper Editorials: A Corpus-Based Study

Metadiscourse markers (MMs) are lexical resources that writers use to organize their discourse and express their stance about the content or the reader. Metadiscourse analysis of Pakistani English Newspaper Editorials (PENE) has been conducted. The corpus of this study has contained 1000 editorials taken from four renowned Pakistani newspapers: Dawn News (DN), The Frontier (TF), The Express Tribune (TET) and The News (TN). The distribution of 250 editorials from each newspaper has been retrieved from online sources. The frequencies of metadiscourse features (MFs) have been counted and compared, and further studied metadiscourse features (MFs) functionally on the basis of propositional and non-propositional contents. A comprehensive model on Interpersonal metadiscourse has been proposed and it has been categorized into interactive and interactional markers. A comprehensive scheme of metadiscourse markers (MMs) has been proposed for the analysis of the present study. The findings revealed that all corpora used more interactive than interactional markers. In this regard, the sub-categories of interactive metadiscourse such as sequencing markers and transition markers have been frequently observed in the corpus of The Frontier (TF) as compared to other said corpora. The sub-categories of interactional metadiscourse such as engagement, and hedges have been frequently seen in the corpus of The Frontier (TF) as compared to other said corpora. In conclusion, this study has claimed that The Frontier (TF) is more reader-friendly because of the excessive use of interactive metadiscourse.

The Metadiscourse Markers in Good Undergraduate Writers’ Essays Corpus

Good student writers are often seen as a benchmark to the weaker writers. In the area of metadiscourse in students’ writing, previous studies show that good undergraduate writers use more metadiscourse markers as compared to the weaker writers. However, there are limited previous studies which observe the use of metadiscourse among Malaysian ESL undergraduate writers whose Bahasa Malaysia is their first language. Therefore, further studies involving undergraduate writers from this particular setting is significant to add more literature to the field of metadiscourse among ESL undergraduates. This paper aims to present the metadiscourse markers found in a corpus of good undergraduate writers’ essays (GUWE corpus). These metadiscourse markers are classified in the main categories and sub-categories based on Hyland’s (2005) interpersonal model of metadiscourse. Using a concordance software, this study aims to reveal the frequency of the metadiscourse markers use in good essays produced by 269 Malaysian undergraduate writers. The findings presented in this paper are hoped to be useful for other researchers who are interested in the same field of metadiscourse among ESL student writers especially among Malaysian undegraduates.

EXPLORING IMPLICIT META-DISCOURSE IN LEGAL DISCOURSE: AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHINESE AND AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONS

Research in meta-discourse, particularly explicit meta-discourse or meta-discourse markers has contributed much knowledge on the discourse features of specialised genres. However, there are very few studies on implicit meta-discourse. The current study explores implicit meta-discourse in legal discourse by comparing the implicit interpersonal meta-discourse in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China with the Constitution of the United States. The focus of the study is the use of implicit meta-discourse, particularly the grammatical meta-discourse in the legal discourse of two different languages and cultural groups. The findings demonstrate that there are similarities and differences in the use of implicit meta-discourse in the two constitutions. Within the context of language discourse, the findings of the current study suggest that legal discourse is distinctive in the use of implicit interpersonal meta-discourse, particularly in the way writers intrude into the discourse implicitly by certain key grammatical forms of meta-discourse. Despite the objectivity and rigour of legal discourse, the current study found that there is some level of subjectivity in such discourse, evident from the use of implicit meta-discourse.

Analysis of Metadiscourse Features in Argumentative Writing by Pakistani Undergraduate Students

Metadiscourse involves the interaction between the reader and the writer of the text in the overall process of communication. Metadiscourse not only guides the reader to understand the primary message of the text through structure and content, but also it intimates the reader with the particular slants and perspectives in the primary discourse. The students have to master the use of Metadiscourse in their writings. The purpose of this study is to examine the distribution and frequency of Metadiscourse features used by Pakistani undergraduate students in their argumentative essays and to analyze roles played by these particular features. Moreover, the research explores the extent of appropriateness and inappropriateness in this particular text as well. Hyland’s Interpersonal model of Metadiscourse (2005) was adapted to conduct the present study. AntConc 3.4.4 software is used for corpus analysis of the text. Findings show that Pakistani undergraduate students are more comfortable with using Interactional Metadiscourse 61% rather than Interactive dimension 39%. It has been observed that undergraduate students used high score of self-mentions 37% and engagement markers 37%. Endophoric markers were not used by these students 0%. Findings have considerable importance, as they assist the learners to figure out the problems of the students regarding the use of Metadiscourse. Trainings should be given to the students to use these features appropriately.

Organisational Discourse Markers in ESL Students’ Essays: A Study of Metadiscourse

Metadiscourse is the linguistic expressions and signalling words used by a writer to organise a text and connect with the readers. This research paper is a preliminary study to explore and identify the metadiscourse markers from organisational discourse markers category in 195 persuasive essays written by second year undergraduate students at a chosen public university in Malaysia. The organisational discourse markers category (ODM) is one of the two main categories, other than the interpersonal discourse markers category (IDM), in a simplified metadiscourse framework for ESL lay writers proposed by (Tan, 2012). This preliminary study focuses on ODM because this category assists a writer to manage the flow of ideas in a text. It is also relevant to get an idea of how metadiscourse markers are applied by this group of tertiary level students to organise their essays, through the use of organisational discourse markers. The metadiscourse markers in the essays were searched with the assistance of a concordance software, WordSmith 5.0. The findings of this study provide a platform for a larger study of metadiscourse use in Malaysian undergraduate students’ essays.

Corpus Analysis of Metadiscourse in Undergraduate Academic Projects

Writers engage different types of metadiscourse markers in interacting with the readers. They provide indicators in their writing of the contents to help readers comprehend and respond to the text. This paper is a preliminary study to identify types and categories of metadiscourse found in a corpus of undergraduate academic projects (UAP corpus). This study is significant as it identifies types and categories of metadiscourse found in both good and weak undergraduate academic writing. Hence, this study is relevant to further support related research on the use of metadiscourse among tertiary level students to write effectively in academic writing. Since metadiscourse has never been directly taught as a subject to undergraduate students, it may contribute to the lack of awareness on metadiscourse functions in effective writing. In this study, the metadiscourse items in UAP corpus are identified and rated by inter-raters. It is a corpus-based research study that involves collecting, analyzing, and using qualitative and quantitative approaches to identify metadiscourse items in the corpus.

Exploring the Rhetorical Use of Interactional Metadiscourse: A Comparison of Letters to Shareholders of American and Chinese Financial Companies

By taking Hyland and Tse’s (2004) interactional metadiscourse model, this study attempts to compare the incidence of the interactional metadiscourse markers in letters to shareholders of American and Chinese companies in the financial industry and their rhetorical functions. This study makes American corpus of 41 letters and Chinese corpus of 37 letters both of which are written in English. WordSmith is adopted to find out the differences in incidence of these markers. Chi-square test further confirms these differences are significant. It is consequently found that five types of interactional metadiscourse markers are all deployed in both American and Chinese corpus but the incidence of each marker is much more in American corpus than that in Chinese corpus. Besides, this study identifies that self-mentions and engagement markers are the most frequently employed in both corpora. However, it is noticeable that self-mentions and engagement markers collaborate with another three types of markers more tactically and flexibly in American corpus than in Chinese. In particular, self-mentions markers are found to use with not only boosters, but hedges and engagement markers in American corpus, while self-mentions markers in Chinese corpus only collaborate with hedges. In addition, the engagement markers of model verbs and personal pronouns are more active in American corpus than these in Chinese. This study finds out American companies integrate these markers into building a positive personal or corporate image and closing writer-reader relationship, thereby accomplishing the promotional and persuasive purposes. It may suggest that Chinese companies employ the integration of interactional metadiscourse markers as strategically as American.

Poring Over Metadiscourse Use in Discussion and Conclusion Sections of Academic Articles Written by Iranian ESP Students

This study investigated the employment of interactional metadisocurse in English academic articles written by Iranian ESP students. Data consisted of a total of 66 academic articles written in English by nonhumanities and humanities writers. Discussion and Conclusion sections were extracted, and Hyland’s (2005) taxonomy was borrowed for analysis. The use of hedges, boosters, and attitude markers was compared in the articles. Total number of each metadiscourse marker was counted, and the differences were checked running Mann-Whitney U test. Analysis revealed that there were disciplinary differences in the use of markers by nonhumanities and humanities. Hedges and attitude markers were more frequent in the humanities’ articles, rather than the nonhumanities’ articles. Also, the use of hedges and boosters was statistically significant. Pedagogical implications are discussed in light of the empirical data.

On the Use of Metadiscourse in EFL Undergraduate Student Writing

Metadiscourse has been recognized as an important aspect of effective persuasive discourse. In this study, we explore how metadiscourse features are deployed by 34 EFL undergraduate students to make their non-discipline persuasive texts effective. We find that students grasp at least some of the metadiscourse resources available to them, but are relatively limited in rhetorical sophistication. In fact, transitions, frame markers, code glosses and hedges were found to be critical elements contributing to student writing quality. The findings also show that both frequency and diversity of frame markers are positive predictors of overall writing quality. We also investigate the linguistic forms of metadiscourse used by the students to project stance in their writing. The students were found to have difficulty handling the range of stance construction they could take, and this was unfortunately couched in single-word modal verbs. Teachers should make the metadiscourse features of persuasive writing explicit to students to assist them in making stronger arguments.

The Use of Personal Metadiscourse over Monologic and Dialogic Modes of Academic Speech

This study was an attempt to investigate the functions of personal metadiscursive expressions found in academic monologues and dialogues. The analysis was based on verbal data of 16 academic lectures and discussions. Based on Ädel's (2010) taxonomy of the subtypes and discourse functions of metadiscourse, the two data sets were compared in terms of the use of personal metadiscourse functions. The results show that “references to the audience” metadiscourse was much more prevalent in dialogic speech than in monologic lectures; “metatext” was more frequent in monologues than in dialogues. The findings also suggest that academic lecturers made more frequent use of “discourse organization” metadiscourse expressions in their presentations, because of the presence of a discourse whose topic and phorics management is important. On the other hand, interlocutors used more “audience interaction” metadiscourse expressions in dialogues due to the presence of a direct audience whose active understanding and contribution is vital.

Metadiscourse in Persian and English Research Article Introductions

This study aims to investigate the use of metadiscourse in Persian and English research article introductions in the field of linguistics. The corpus of the research consists of 40 introductions of linguistics research articles, 20 Persian and 20 English. The analytical framework for this study is Hyland's (2004) model of metadiscourse in academic text. In order to investigate the similarities and differences in the implication of metadiscourse (i.e. the interactive and interactional resources) between these texts, both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used. On the qualitative basis, this study identifies and categorizes metadiscourse markers and a comparative analysis is conducted to determine the frequency of different types of metadiscourse. The results are analyzed carefully and quantitatively which include the general distribution of metadiscourse in each category and then the density of metadiscourse in both sets of data. They are scrutinized based on the number of sentences and words in the corpora. The similarities and differences between two sets of data are looked at from a sociocultural view. The results of this study make some perspectives into the teaching and learning of writing for EFL learners.