This paper investigates the use of reformulation markers as a common metadiscourse device in L1 English and Spanish and in L2 English research articles of a particular discipline, namely Business Management. These markers are considered procedural items, i.e. they encode information on how to process lexical meaning. The general frequency of use of the markers, the types of markers used, the functions most commonly performed and their (non-)parenthetical uses are compared in order to explore the degree of transference in their use by the L1 Spanish academics writing L2 English articles. The results are compared to similar studies on reformulation markers in general English and Spanish and also to studies in other disciplines. The results lead us to conclude that some general rhetorical L1 features are more likely to be adapted in the L2 English texts written by L1 Spanish academics than other more specific grammatical features.

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Reformulation markers (RMs) —in other words,that is,that is to say,i.e.andnamelyin English, andes decir,o sea,esto esanda saberin Spanish — are used to articulate different voices (Ducrot, 1984) or points of view (Anscombre, 1990; Nølke et al., 2004) in discourse. This paper offers a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the RMs found in a corpus of journalistic English and Spanish according to their different polyphonic arrangements. The theoretical framework used is a combination of insights from Relevance Theory — to explain the general role and the specific functions of RMs in the two languages —, and the Theory of Argumentation in Language — to account for their polyphonic meaning. The results show that instances of a high degree of polyphony are generally associated with particular discourse processes introduced by RMs, related to more interpretive uses such as definition, conclusion and consequence. However, significant differences emerge in the comparison of the specific RMs in English and in Spanish. Although the markers are often regarded as synonyms within each language or directly translatable from one language to another, their polyphonic potential may be considered a differentiating element between some of them.

Reformulation markers can be considered indicators of rhetorical conventions (Cuenca, 2003). In this paper I contrast these markers in the SciELF corpus of unedited research papers (building on previous work [Murillo, submitted]) and in a comparable ENL (English as a Native Language) corpus (SERAC), focusing on the overall frequency, the relative frequency of each marker and the discourse processes they introduce (Murillo, 2012). The results reveal statistically significant differences between the two corpora regarding the specific choice of reformulation markers and the processes introduced by them. Further, the “similects” of the SciELF corpus (Mauranen, 2012) present very different trends. ELF does not seem to constitute a homogeneous use of the English language, at least at the lexico-grammatical level.

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