The Contrastive Rhetoric of Metadiscourse Markers in L1 and L2 Research Papers: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Abstracts and Discussion Sections of Medical Research Papers

Abstract

Most researchers find themselves in a very competitive surrounding and are supposed to be published continuously in prestigious peer-reviewed journals. However, the norms adopted by the local academic communities may differ from the norms adopted by the international academic communities. Differences have various causes and often include metadiscoursal textual features. The vast majority of the research in metadiscourse basically follow the model proposed by K. Hyland in 2005. To analyze the distribution of metadiscourse markers, four corpora were created: two corpora representing medical cardiology texts written in English by L2 Russian researchers (abstract and discussion section corpora) and two corpora representing English medical texts written by L1 English researchers. The results suggest that interactive metadiscourse markers for sequencing, announcing goals and indicating the nature of a given statement (evidentials) are more frequent in both L1 English abstracts and discussion sections than in their L2 English counterparts. The findings of this study have important pedagogical implications, especially for classes in English for Specific Purposes, English for Academic Purposes, and English for Research Publication Purposes.