Variations in Metadiscourse Use in English Language Introduction and Literature Review Thesis Chapters

Akoto, Osei Yaw; Afful, Joseph Benjamin Archibald

doi:10.30743/ll.v4i2.2601

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Extending the trend of investigating metadiscourse in academic texts using Hyland's model, Bal-Gezegin and Baş (2020) investigated book reviews and compared the use of metadiscourse markers with those found in research articles. Their findings corroborate conclusions drawn by other studies (Akoto & Afful, 2020;Deng et al, 2021;García-Izquierdo, 2022;Herriman, 2022;Zahro & Degaf, 2021) in that the use of metadiscourse is influenced by several factors, including the genre, and the aims of the various sections of a text.…”

Section: Metadiscourse Studiessupporting

confidence: 89%

“…While discussion forums are considered academic discourse (Biber, 2006), the Main Response and Comment corpus that is contained in these forums have different goals. The goal of a particular discourse type has been identified as influencing metadiscourse patterns (Bal-Gezegin and Baş, 2020;Akoto & Afful, 2020;Deng et al, 2021;García-Izquierdo, 2022;Herriman, 2022;Zahro & Degaf, 2021). The goal of the Main Response corpus is to respond to a prompt provided by the course instructor at the beginning of every week.…”

Section: Reflexivity In Online Academic Discussion Forumsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reflexive Metadiscourse in Online Academic Discussion Forums

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This study investigates metadiscourse use in online academic discussion forums with the use of Ӓdel’s reflexive model. Metadiscourse markers are linguistic features in spoken and written texts that refer to the author/speaker, the reader/listener, and the evolving text. Reflexive metadiscourse, the focus of the current thesis, is a specific type of metadiscourse where the linguistic features are all discourse internal. This means that the author/speaker, the reader/listener, and the reference text must all be part of the evolving text. The reflexive model offers a set of criteria for the selection of metadiscursive markers that prove to be useful in a study such as this.In the reflexive metadiscourse model, metadiscourse instances satisfy the delimiting strategies set in Ӓdel (2006). In the current study, reference to these reflexive metadiscourse instances are termed simply as “metadiscourse”. If the process of identifying potential metadiscourse is still ongoing, then the instances are termed “potential metadiscourse”. Finally, the term reflexive will be used when an instance is found to be non-metadiscursive, according to the framework of this thesis, subsequently labelled as “non-reflexive metadiscourse”. This is to account for the fact that in other models, such as Hyland’s interpersonal metadiscourse model, some non-reflexive metadiscourse instances are still metadiscursive. For example, evidentials include instances when a speaker is sharing his/her experience in an ongoing text. In the reflexive model, however, such evidentials would not be metadiscursive as the experience occurs outside of the ongoing text and in the writer’s real world.The study involved collecting interactions in online discussion forums from four modules at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, and the resultant corpus has over 150,000 words. The reflexive model was adapted for use with this discourse based on a close reading of one module during the pilot study. To analyse the corpus, AntConc was used to electronically search for metadiscourse markers from the pilot study, and from Ӓdel (2006) and Molino (2018) to generate concordance lines. Then these lines were manually read to filter out non-metadiscursive instances. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 undergraduates and postgraduates on their use of online discussion forums for their learning to provide an insider’s perspective on the use of metadiscourse online and to check the categorisations that resulted from the analysis. Some of the categorisations were revised based on the information from the interviews. Finally, quantitative methods were employed for the identification of patterns in metadiscourse use in online discussion forums, specifically their role in constructing relationships among peers and in constructing the self-identity of writers.The results suggest that there were new metadiscourse forms found in this genre of online interactions and some revision to the key concepts in reflexive metadiscourse is perhaps timely and necessary. The results may be influenced by the affordances of online platforms such as change in the intended audience (Hafner, 2018) and the ability to reference other texts intertextually via the use of hyperlinks (Xia, 2020). These affordances have contributed to the changes in the way that writers construct their texts for their readers. In addition, in the current study, the interactions seem also to be influenced by the relationship writers have with their readers outside of the discussion forum (i.e., their relationships in their face-to-face classes and their social relationships outside of the academic settings).Overall, this thesis provides insight into the writing process in crafting main responses and comment posts in online discussion forums using data from both the Discussion corpus and information obtained from the semi-structured interviews. This thesis thus provides valuable methodological, theoretical, and conceptual implications, laying out a foundation for future studies on reflexive metadiscourse in online academic discussion forums, and potentially other discourses in various under-explored settings.

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Section: Metadiscourse Studiessupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Reflexivity In Online Academic Discussion Forumsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflexive Metadiscourse in Online Academic Discussion Forums

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“…Finally, engagement markers did not appear in the corpus. Akoto and Afful (2020) scrutinized metadiscourse in the introduction and literature review chapters of 10 English language theses written by non-native researchers. A total of 150.500 words were collected.…”

Section: Previous Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A corpus-based analysis of Arab scholars’ use of interactional metadiscourse markers

Sanosi,

Mohammed

2024

5019

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Authors frequently employ metadiscourse markers (MDMs) in academic literature to encode their perspectives, support their claims and captivate readers. The usage of MDMs based on a variety of taxonomies and models has long been studied by researchers with the interpersonal model being one of the most widely applied. Results have shown a significant relationship between the use of MDMs and the comprehensibility of the texts. Though these findings seem insightful and valuable for fostering academic writing, Arab scholars’ use of MDMs especially the interactional type seems to be neglected. Accordingly, the purpose of the present study is to bridge this gap and reveal the use of interactional MDMS by Arab scholars in the fields of applied linguistics, translation and literature. The study adopted the corpus linguistic method and used a one-million-token specialized corpus that had been compiled for research purposes. The results have shown an imbalanced use of MDMs by Arab scholars using descriptive statistics and Key Word in Context (KWIC) qualitative analysis. The results have shown an imbalanced use of MDMs by Arab scholars. However, despite the limited and imbalanced use of MDMs, they are effectively utilized to serve various pragmatic functions. These findings can have implications for designing training courses that aim at fostering Arab scholars’ and students’ academic writing. Further research that investigates the writing production of Arab scholars in different disciplines is recommended to further support the current findings.

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Attitudinal Meaning in Letters of Recommendation Written by Some Lecturers of the University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana

Kyei¹,

Archibald

2021

Romanian Journal of English Studies

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The main communicative purpose of Letters of Recommendation (LORs) is to share the writer’s evaluation of the candidate. Every kind of evaluation draws distinctively on resources of grammar. To this end, Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal System was adopted to examine the mechanisms through which some lecturers of a Ghanaian university express their evaluation in 35 purposively sampled letters. The study concludes that evaluation plays a crucial role in the construal of ideology, voice and stance in the LORs genre, and that the dominance of judgement is a proof of the communicative purpose of the LOR genre.

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Variations in Metadiscourse Use in English Language Introduction and Literature Review Thesis Chapters

Cited by 4 publications

References 18 publications

Reflexive Metadiscourse in Online Academic Discussion Forums

Reflexive Metadiscourse in Online Academic Discussion Forums

A corpus-based analysis of Arab scholars’ use of interactional metadiscourse markers

Attitudinal Meaning in Letters of Recommendation Written by Some Lecturers of the University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana

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