Metadiscourse Markers in Discussions Section of Humanities Research Articles Written in English and Persian

Metadiscourse, as an important rhetorical tool in any piece of discourse, has been studied from different perspectives like appraisal, attitude, evaluation, stance, interpersonality , etc. A large number of studies have also investigated cross-cultural, cross-linguistic, and cross-disciplinary differences in the application of metadiscourse markers in academic discourse. Bearing this in mind, the present study attempted to compare and contrast the frequency and distribution of interactional metadiscourse markers used in the discussion section of English research articles written by English and Persian authors based on the Hyland’s model of metadiscourse markers to verify the claim that cross-cultural and cross-linguistic differences can result ian different applications of interactional metadiscourse markers. In so doing, a corpus of 40 Humanities research article discussions totaling 35,064 words, selected from some relevant journals were scrutinized. The results indicate that English native speakers used interactional metadiscourse markers more frequently than Persian ones and the authors in both groups employed all sub-types of interactional metadiscourse markers. Implications of present findings and suggestions for further research are discussed as well.

Keywords:

Frequency , distribution , interactional metadiscourse markers , discussion section , English and Persian authors