An Investigation into Metadiscourse Elements Use In Research Articles Written by Nursing and Midwifery Students: A Corpus- based Study

The aim of this study is the investigation of metadiscourse elements in research paper written by Iranian nursing and midwifery students based on Hyland’s model. This research is a systematic review and meta-analysis of the English articles written by Iranian nursing and midwifery students published in Applied Nursing Research Journal (2016-2017) and Midwifery. The results revealed that there was statistically significant difference in the total interactional discourse markers used in nursing and midwifery research articles , the rate of the occurrences of hedges for the nursing corpus (N = 8) was lower than that of the midwifery corpus (N = 11). In contrast, the frequency of boosters for the nursing corpus (N = 10) was higher than that of the midwifery corpus (N = 4). In addition, the rate of occurrences of attitude markers for the nursing corpus (N = 9) was lower than that compared to the midwifery corpus (N= 15). Meanwhile, the proportion of instances of self - mention for the nursing corpus (N = 149) was lower than that compared to the midwifery corpus (N=413). Finally, the rate of occurrences of engagement markers for the nursing corpus (N = 11) was lower than that compared to the midwifery corpus (N = 29). Therefore, the metadiscourse features were employed differently in the two disciplines. The findings disclosed that the research articles in both disciplines relied heavily on interactive markers rather than interactional features.

Keywords:

Corpus , Interactional metadiscourse feature , Interactive metadiscourse feature , Midwifery corpora , Nursing corpora