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In recent decades, the traditional perception of academic writing as an objective and impersonal endeavour solely devoted to conveying factual information has given way to a view that sees it as an interactional enterprise laden with personal preferences and cultural influences. With this shift in the understanding of the nature of academic writing, authorial voice and stance have become a major focus for research in applied linguistics. This paper investigates the extent to which Turkish doctoral students of literary studies differ from their counterparts in British universities in terms of the use of the self-mention markers in their doctoral dissertations. To this end, having its spark in Hyland's idea of interactional metadiscourse, this study compares the self-mention markers and their collocates in the Turkish and UK corpora comprising 100 doctoral dissertations, using a corpus-assisted lexical analysis method. The results show that there is a statistically significant difference between the doctoral students at Turkish and British universities in the use of the self-mention markers. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the surrounding context of those markers (i.e. collocational patterns) seems to diverge to a great extent when the corpora output is compared. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the possible causes of this difference and suggestions for further studies.

Traditionally, academic writing has been considered impersonal and objective. However, the use of first-person pronouns can have value when used as a rhetorical strategy that promotes a researcher’...

This paper is to identify the use of interactional devices employed in English research article (RA) abstracts from a cross-cultural perspective. A total of 120 English RA abstracts written by Korea-based writers and US-based writers were randomly selected from leading academic journals (30 from English Teaching, 30 from Korean Journal of Applied Linguistics, 30 from TESOL Quarterly, and 30 from Applied Linguistics). A concordance program, AntConc 3.5.8, was used to identify the makers. The results showed that hedges are the most frequent marker in both groups. The most significant cross-cultural difference was found in the use of self-mentions in the academic texts. Korea-based writers tended to avoid of mentioning selves in their texts, whereas US-based writers used self-mention markers frequently to construct authorial identity and to emphasize their contribution to the field and their research claims. This study provides an intercultural understanding of academic texts from a cross-cultural perspective with implications for academic writing in the field of English for academic purposes.

Metadiscourse is an interesting field of inquiry that is believed to play a vital role in organizing and producing persuasive writing. It is a set of linguistic devices used to communicate attitudes and mark the structural properties of a text. The study aimed to investigate whether native and non-native varieties of English varieties are similar or different from each other from the perspective of interactional meta-discourse markers. The study as contrastive rhetoric research scrutinized a corpus of 900 newspaper editorials (450 written in native English newspapers and 450 written in non-native English newspapers). Editorials were culled from 15 native English newspapers belonging to three native English countries, England, America, and New Zealand, and 15 non-native English newspapers belonging to three non-native English countries, Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka. Based on the model of metadiscourse given by Hyland (2005), interactional metadiscourse resources were analyzed. The frequencies of interactional metadiscourse markers in both native and non-native varieties were counted and compared with each other. The results disclosed that there were worth-pointing differences between the native and non-native English editorialists in the use of interactional metadiscourse markers. Two different varieties of English editorials showed variations particularly in the use of hedging and self-mention markers. On the whole, findings suggested that the use of interactional metadiscourse markers in native English editorials were more frequent than those in non-native English editorials which made their writings more appealing and convincing context.Keywords: metadiscourse; native; non-native; newspaper; editorials

Metadiscourse refers to the linguistic element that is used to communicate meanings with imagined readers and to express a viewpoint as members of a particular academic community. Accordingly, this study reported the distributions of interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers in a corpus of 99 research articles representing the English language, Computer Sciences, and Education disciplines. To observe the writers’ metadiscourse devices usage in their discourse community, Hyland’s (Metadiscourse: exploring interaction in writing. Continuum, New York, 2005) metadiscourse taxonomy was employed. The data were computed through descriptive statistics, Chi square, Kruskal–Wallis test, and content analysis. Hence, the data revealed that though articles in all disciplines employed both interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers, English Language discipline articles contained highest metadiscourse devices compared with Education and Computer sciences discipline articles. It was also observed that the book review writers used much more interactive markers such as transition and evidential devices than interactional markers. However, among interactional markers, self-mention markers were extensively used. The data also indicated that there was statistically a significant difference across disciplines in using interactive and interactional metadiscourse devices. Hence, these findings implied that academic writing teachers should focus on discipline-oriented metadiscourse devices while teaching academic writing skills.

Self-mention is a powerful rhetorical strategy for constructing authorial identity in research articles. This study proposes that researchers’ authorial identity can be considered in three aspects according to the self-mention devices they employ: the detached self, the individual self and the collective self. Based on a corpus comprising 90 research articles (45 in English and 45 in Chinese), the research explores the construction of authorial identity in English and Chinese research articles by examining the frequency of and roles performed by self-mention markers. Results show that both English and Chinese writers try to display their detached self by distancing themselves from the text and reader. But English writers are more ready to present the individual self by taking on the role of discourse constructor, arguer and evaluator, whereas Chinese writers are inclined to show their collective self and take on the role of researcher. The research results have implications for research article writing and the teaching of research article writing.