List of Figures List of Tables Foreword Introduction Robin P. Fawcett, M.A.K. Halliday, Sydney M. Lamb and Adam Makkai 1 Language as Code and Language as Behaviour: A Systemic-Functional Interpretation of the Nature and Ontogenesis of Dialogue M.A.K. Halliday 2 Metaphors of Information John Regan 3 How Universal is a Localist Hypothesis? A Linguistic Contribution to the Study of 'Semantic Styles' of Language Yoshihiko Ikegami 4 Some Speculations on Language Contact in a Wider Setting Jeffrey Ellis 5 Ways of Saying: Ways of Meaning Ruqaiya Hasan Index

Language as social semiotic

Metadiscourse is self-reflective linguistic material referring to the evolving text and to the writer and imagined reader of that text. It is based on a view of writing as social engagement and in academic contexts reveals the ways that writers project themselves into their discourse to signal their attitude towards both the propositional content and the audience of the text. Despite considerable interest in metadiscourse by teachers and applied linguists, however, it has failed to achieve its explanatory potential due to a lack of theoretical rigour and empirical confusion. Based on an analysis of 240 L2 postgraduate dissertations totalling 4 million words, we offer a reassessment of metadiscourse, propose what we hope is a more robust model, and use this to explore how these students used metadiscourse. Essentially our argument is that metadiscourse offers a way of understanding the interpersonal resources writers use to present propositional material and therefore a means of uncovering something of the rhetorical and social distinctiveness of disciplinary communities.

Metadiscourse in academic writing: A reappraisal

A fully updated and expanded second edition of this flagship work, which introduces methodological techniques to carry out analyses of text varieties, and provides descriptions of the most important text varieties in English. Part I introduces an analytical framework for studying registers, genre conventions, and styles, while Part II provides more detailed corpus-based descriptions of text varieties in English, including spoken interpersonal varieties, general and professional written varieties and emerging electronic varieties. Part III introduces more advanced analytical approaches and deals with larger theoretical concerns, such as the relationship between register studies and other sub-disciplines of linguistics, and practical applications of register analysis. A new chapter on EAP and ESP has been added, with new sections on the important differences between academic writing in the humanities and sciences, and a case study on engineering reports as an ESP register and genre. Coverage of new electronic registers has been updated, and a new analysis of hybrid registers has been added.

/pdf/register-genre-and-style-5dgexc09y1.pdf

Register, Genre, and Style

Persuasion and context: the pragmatics of academic metadiscourse

Metadiscourse refers to writers' discourse about their discourse—their directions for how readers should read, react to, and evaluate what they have written about the subject matter. In this study the authors divided metadiscourse into textual metadiscourse (text markers and interpretive markers) and interpersonal metadiscourse (hedges, certainty markers, attributors, attitude markers, and commentary). The purpose was to investigate cultural and gender variations in the use of metadiscourse in the United States and Finland by asking whether U.S. and Finnish writers use the same amounts and types and whether gender makes any difference. The analyses revealed that students in both countries used all categories and subcategories, but that there were some cultural and gender differences in the amounts and types used. Finnish students and male students used more metadiscourse than U.S. students and female students. Students in both countries used much more interpersonal than textual metadiscourse with Finnish ...

Metadiscourse in Persuasive Writing A Study of Texts Written by American and Finnish University Students

Metadiscourse in Popular and Professional Science Discourse

Hedges, which signal writers' tentative assessments of referential information, were added to a passage from both a science and a social studies textbook The hedges appeared in either personal or impersonal voice; in the first half, second half, or both halves of the passages; and in either a low-intensity condition or a high-intensity condition A measure of what subjects learned from reading the passages showed that they learned most when the hedges appeared in personal voice, the second half of a passage, and low intensity Some extensions of the implications of this work to practices in composition classes—particularly practices of evaluating whether or not material should be hedged—are recommended in order to broaden students' critical-thinking abilities and their views of language

Readers' Learning from Prose The Effects of Hedges

Hedges and Readers: Effects on Attitudes and Learning

This paper reports the impact of metadiscourse, a rhetorical domain that regulates the communicative function of language, on sixth‐grade students’ learning and attitudes. Metadiscourse directing the reader how to regard the author and the text was divided into two types, informational and attitudinal, and inserted in a social studies textbook chapter in either interpersonal or impersonal voice. Students were placed in high‐vocabulary or low‐vocabulary groups on the basis of test scores; in low‐comfort or high‐comfort groups on the basis of comfort index scores. The significant interaction results showed differential effects of metadiscourse on students’ learning. Low‐comfort students learned more when informational metadiscourse was presented in interpersonal voice, but high‐comfort ones learned less. The results for attitudinal metadiscourse were the opposite. The effect on attitudes was that students who read just one type of metadiscourse were more tolerant of opinions than those who read both types o...

Avon Crismore

Papers

Metadiscourse in Persuasive Writing A Study of Texts Written by American and Finnish University Students

Metadiscourse in Popular and Professional Science Discourse

Readers' Learning from Prose The Effects of Hedges

Hedges and Readers: Effects on Attitudes and Learning

Metadiscourse and discourse processes: Interactions and issues