In this paper we provide an overview of past and current research on metadiscourse and highlight new research discourses emerging from the field. We trace the category back to its critical and theoretical origins, examining the three ‘waves’ that have configured it over the last four decades. We investigate how metadiscourse has evolved and the reasons why it continues fascinating researchers in professional and academic fields in a variety of disciplines and domains. We then focus on the fact that, as communication moves online and a variety of genres become digitalised, researchers active in metadiscourse are increasingly concerned with digital communication and are accordingly questioning (or adapting) well-established methodologies, but also proposing new and much-needed perspectives on reflexivity. The field is undoubtedly in a flux and new and interesting approaches and eclectic frameworks are emerging, which merit consideration
This paper explores PowerPoint (PPT) as a leading genre in academic discourse, focussing on the implementation of student motivation boosting strategies. ICT nowadays plays an increasingly important role in pedagogy, by reinforcing the informative and persuasive impact of instructional materials through multimodal strategies including verbal and visual codes, as well as performative elements. A hybrid genre in academic oratory, PPT offers corporeality of knowledge, modularity and easily transmittable format, providing presentations with structure and facilitating ordering and summarizing operations. PPT can therefore be ranked among today's epistemic machineries, whereby knowledge is construed by discourse. The paper analyses the semiotic and metadiscursive features of a corpus of presentations produced in various universities for both academic staff and students. Research questions explore how PPT can be used to motivate teachers and students, from both an ideational and interactional standpoint. An integrated analytical approach is employed, bridging multimodal and critical discourse analysis.
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