Metadiscourse Markers in the Abstract Section of Applied Linguistics Research Articles: Celebrity vs. Non-celebrity Authors

Abstract

Metadiscourse involves the self-reflective linguistic expressions that refer to the evolving text, the writer, and the imagined readers of that text. This study utilized an interpersonal model of metadiscourse to examine the authors' use of metadiscourse in the Abstract sections of Applied Linguistics Research Articles (RAs). It investigated the distributions of interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers at a corpus of 110 RAs published by celebrity and noncelebrity authors to determine the ways academic writers deploy these resources at a hight-stake research genre to persuade readers in their discourse community. The findings revealed that frame markers with a relative frequency of 112 were the most frequent strategy category for the non-celebrity authors. Moreover, evidentials with a relative frequency of 3 were the least frequently used strategy for the celebrity authors. There were no significant differences in the use of interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers between celebrity and non-celebrity authors. These findings might have implications for the teaching of academic writing and scholarly publishing and for novice writers who aim to publish their studies in academic journals.