Metadiscourse Markers in the Introduction of Master Theses Written by Iranian TEFL Students

This study set out to investigate the pragmatics of academic metadiscourse in masterʼs theses written by Iranian graduates in TEFL, English-Persian Translation Studies, and English Literature. The major aim was to explore the type, frequency, and function of two broad metadiscourse categories, i.e., textual and interpersonal in the introduction sections. To this end, a corpus of ۳۰۰ introductions (i.e., ۱۰۰ from each discipline) was randomly collected from several state and Azad universities. Using the taxonomy proposed by Hyland (۱۹۹۸) and taking a broad approach to metadiscourse, a human coder analyzed the introductions manually. Interestingly, the results of the data analysis revealed the same descending order for the mean percentages of the textual metadiscourse in all majors (i.e., in all majors, the highest to lowest mean percentages belong to logical connectives, followed by evidential, code glosses, frame markers, and finally endophoric marker types with the lowest percentage). There was also a statistically significant difference among the three majors in terms of total, logical connectives, and evidential textual metadiscourse types. Additionally, the data for interpersonal metadiscourse showed considerable variations among the three disciplines. The findings of this study may have pedagogical implications for teaching academic writing to non-native speakers of English.

کلیدواژه ها:

Academic Discourse ، Master's Theses ، Metadiscourse Markers ، Pragmatics ، TEFL