Interactive metadiscourse in research articles: A comparative study of paradigmatic and disciplinary influences

• Published in: Journal of pragmatics 2014-05, Vol.66 (May), p.15-31
• Main Authors: Cao, Feng, Hu, Guangwei
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Disciplinary discourse; Epistemology; Epistemology and methodology; Interactive metadiscourse; Knowledge-knower structure; Linguistics; Qualitative research; Quantitative research
• ISSN: 0378-2166; 1879-1387
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2014.02.007

•120 research articles are sampled from applied linguistics, education, and psychology.•The RAs are equally split between the quantitative and qualitative research paradigms.•The RAs are analyzed for 13 subtypes of interactive metadiscourse.•The 3 disciplines differ in the frequency of 4 subtypes of interactive metadiscourse.•The 2 paradigms differ in the incidence of 5 subtypes of interactive metadiscourse. This article reports a comparative study of interactive metadiscourse in quantitative and qualitative research articles across the disciplines of applied linguistics, education, and psychology. Drawing on Hyland's metadiscourse framework, the study examined the use of five types of interactive metadiscourse, together with their subtypes, in a corpus of 120 research articles. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed clear cross-paradigmatic differences in the incidence of reformulators, comparative and inferential transitions, sequencers, and non-linear references. The analyses also identified marked cross-disciplinary differences in the use of exemplifiers, comparative transitions, linear references, and integral citations. These observed differences are interpretable in terms of the contrasting epistemologies underlying the qualitative and quantitative research paradigms and the different knowledge-knower structures prevailing in the disciplines under investigation.