Interactional Metadiscourse As A Realization Of Consensus-building In Academic Research Articles

In recent decades, academic research articles have come to be regarded as a persuasive endeavor involving interaction between writers and readers(Hyland, 2005b). Instead of merely producing texts that represent external reality, academic writing is also related to acquiring recognition and seeking acceptance through communication with readers. Hence, the ultimate goal of academic writing is to search for consensus for its claims. Metadiscourse is a major feature of the way we communicate in a range of genres and settings(Hyland, 2005a:5). As an essential way to promote communication, strengthen statements and engage readers, interactional metadiscourse helps reflect interaction between writers and readers. Thus, interactional metadiscourse plays an important role in building up consensus.The present study makes a tentative attempt to explore how interactional metadiscourse operates as a consensus-building mechanism in academic writing through analyzing 51 research articles from world-wide electrical and electronic engineering journals.The results of the study reveal that consensus-building involves most of interactional metadiscourse, including hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self-mention and engagement markers. These devices help promote the writer’s academic research through building writer-reader solidarity and negotiating the acceptance of the proposed claims with readers. At the same time, they give impetus to involve readers into the collaborative work of the research in pursuit of shared understanding and consensus in joint efforts.The present study highlights the role of interactional metadiscourse in building up consensus in academic writing. We hope this research will be helpful in improving the awareness of making use of metadiscourse to build consensus in teaching and/or writing academic research articles.