| As previous studies have paid greater attention to the synchronic studies on metadiscourse,this study echoes the call by Hyland(2005a)to exploit possible variations of interactional metadiscourse over time to bridge the literature gap.The general research topic revolves around 3 research questions:(1)What is the distribution feature of interactional metadiscourse in the studied abstracts by Chinese scholars compared with those by English natives?(2)Are there any significant differences in the use of interactional metadiscourse devices during the past decade(2001-2013),and what are they?(3)What might contribute to the above(non-)differences?To address these research questions,both qualitative and quantitative approaches are deployed to analyze the corpus data consisting of 289 English abstracts from Economic Research Journal in China with a three year interval between each from 2001 to 2013.The present study adopts the taxonomy of interactional metadiscourse proposed by Hyland(2005b),which consists of two broad categories,i.e.stance features and engagement features.But minor modifications are made to satisfy our analysis need,such as the removal of directives and personal asides,and the addition of a new engagement feature,i.e.merit markers.The comparison study of interactional metadiscourse in English abstracts between Chinese and English authors suggests that they diverge in the use of hedges and boosters while converge on the deployment of attitude markers and self-mentions apart from engagement features due to different coding schemes employed.Then the descriptive statistics shows that the overall amount is on the wax over the analyzed period and authors in all the subcorpora put a substantially unequal emphasis on stance features and engagement features.The data analysis indicates that Chinese authors harmonize with English counterparts by capitalizing on more hedging devices,while the amount of boosters unexpectedly maintains at a high level over time,both of which can be attributed to the interaction of Chinese deep-seated cultural leanings and Anglo-American cultural preferences.Consistent with our prediction,attitude markers exhibit no significant difference along the years given the initial parallel with English counterparts.However,there are significant differences of self-mentions regardless of English rhetorical conventions,which may be accounted for by economical influences in China.With regards to engagement features,they remain relatively underused with no marked difference within the period resulting from the genre-specific factor which confines their use.On the whole,the variations and non-variations of interactional metadiscourse are subject to external and internal factors respectively,the eventual outcome of which is the negotiation of them despite their varying effects. |
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