A Contrastive Analysis Of Metadiscourse Resources Used In Research Article Introductions In Mechanical Engineering And Applied Linguistic Disciplines

Metadiscourse is a construct grounded in the fundamental understanding of discourse as a form of social engagement.It refers to rhetorical and pragmatic expressions whereby writers project themselves into discourses by signaling attitude towards both the content and the audience of the text.As the beginning section is often used to state purposes and significance of a study,the introduction part plays a crucial role in research articles(RAs)to draw readers’ attention toward a specific goal.Therefore,a comprehensive analysis of introduction from a metadiscoursal view would be meaningful.Based on the Interpersonal Model of Metadiscourse proposed by Hyland(2005),which helps better define the way text interacts with the reader,the corpus-based study investigated the distribution of metadiscourse elements in English RA introductions of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Linguistics disciplines,and highlighted the metadiscoursal features in the introduction parts of research articles.The corpus consists of a total of sixty English RA introductions: 30 Mechanical Engineering articles and 30 Applied Linguistics articles,collected from six international core journals in the two respective fields which were published over a five year span from 2012 to 2016.The comparative analysis reveals similarities and differences across the two disciplines.Similarities mainly exist in the following four areas:(1)All the ten types of metadiscourse resources have their presence in the two sets of data,indicating that metadiscourse is common in English RA introductions.(2)Both disciplines use significantly more interactive resources than the interactional ones in the introduction parts,showing a metadiscoursal preference to the interactive markers in English RA introductions.(3)Evidentials and transitions are the top two most used metadiscourse resources while engagement markers are the least used ones.(4)Among the interactional subcategory,hedges are the most frequently used devices.On the other hand,differences exist across the two disciplines as well:(1)Linguistic introductions use significantly more interactional resources overall than the mechanical group.In specific,hedges,attitude markers and self mentions are significantly more used in the linguistics data.(2)On the contrary,endophorics and engagement markers are significantly more used in the mechanical introductions.In addition,certain linguistic features have been discovered within each subcategory,for example,with regard to interactive metadiscourse,(1)linguistic writers mainly use “but” and “because” to express contrastive and consequential relations,while “however” and “therefore” are preferably used by mechanical writers.Besides,“and” is the most often used addictive transitions in the two disciplines;(2)linguistic writers use frame markers primarily to announce writer’s purposes and research goals,yet mechanical writers prefer use them to sequence parts of the text;(3)endophorics in linguistic introductions are usually realized by anaphora/cataphora expressions(i.e.follows/following/above),while in the mechanical corpus,they are exclusively formulated as “(inclusive we)+(imperatives,i.e.see)+(prep,i.e.in/from)+ Section/Fig” to show clearly figures or textual structure.(4)parentheses “()” and colons “:” are the most frequent realization of code glosses in both corpora.With regard to interactional resources,(1)mechanical writers mainly use positive adjectives(“important” and “necessary”)to show directly the importance of research,yet linguistic writers have a wider variety of means to choose,such as deploying negative adjectives,attitude nouns or attitude verbs to fulfill this role;(2)expressing possibility is of top priority when using hedges in the two disciplines,in specific,“general” and “could” are respectively the most favored hedges in the mechanical and linguistic introductions;(3)mechanical writers show preference to the verb “demonstrate” with inanimate subjects to persuade readers to further their reading of the associated articles,whereas “show” and “find” are favored by linguistic writers to perform the boosting function;(4)self mentions have relative low presence in the corpus,as writers prefer to use the impersonalized expressions such as “the analysis”,“the present study” instead of self mentions to present their purpose;(5)mechanical writers prefer to use imperatives(i.e.see,note)and the inclusive we to engage readers while linguistic writers raise research questions to strengthen readers’ engagement.Besides,the second-person pronouns you,your do not occur in the two sets of data.Certain linguistic preferences in each metadiscourse category can be ascribed to the following factors: the persuasive and summarizing function of RA introductions,the objective and impersonal nature of RA introductions,different research objects and research methods of the two disciplines.Understanding the similarities,differences and possible reasons behind them can help learners raise disciplinary awareness and equip them with necessary knowledge in discourse analysis,especially for those who major in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Linguistics,to improve their competence of reading academic papers and applying metadiscourse resources into writing proper RA introductions.