The Use Of Metadiscourse For Persuasion In Belf Meetings

Business English as a Lingua Franca(hereafter BELF)meetings are “rolestructured”(Boden 1994:84)and goal-oriented interaction(Kankaanranta and Planken 2010:381).To reach the goal,different institutional roles have to settle disagreements and reach a consensus,which requires the realization of persuasion.Previous studies provide hard evidence for the persuasive function of metadiscourse in business genre(e.g.Bhatia 1993;Hyland 1998;Victor 2018).It's significant to explore how different institutional roles use metadiscourse to achieve persuasion in BELF meetings.In the framework of Aristotle's Rhetoric Model,the present study aims to explore the impact of different institutional roles on achieving persuasion with metadiscourse in BELF meetings,which can be further decomposed into three research questions:(1)What are the differences in metadiscourse patterns between the chair and participants in BELF meetings?(2)How do different institutional roles achieve persuasion with metadiscourse in BELF meetings in the framework of Aristotle's Rhetoric Model?(3)What are the persuasive goals achieved by metadiscourse?Major findings can be concluded as follows:(1)In BELF meetings,both the chair and participants use considerable metadiscourse to achieve persuasion,among which self-mentions are most frequently used,followed by transitions and engagement markers;while boosters,frame markers,hedges,code glosses and attitude markers are infrequently used.However,the chair and participants have different preference for persuasive means.The chair uses metadiscourse for rational appeals and affective appeals more often than participants;while the chair uses metadiscourse for credible appeals less frequently than participants.(2)Businessmen apply metadiscourse for rational appeals to enhance logicality;they employ metadiscourse for credible appeals to build a positive image;they use metadiscouse for affective appeals to resonate with others.The use of metadiscourse enables businessmen to achieve persuasive goals in BELF meetings.(3)Different institutional roles have different preference for persuasive means to achieve different persuasive goals.The chair aims to push forward discussion with logical and organized propositional content;participants aim to gain peer recognition with credible,competent and confident image;and both the chair and participants aim to establish rapport by arousing resonance.Theoretically speaking,the present study complements the study of metadiscourse in business meetings.Practically speaking,the present study has significant reference value for businessmen to achieve persuasive goals by means of metadiscourse.