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One Journal, Different Practices: A Corpus-Based Study of Interactive Metadiscourse in Applied Linguistics

  • Sitong Lu

    Sitong Lu is teaching English for academic purposes (EAP) in the School of International Education at Shenyang Medical College. She has been teaching and researching in academic discourse and EAP pedagogy.

    and Feng (Kevin) Jiang

    Feng (Kevin) Jiang is Kuang Yaming Distinguished Professor of applied linguistics in the School of Foreign Language Education at Jilin University and gained his PhD under the supervision of Professor Ken Hyland at the University of Hong Kong. He has been teaching and researching in academic writing, disciplinary discourse and corpus studies, and has published in most major applied linguistics journals.

Published/Copyright: July 3, 2024
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Abstract

Research articles are a primary medium for scholars to communicate with disciplinary community, but there is little evidence suggesting how much writing practices on different research subjects within a discipline diverge in a single journal. This study remedies the oversight by comparing the use of interactive metadiscourse in the papers of Applied Linguistics on language acquisition and discourse analysis. Based on a corpus of 30 research articles on each research subject, results show that writers in language acquisition make a significantly more frequent use of additive and consequential transitional markers, reformulators, and non-integral citations. However, discourse analysts prefer to invest in exemplifiers, linear and non-linear references and topic shifts. All the differences can be attributable to the characteristics of disciplinary research paradigms, which lead to different knowledge-making and interactive patterns in academic writing. The findings offer empirical evidence to the rhetorical function of metadiscourse in constructing disciplinary knowledge, and raise pedagogical implications for EAP instructors to help scholars in applied linguistics increase international publications.

About the authors

Sitong Lu

Sitong Lu is teaching English for academic purposes (EAP) in the School of International Education at Shenyang Medical College. She has been teaching and researching in academic discourse and EAP pedagogy.

Feng (Kevin) Jiang

Feng (Kevin) Jiang is Kuang Yaming Distinguished Professor of applied linguistics in the School of Foreign Language Education at Jilin University and gained his PhD under the supervision of Professor Ken Hyland at the University of Hong Kong. He has been teaching and researching in academic writing, disciplinary discourse and corpus studies, and has published in most major applied linguistics journals.

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Published Online: 2024-07-03
Published in Print: 2024-06-25

© 2024 BFSU, FLTRP, Walter de Gruyter, Cultural and Education Section British Embassy

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