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A Cross-disciplinary Study of English Metadiscourse Markers in the Abstract Sections of Conference Proceedings: A Case of Hard and Soft Sciences

كارشناسي ارشد

آموزش زبان انگليسي

دانشگاه پيام نور مركز نجف آباد

1398/04/11

1398

مريم فرنيا

راضيه رباني يكتا

abstract sections , interactive metadiscourse markers , interactional metadiscourse markers , hard and soft sciences , conference proceedings

ABSTRACT The abstract section is well-accepted as a very vital part of any academic writing which is read more frequently than any other parts of the paper. Moreover, the abstract has a determinative role for readers to see whether they want to read the rest of the paper or not. Meanwhile, metadiscourse markers are used as one of the tools which make the abstract section more effective and coherent. The current study aims to investigate the use of interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers in the abstract sections of conference proceedings of hard and soft science disciplines. To this end, the corpus was randomly selected from conference proceedings published in Procedia, Elsevierʹs online collection of high quality conference proceedings, from2012 to 2018. The corpus was around 45000 words. The selected corpus was analyzed based on Hylandʹs (2005) model to examine the use metadiscourse markers. The overall findings indicated that metadiscourse markers were present in the two corpora and there were no significant differences in the use of metadiscourse markers in the main categories in hard and soft disciplines. However, there were significant differences in the use of metadiscourse markers in the subcategories. The results showed that evidentials, frame markers and endophoric markers from the interactive category were used more frequently in the soft science corpus while the code glosses were used more frequently in the hard science corpus. It was also found that there was no significant difference in the use of hedges, boosters, self-mentions and engagement markers as interactional markers in the two corpora. Only the hard science authors preferred to employ attitude markers more than their counterpart. This study can help teachers to provide a useful guidance for learners and support them to write accurate and effective conference proceedings.

98/9/16

سميه طاهري

58417