Seyed Foad Ebrahimi

An exploration of interactive metadiscourse markers in academic research article abstracts in two disciplines

A generic analysis of research article abstracts can cover issues of different types; among them are linguistic features. An integral part of linguistic features of research article abstracts is interactive metadiscourse usage that can assist to make the text persuasive and unfolding to a discourse community. The main principle behind applying interactive metadiscourse is the view of writing as socially engaging; specifically, it indicates the ways writers project themselves into their arguments to declare their attitudes and commitments to the readers. This study aimed to explore how interactive metadiscourse markers are deployed by research article abstract writers belonging to different disciplinary communities within the soft sciences, while trying to reach the audience by creating a well-organized discourse. Hyland’s (2005) interpersonal model of metadiscourse was adopted to analyze 60 research article abstracts written in Applied Linguistics and Economics. Based on the results, there were marked variations found across the two disciplines in terms of interactive metadiscourse markers.

Research Article Abstracts in Applied Linguistics and Economics: Functional Analysis of the Grammatical Subject

The aims of this paper are to analyse and compare the discourse functions of grammatical subjects used in research article abstracts in the disciplines of Applied Linguistics and Economics. The data for this study consisted of 60 research article abstracts published in 2010 and 2011 in the journals of Applied Linguistics and Oxford Economic Papers. The corpus was analysed using the classification of discourse functions of grammatical subjects established by Gosden. The analysis revealed disciplinary differences concerning the discourse functions enacted by the application of the grammatical subject. These findings add to the claim that academic writing (research article abstract writing in this study) is shaped by the writers disciplinary background with particular reference to the use of the grammatical subject as a theme in text development.