A cross-cultural, cross-contextual study of interactional metadiscourse in academic research articles: An interpersonal approach

In this empirical study, we have focused on the cross-cultural and cross-contextual analysis of interactional metadiscourse in a corpus of 240 English academic research articles published by American and Persian scholars in national and international journals. Drawing on Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse, we discuss the most frequent interactional features and different rhetorical purposes across abstracts, introductions and conclusions in three corpora: an American international corpus, a Persian international corpus and a Persian national corpus. We report on the significant differences in the frequency of interactional metadiscourse (sub)categories in the three corpora. In the international context, we find close similarities between American English academics and their Persian peers in metadiscoursal preferences. We discuss differences in the use of metadiscourse markers among writers in light of the communicative purposes that metadiscourse features may serve across sub-genres. The results of the study suggest that although rhetorical purposes contribute to the frequency and use of interactional resources, cross-cultural factors seem to exercise a more powerful influence on regulating the frequency and use of these discursive features. The findings carry implications for English for academic purposes (EAP), discipline-specific genre writing for novice non-native English writers.