Metadiscourse Variations across Academic Genres: Rhetorical Preferences in Textual and Interpersonal Markers

It is now commonly accepted that academic discourses tend to provide venues for participants to interact where the producer needs to display an awareness of the audience, and metadiscourse (MD) is the set of tools enabling the involved parties to establish relationships. MD strategies allow writers to project themselves into their work, signal their communicative intention, influence their readers and align, and distance themselves from cited materials (Hyland,1998, 2005a, 2005b). The problem is, however, that the rules of engagement differ from one culture to another, and from one specific genre to another (e.g., educational vs. professional), and according to Bizzell (1992), academic writers or speakers would not be able to produce texts fulfilling their aims unless they are closely acquainted with the intricate conventions followed in the particular genre by the particular discourse community. The overall aim of researchers exploring academic discourses, therefore, revolves around how such an interaction is built and sustained.