The Comparative Study of Interactional Metadiscourse Markersin English Scientific Articles of Hard and Soft Disciplines

This is a corpus-based investigation on interactional metadiscourse markers containing hedges, boosters, self-mentions, attitude markers and engagement markers in the discussion and the conclusion sections of 120 English research articles of hard and soft disciplines including chemistry, medicine, economic psychology and tourism management. The corpus was comprised of 160344 words. The selected corpus was analyzed using Hyland’s (2005) model of interactional markers. This study employed quantitative approach, including frequency counts and text analysis. Several chi-square tests were carried out to clarify the probable differences. The results indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between hard and soft sciences papers in the application of markers in the discussion and the conclusion sections. The findings indicated that the use of interactional elements differed in four majors. The most used markers were in the tourism management corpus and the least ones were in the chemistry corpus. Furthermore, the discussions and the conclusions sections in every majors differed in terms of metadiscourse markers. In the whole corpus, the frequency of markers in the conclusion sections were higher than the frequency of markers in the discussion sections. The study rendered some pedagogical implications.