Ädel Annelie. Metadiscourse in L1 And L2 English

John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2006. — 256 p. — (Studies in Corpus Linguistics 24). — ISBN 9027222975, 9789027222978, 9789027293299.The pervasive phenomenon of metadiscourse – commentary on the ongoing discourse – is beginning to take its rightful place among the major topics of discourse studies. This book makes simultaneous contributions to the theory of metadiscourse, corpus-based methods of studying such phenomena, and our knowledge of metadiscourse use in written English. After comprehensively reviewing previous research, it introduces a more rigorous and empirical approach to metadiscourse studies. Ädel presents a new model of metadiscourse based on Jakobson’s functions of language, and other conceptual tools, including explicit features for defining metadiscourse, a taxonomy of the functions it serves, and maps of the boundaries between it and related phenomena. A large-scale study of writing by L1 and L2 university students is presented, in which the L2 speakers’ overuse of metadiscourse strongly marks them as lacking in communicative competence. This work is of interest both to linguists and to educators concerned with writing in English.Background
Aims
Material
Method
Outline of the study
A model of metadiscoursePersonal and impersonal types of metadiscourse
The present model
Definition of metadiscourse
Generalisations about metadiscourse
Features for identifying metadiscourse
Applying the features to personal metadiscourse
First person singular I
First person plural we
Second person you
Delimiting the categories
‘Metatext’ and ‘writer-reader interaction’
Stance markers
Participation
Connecting the categoriesPersonal metadiscourseQuantifying personal metadiscourse
Distribution of personal metadiscourse
The density of metadiscourse
The discourse functions of personal metadiscourse
Metatext
Writer-reader interaction
Distribution of discourse functions
Other references to the writer and reader
Oblique forms of I, we and you
Pronominal one
Nouns that refer to the writer and reader
The writer persona
Roles of the writer persona
The hermeneutics of the text made explicit
Tentativeness in the learner essaysImpersonal metadiscourseDistribution of impersonal metadiscourse
The discourse functions of impersonal metadiscourse
Phorics
References to the Text/Code
Code Glosses
Discourse LabelsThe textual distribution of metadiscourseTextual distribution of personal metadiscourse
Textual distribution of impersonal metadiscourse
Textual distribution of questions
Textual distribution of exclamationsPossible causes of variation in metadiscourse useGenre comparability
Register awareness
Cultural conventions
Learner strategiesTheories of metadiscourseMetalanguage
Metalanguage versus object language
Use versus mention
On the meanings of metalanguage
Metatextual versus intertextual
Functional perspectives on language
The metalinguistic function
Reflexivity
Two approaches to metadiscourse
The broad approach
Stance
The narrow approachConclusionsThe theory of metadiscourse
Metadiscourse in corpus studies
The use of metadiscourse
Future research
Final remarks
Appendix
Comparability of the corpora
appendix
The control corpus and the norm appendix
Metadiscourse as non-propositional material?
appendix
Meta-terminology
NotesAuthor index