across disciplinary study of metadiscourse markers in argumentative essays

Metadiscourse is “a central pragmatic construct which allows us to see how writers seek to influence readers’ understandings of both the text and their attitude toward its content and the audience” (hyland, 1998, p. 437). in academic disciplines, writers or speakers choose from the range of linguistic devices common in their disciplines and sociorhetorical backgrounds to organize and rationalize discourse and present ideas and claims to influence their audiences (hyland, 2005). one of the linguistic devices, that is central for such interpersonal and social interactions, is metadiscourse. it plays a crucial role in knowledge construction and help writers or speakers manage relationships with readers or listeners. due to these points, this study intends to explore how writers of essays in two disciplines of political science and psychology use metadiscourse markers. the corpus of this study includes 35 argumentative essays (19 from political science discipline and 16 from discipline of psychology) taken from the micusp corpus. to analyze the corpus, hyland’s (2005) classification of metadiscourse markers is used. results showed some disciplinary differences and similarities in the cases of types, frequencies and discourse functions of metadiscourse markers across the two disciplines of political science and psychology. findings of this study could be used in teaching writing academic essays in esl context.