An Investigation of Interactional Metadiscourse in Discussion and Conclusion Sections of Social and Natural Science Master Theses

Abstract

This study is a corpus-based study of interactional metadiscourse in natural and social science master theses. For this purpose, 30 natural and social science master theses in six disciplines were randomly selected out of the library of five universities. Five master theses were selected in each discipline, in a period of six years (2010-2016).This study analyzed only the discussion and conclusion sections of master theses. To investigate interactional metadiscourse, Hyland's (2005) classification was used. The results of this study demonstrated that the percentile proportion of total interactional metadiscourse markers in social science master theses was more than natural science master theses. Among the analyzed resources, hedges was the most frequent role in both corpora while attitude markers in social science and self-mention in natural science was the least favored role. The results of the present study suggested that being aware of interactional metadiscourse markers can shed light on the way of writing of academic texts because these markers help writers to negotiate with their readers and make the text more comprehensible and coherent. The results of the present study might offer pedagogical implication of this aspect of metadiscourse for postgraduate students.