Talking to students: Metadiscourse in Introductory Coursebooks

-Ken Hyland

• This paper explores the possible role of university textbooks in students’ acquisition of a specialized disciplinary literacy focusing on the use of metadiscourse as a manifestation of the writer’s linguistic and rhetorical presence in the text. To achieve this objective, Hyland has made a comparison between the features in extracts from 21 introductory textbooks in Microbiology, Marketing and Applied linguistics and a similar corpus of research articles and the findings suggest that the ways textbooks authors represent themselves, organize their arguments, and signal their attitudes to both their statements and their readers differ markedly in the two corpora. Thus, he concludes that these differences suggest that textbooks provide limited rhetorical guidance to students seeking information from research sources or learning appropriate forms of written argument.

What is Metadiscourse?

• Metadiscourse is an approach to conceptualizing interactions between text producers and their

roles and their texts and between text producers and users. -Ken Hyland

• ‘Metadiscourse is discourse about discourse.’ (Van de Kopple 1985)

• ‘Metadiscourse’ was coined by Zellig Harris in 1959 to offer understanding language in use,

representing a writer’s or speaker’s attempts to guide a receiver’s perception of a text.

• Essentially, Metadiscourse embodies the idea that communication is more than just the exchange

of information, goods or services, but also involves the personalities, attitudes and assumptions of

those who are communicating. Thus, metadiscourse offers a framework for understanding

communication as a social engagement.

Sections in the paper

• The paper consists of nine sections:

• 1. The genre of introductory textbooks

• 2. Audience, purpose, and metadiscourse

• 3. A metadiscourse schema

• 4. Corpus and procedure

• 5. Findings

• 6. Discussion

• 7. Textual features in textbooks

• 8. Interpersonal features in the textbooks

• 9. Conclusion and implications

The genre of introductory textbooks

• The genre of textbooks, the most commonly encountered and used by undergraduate students.

• It is one of the primary resources by which they acquire concepts and analytical methods of a

discipline.

• Hence, textbooks play a key role in learners’ experience and understanding of a subject by

providing a coherent epistemological map of disciplinary landscape and through their textual

practices, can help convey the norms, values, and ideological assumptions of a particular academic

culture. This is what makes the ESP writers draw heavily on coursebooks.

To be contd.….

• Therefore, particularly students in the sciences often see textbooks as concrete embodiments of

knowledge of their disciplines.

• However, apart from gaining an understanding of the subject knowledge, the students must

acquire a specialized literacy that consists of the discipline-specific rhetorical and linguistic

practices of a particular community.

• Understanding the written genres of in one’s field is essential for full acculturation and success

which the textbooks largely lack in.

• Similarly, Research articles are a highly valued genre central to the legitimacy of a discipline as

a result of its role in communicating new research.

To be contd.……• It is a problem for students to advance from participation in an Undergraduate culture of

‘knowledge-telling’ to a disciplinary one involving ‘knowledge-transforming’ through reading

research sources and writing in specialized genres (Bereiter & Scardamalia 1987).

• Hyland also argues that the textbooks help represent and construct a knowable, objective world.

Therefore, the roles textbooks play in a given academic environment may differ considerably.

• For example, science and economics texts help reinforce existing paradigms, whereas philosophy

and composition are meant for advancing scholarship and presenting original research.

•

To be contd.….• problems and reactions to the text.

• One of the important means that texts adopt to depict the characteristics of an underlying

community is through the writer’s use of metadiscourse. It is therefore a crucial rhetorical device

for writer’s (Crismore 1989; Crismore & Farnsworth 1990).

• Metadiscourse allows them to engage and influence readers in ways that conform to a discipline’s

norms, values and ideologies, expressing textual and interpersonal meanings that their audience is

likely to accept as credible and convincing.

• However, it is also considered as an important means to support a writer’s arguments and build a

relationship with readers.

2. Audience, purpose and metadiscourse

• This section deals with a deep insight into what ‘metadiscourse’ is, its possible audience, and its

purpose.

• The features of a discourse are always relative to a particular audience and social purpose. Thus, the

effectiveness of writer’s attempts to communicate largely depends on their success in analyzing and

accommodating the needs of the readers.

• In textbooks, as much as research papers, authors are not only concerned with simply presenting

propositional facts, but also must address to the expectations of readers and what they are likely to

find interesting, credible, and intelligible.

• In addition to, writers must anticipate the audience’s likely background knowledge, processing --

To be contd.…..

• However, essentially a text communicates effectively only when the writer has correctly assessesed

the reader’s resources for interpreting it.

• The writer of a research article can assume shared awareness of a codified texts, principles and

rules that represent the socially constructed ideology of their community (Hyland 1997a).

• On the contrary, textbooks authors are unable to invoke community knowledge as the novice lacks

experience, seeking to make propositional material explicit to novices while simultaneously

socializing them to the ways of speaking appropriate to the community.

A metadiscourse schema• This section presents the schema of metadiscourse and how the knowledge of it can be useful for

the writer and reader as well.

• Metadiscourse is a heterogeneous category that can be realized through a range of linguistic

devices from punctuation and typographic marks (parentheses to signal clarifications or

underlining to mark emphasis)

• Hyland has broadly categorized a metadiscourse schema into two types:

• Textual metadiscourse and Interpersonal metadiscourse

• Again, each of the broad categories has been divided into five sub-categories:

To be contd.…….• Textual metadiscourse Interpersonal metadiscourse

• Logical connectives Hedges

• Frame markers Emphatics

• Endophoric markers Attitude markers

• Evidentials Relational markers

• Code glosses Persoanl markers

•

• Textual metadiscourse is used to organize propositional information in ways that will be coherent for a

particular audience and appropriate for a given purpose.

To be contd.….• Interpersonal metadiscourse offers the writers to express a perspective towards their propositional

information and their readers. Essentially, it is an evaluative form of discourse and expresses the

writer’s individually defined, but disciplinary circumscribed, persona. Metadiscourse therefore is

concerned with the level of personality, or tenor, of the discourse and influences such matters as

the author’s intimacy and remoteness, expression of attitude, commitment to propositions and

degree of reader involvement.

4. Sample and analysis • The corpus containing extracts from 21 introductory course books in three academic disciplines:

Microbiology, Marketing and Applied Linguistics comprising almost 1,24,000 words has been

selected.

• The average length of the extracts was 5900 words (range 3305-10678) consisting of complete

chapters (16) or substantial sections of chapters beginning with introductory matter and comprising

entire contiguous subsections (5).

• However, a parallel corpus of 21 research articles (1,21,000 words/average length of 5771 words)

was compiled for comparison from the current issues of prestigious journals recommended by

expert informants in the same three disciplines.

To be continued……

• The corpora were analyzed by the author himself independently and two research assistants by

coding all items of metadiscourse according to the schema outlined.

• An interrater reliability of 0.83 (Kappa) was obtained, which indicated a high degree of agreement.

Findings• The quantitative analysis of the corpora shows the following results:

• Table 2 (analysis of textbooks) shows that writers used more textual than interpersonal

metadiscourse.

• Logical connectives and code glosses are the most prominent features that have been used, in each

discipline.

• The applied linguistics texts comprised considerably more evidentials and relational markers,

biology used more hedges, and marketing had fewer evidentials and endophorics.

• In particular, all disciplines exhibited a high use of logical connectives and code glosses which

together made about half of all cases.

To be contd….• From table 3 (a comparison of both textbooks and research articles)it can be noticed that…

• A strikingly similar total frequencies of metadiscourse in both the corpus, i.e., 68.5% in textbooks

and 66.2% in research articles.

• Devices used to assist comprehension of propositional information, such as connectives, code

glosses, and endophoric markers, were less frequent in the articles while those typically used to

assist persuasion, such as hedges, emphatics, evidentials, and person markers, were more frequent.

• Hedges were almost three times more common in the research articles and represented the most

frequent metadiscourse feature demonstrating the importance of distinguishing established from

new claims in research writing.

To be contd.……• Table 4 shows that….

• The overall density levels differed markedly in biology, with almost 25% more metadiscourse in

the textbooks than in the research articles.

• Biology was the only discipline where there was a little change between the two genres, whereas

the interpersonal frequencies increased dramatically in the applied linguistics and marketing

research articles.

• Table 5 exhibits that…….

• Use of logical connectives was highest in textbooks in all disciplines and that the research articles

contained a higher proportion of hedges, person and frame markers.

To be contd.…

• Biology showed the greatest variation, both across the genres and disciplines, with substantial

genre differences in most categories.

• Marketing and applied linguistics texts were more uniform between genres whereas, both

contained large differences in hedges, and connectives.

• Substantial genre variations were also visible in the use of evidentials and person markers in

marketing and endophoric and relation markers in applied linguistics.

• In general, metadiscourse variations were more apparent between genres than disciplines,

particularly for high frequency items, and the textbooks tended to exhibit greater disciplinary

diversity than the research articles.

Discussion

• It also supposes that the metadiscourse variations may reflect the different roles that textbooks and

research articles play in the social structures of disciplinary activity and anticipates that their use

will contain clues about how these texts were produced and the purposes they serve.

• Metadiscourse is grounded in the rhetorical purposes of writers and sensitive to their perceptions of

audience, both of which differ markedly between the two genres.

Textual features in textbooks• This section details how many textual features are used in the textbooks in comparison with the

research articles.

• Textual forms constituted nearly about 70% of all metadiscourse in the coursebooks.

• It not only serves to fill in the gaps and explicitly spell out connections to related ideas, but also

clarifies the schematic structure of the text.

Interpersonal features in textbooks

• The findings for interpersonal metadiscourse indicate something which is contrasting the use of

textual features.

• Crismore and Farnsworth (1990) and Hyland (1997b, in press) found a heavy use of interpersonal

forms in persuasive texts of different discourse types.

• Research articles contained 60% more interpersonal devices overall with hedges and person

markers particularly prominent.

•

Conclusions and implications• The analysis offers a few conclusions:

• The primary goal of textbooks authors is to make intellectual content accessible to undergraduate

students rather than to provide the means to interact effectively with other community members.

• Thus, while the metadiscourse practices employed to facilitate knowledge transfer can make textbooks

to read, the different strategies used in research articles may mean that students find it difficult to refer

to the research literature in their studies to appropriate rhetorical skills.

• Regarding pedagogical implications, students need to be steered away from using textbooks as models.

• Essentially, textbooks provide students with a little understanding of the meta-textual requirements of

an academic audience or show how arguments are constructed to anticipate the reactions of a relatively

egalitarian community peers.