The Role of Metadiscourse in Expressing Author Stance and Engagement in MS Linguistics Theses Abstracts

Abstract

This study investigates the role of metadiscourse in expressing authorial stance and engagement in abstracts of MS Linguistics theses. Drawing on Ken Hyland’s (2005) interpersonal model of metadiscourse, the research examines how writers employ interactional metadiscourse resources—such as hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and engagement markers—to position themselves and involve readers within a highly condensed academic genre. A corpus of 60 MS Linguistics thesis abstracts was compiled from public sector universities. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study combined quantitative frequency analysis with qualitative functional interpretation to identify patterns of metadiscourse use. The findings reveal that hedges and boosters are the most frequently used devices, indicating writers’ need to balance caution with certainty when presenting research claims. Engagement markers, although less frequent, play a significant role in addressing the reader and guiding interpretation, while attitude markers are used selectively to express evaluation. The results suggest that while students demonstrate an emerging awareness of metadiscourse, their use of these resources is often limited and uneven, particularly in terms of reader engagement. This may reflect insufficient explicit instruction in rhetorical and interpersonal aspects of academic writing. The study concludes that effective use of metadiscourse enhances clarity, persuasiveness, and coherence in thesis abstracts, and recommends incorporating metadiscourse-focused pedagogy in English for Academic Purposes courses.

Keywords: metadiscourse, authorial stance, reader engagement, academic writing, thesis abstracts, English for Academic Purposes, hedges, boosters, MS Linguistics.