| Metadiscourse, as a language to denote or describe languages, is a commonphenomenon of discourse in communication. It can help us to comprehend the attitude ofwriters and readers towards the content of a text or discourse. Since writing and speakingare activities to express meanings, speakers and writers not only convey information, butalso express their own interest, viewpoints, and values and so on. Meanwhile, they willtake social influence and participants’ ability of comprehension into account. Mostscholars have analyzed metadiscourse in various genres, but these researches mainly focuson the relation between metadiscourse and writing, the rhetorical strategies ofmetadiscourse are rarely touched upon.Internet Academic Forum (IAF) is a platform for the members to communicate andinteract with each other. Usually the members are supposed to discuss some academictopics and convince others to accept their own points. Therefore, IAF is a persuasiveacademic discussion. This thesis selects300emails written by the members of IAF as thedata, and makes a study on the realization of persuasion through metadiscourse indiscourse of IAF. The study adopts Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse toidentify the subcategories of metadiscourse, and takes the three modes of persuasion as itsframe for analysis. The three modes of persuasion are logos (rational appeals), pathos(affective appeals) and ethos (credible appeals), which are respectively related to the logicof the text, readers’ engagement and comments, and writers’ credibility and authority. Thisthesis is mainly developed from the following three aspects:(1) find out the wholedistribution of metadiscourse in discourse of IAF;(2) find out how the interaction betweenthe participants is realized by metadiscourse in discourse of IAF (3) find out howrhetorical strategies are achieved by metadiscourse in discourse of IAF.After the detailed analysis, the author finds that metadiscourse is used widely indiscourse of IAF. According to the study, the markers of interactional metadiscoursegenerally appear more frequently than the markers of interactive metadiscourse. Thereason lies in that the members of the forum need to communicate and interact with eachother in order to be accepted in an appropriate way. Interactive resources such as transitions, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidentials and code glosses are utilizedto help readers comprehend the text, thus the rational appeals of persuasion are realized.Especially, the combination of code glosses and frame markers can effectively explain theinformation to the reader. Interactional resources such as hedges, attitude markers,engagement markers and self-mentions help motivate readers’ affection, thus the affectiveappeals of persuasion are realized. In particular, the combination of self-mentions andattitude markers can help trigger readers’ emotions. Hedges, boosters, attitude markers,engagement markers and evidentials are employed to help writers show their ownpersonalities, thus the credible appeals of persuasion are realized. Especially, thecombination of hedges and boosters can help writers create a credible image of authority.Through analyzing the rhetorical strategies realized by metadiscourse in discourse of IAF,this thesis tries to unfold the persuasive power of metadiscourse, reveal the characteristicsof metadiscourse in discourse of IAF and expand the research scope of metadiscourse.The results of the study show that metadiscourse helps members of IAF to realizepersuasion. For the readers, metadiscourse can help them to comprehend academicdiscourse and find the characteristics of language in discourse of IAF. While for thewriters, metadiscourse can help them take full advantage of skills of persuasion so as toimprove the competence of communication. |
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