Cognitionand Construction Of Metadiscourse

Metadiscourse refers to language resources used to mark the structure of adiscourse, engage the reader or signal the writer’s attitude. Metadiscoursecomprises interactive metadiscourse and interactional metadiscourse, with theformer employed to organize and adjust the discourse, and the latter to guidereaders to better understand the discourse, engage the readers or evaluate thecontent of discourse in order to promote the interaction between the writer and thereader.To deepen our understanding of the complexity of cognition and constructionof metadiscourse in an EFL context, a dual case study was implemented. Throughquestionnaire, face to face interview and discourse analysis of term papers, thecognition and construction of metadiscourse of English major postgraduates wereinvestigated.The results showed that1. The postgraduates majored in English havedeveloped some awareness of metadiscourse, and their cognition and constructionof metadiscourse appeared to be gradual and developmental.2. Due to individual,interdisciplinary and educational differences, overuse, misuse and underuse ofmetadiscourse were spotted in their English academic discourse.3. During theprocess of their English academic writing, English major postgraduates adopted arange of strategies such as:1）writing with a framework of reference;2）seekingfeedback from their teachers or supervisors;3) enhancing the quality of theiracademic discourse by means of peer review;4) imitating the macro and microstructure of English journal papers published at home and abroad.The present study has some pedagogical implications for English teaching inChina:1) Teachers should pay much more attention to metadiscourse while teaching postgraduates English academic writing, including the definition,classification, and functions of metadiscourse. Postgraduates are expected to useappropriate metadiscourse resources to construct their academic discourse, andoptimize the interaction between the reader and the writer.2) Postgraduates’awareness of metadiscourse ought to be cultivated. As the cognition ofmetadiscourse is vital to the coherence and cohesion at sentence level anddiscourse level, English postgraduates should be guided to capitalize onmetadiscourse resources so as to articulate their ideas clearly, position their stanceproperly, and construct their academic discourse effectively.