| Metadiscourse refers to the linguistic devices writers employ to assist readers to connect with the audience and organize a discourse.As an essential subcategory of metadiscourse,interactional metadiscourse engages readers in the argument by explicitly constructing textual interaction and expresses the writers' stance regarding the proposition.Recently,studies of metadiscourse have mainly focused on academic texts,language teaching and speeches.Few have been conducted on regular press conferences.On the basis of Hyland's(2005a)classification of interactional metadiscourse,this study investigated the usage of interactional metadiscourse utilized by spokespeople of the Department Press Briefing of the U.S.and Regular Press Conference of China.Applying Antconc and SPSS,the author also aimed to explore similarities or differences of interactional metadiscourse and analyze the reasons why they have occurred.Findings show that the American corpus employed more interactional metadiscourse markers than the Chinese counterparts.The engagement markers were shown to be employed the most,followed by self-mentions in both corpora,while attitude markers were utilized the least.In contrast,there existed some differences as well.Contrary to other subcategories of interactional metadiscourse,the attitude markers were used more frequently by Chinese spokespeople than those of the United States.The analyses revealed that same genre conventions and similar relationships between spokespeople and journalists lead to the similarities between the two corpora,while differences were likely to be affected by different cultural backgrounds and speaking styles of various spokespeople.Overall,the findings suggest that interactional metadiscourse has a decisive role in construction of the interactions between spokespeople and journalists and enhances the influence of regular press conferences.Also,the present study has shed light on the research of metadiscourse,providing reference for future research. |
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