| Metadiscourse,especially interactional metadiscourse,is one of the rhetorical tools employed by language users to modify the propositional information in communication.It is often used by speakers to construct a good interpersonal relationship or maintain positive institutional identity.The present study focuses on three closely related research questions:(1)what are the similarities and differences in the frequency and distribution of interactional metadiscoursal devices in male and female news presenters' discourse in the international business news programs?(2)how is persuasion achieved through the use of interactional metadiscoursal devices in male and female news presenters' discourse in the program?(3)what factors may cause the possible observed differences,if any? In order to address the above research questions,230 episodes of BBC Business Live in the year of 2016 were collected and transcribed,and were analyzed with the aid of the corpus tool WordSmith 5.0.Based on the interpersonal model of metadiscourse,the quantitative results reveal that except attitude markers,male news presenters tend to employ far more interactional metadiscoursal devices of the other four subcategories than female news presenters.Engagement markers and self-mentions are the two most frequently used interactional metadiscoursal devices in both male and female news presenters' discourse,and both male and female news presenters prefer to make frequent use of specific metadiscoursal devices under certain subcategories,such as ‘I' and ‘we' in self-mentions and the second-personal pronoun ‘you' in engagement markers.On the basis of Aristotle's rhetoric,the qualitative analysis indicates that the realization of the three means of persuasion – “credible appeal”,“affective appeal” and “rational appeal” can be achieved by using different types of interactional metadiscoursal devices.The use of self-mentions,hedges and boosters helps male and female news presenters to construct an appropriate personal and institutional image in a given context of communication.In addition,the combined use of hedges and boosters helps them to avoid being over-assertive while maintain authority and reliability,which is helpful for better realizing the credible appeal.The realization of affective appeal is mainly through engagement markers,attitude markers and boosters.The use of these subcategories strengthens the emotional connection between news presenters and listeners.Nevertheless,male and female news presenters prefer distinct rhetorical strategies to achieve this appeal.Males are relationship-oriented while females are emotion-oriented.The fulfillment of rational appeal is seldom found in this study,but several engagement markers and boosters are found advantageous for its realization.The quantitative and qualitative results reveal that both male and female news presenters show far more similarities than differences in the use of interactional metadiscoursal devices and the realization of rhetorical functions.Under the premise of similar institutional identity and discourse power,the observed differences between male and female news presenters mainly attribute to the unique gender characteristics and their different repertoire of linguistic resources.Overall,the present study enriches the study of interactional metadiscourse and the knowledge of the use and distribution of interactional metadiscourse in business media communication.It could be a reference for people working in this field. |
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