| Interactional metadiscourse is a common language resource,which mainly expresses the author’s perspective,attitude,and interaction between the author and the readers,and improves readers’ trust and participation.Therefore,it has attracted the attention of scholars at home and abroad.Previous research on interactional metadiscourse has focused on cognition,relevance theory,rhetorical perspectives,or comparative research on interactional metadiscourses in two corpora.To broaden its research perspective,this study will base on Habermas’ Communicative Action Theory and Hyland’s interpersonal classification model of metadiscourse.The present study will explore the nature of interactional metadiscourse.This study mainly answers the following research questions:(1)What are the overall and local distribution of interactional metadiscourse in the master’s thesis and the frequency of usage in different sections?(2)How can interactional metadiscourse satisfy the universal validity claims in master’s thesis?To explore the research questions,this research will select 40 master’s theses(including abstract,introduction,conclusion part)from 5 authoritative universities as corpora,and construct a small self-built corpus.For the pertinence and reliability of the research,the research data are sourced from the master’s thesis of foreign linguistics and applied linguistics of 5 universities,with a total of 165,283 words.According to the Hyland’s interpersonal classification model of metadiscourse,the five small categories(hedges,attitude markers,boosters,self-mention,and engagement markers)under the interactional metadiscourse in the corpus are labeled.The interactional metadiscourse has been identified and analyzed through Ant Conc(version 3.5.7)and manual rechecking.This present study uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze and describe the distribution of interactional metadiscourse,and explore the relationship between interactional metadiscourse and universal validity claims(truthfulness,sincerity,apperception,correctness).The research results are as follows:(1)All interactional metadiscourse markers appear in the corpus,indicating that interactional metadiscourse is a common language resource.The author pays attention to communication with readers in the process of constructing texts.Among the corpora,hedges are used most frequently,and engagement markers are used the least.There are also differences in the distribution of interactional metadiscourse in the abstract,introduction,and conclusion of the dissertation.(2)The interactional metadiscourse markers show the author’s attitude and emotion in the master’s thesis and pay attention to the interaction between the author and the readers to achieve the communicative purpose.The five types of interactional metadiscourses play a role in evaluating information,expressing emotions,establishing norms,and guiding in the master’s thesis,to satisfy the universal validity claims in the Communicative Action Theory and thus realize the meaning of communicative.From the perspective of Communicative Action Theory,this study explores interactional metadiscourse from the perspective of linguistic philosophy,broadens the research horizon of interactional metadiscourse,and provides a broader research perspective for it.Besides,this study has certain guiding significance for the writing of the master’s thesis.The use of interactional metadiscourse in master’s thesis meets the demands of universal validity claims and helps scholars to make better use of interactional metadiscourse in academic writing.In the teaching aspect,the teacher uses the interactional metadiscourse properly,promotes the teacher-student interaction,enhances the teaching efficiency. |
