A Comparative Study Of Interactional Metadiscourse In Chinese And American Economic Conference Speech Texts

Metadiscourse is a linguistic device,which is used to organize discourse,to help readers understand the content of propositions,and to involve readers in the context.As an important part of metadiscourse,interactional metadiscourse focuses on the speaker’s or writer’s stance expression and the interaction with the audience or readers.Since interactional metadiscourse is useful for guiding the audience to understand the content of the discourse explicitly,it has been the focus of linguists and deserves to be explored in depth.In fact,previous research on interactional metadiscourse has focused on the analysis of academic discourse genres,but relatively little research has been conducted on conference speech texts.Today,the economy is developing fast,and under this circumstance,conference speech,as a carrier of economic activities,attracts more attention from metadiscourse researchers.Economic conference speeches have a wide range of influence,and the speakers pay more attention to the communicative interaction with the audience.In addition,the use of interactional metadiscourse in economic conference speech texts is particularly important,which will provide rich material for this study.In this thesis,the author took Hyland’s interpersonal classification modal of interactional metadiscourse as the framework for analysis.Twenty economic conference speech texts made by American speakers and twenty made by Chinese speakers(English version)were collected as research corpora.Then,two self-built corpora were constructed: the speech text from China is named Corpus 1,and the speech text from America is named Corpus 2.To ensure the validity of the findings,the number of words in each speech text was kept to about 2000 words.Next,the author made a comparative analysis with the tools of Ant Conc.3.5.8 and SPSS 26.Therefore,the overall distribution of interactional metadiscourse between the two corpora can be displayed in detail.At the same time,the similarities and differences in the use of interactional metadiscourse markers were explained with examples.Finally,possible reasons for these similarities and differences were discussed.The findings show that there are similarities and differences in the use of interactional metadiscourse between Chinese and American economic conference speech texts.Similarities: 1)five categories of interactional metadiscourse markers appear in both corpora,and the frequency of the categories of interactional metadiscourse in the two corpora from high to low is: engagement markers,self-mentions,hedges,boosters,and attitude markers;2)engagement markers appear most frequently in both corpora;3)attitude markers appear least frequently in both corpora;4)the frequency of self-mentions in the two corpora is similar,and there is no significant difference in the number of self-mentions.Differences: 1)compared with Chinese economic conference speech texts,American speech texts employ more interactional metadiscourse markers,and there is a significant difference in the total number;2)in American economic conference speech texts,interactional metadiscourse items are rich in variety and lexical forms,while in Chinese economic conference speech texts,items are less varied and lexical forms are single;3)in terms of the five categories of interactional metadiscourse,more self-mentions and engagement markers appear in Chinses economic conference speech texts,while more hedges,boosters and attitude markers appear in American economic conference speech texts;4)in terms of the use of self-mentions,Chinese speakers employ more plural personal pronouns(we),while American speakers utilize more singular personal pronouns(I).According to the analysis,the reasons for the similarities and differences in the use of interactional metadiscourse in the two corpora are as follows.The similarities lie in the fact that speech texts in the two corpora belong to the same genre and register,share the same nature of interpersonal interaction,and the relationship between the speaker and the audience is similar.The differences are mainly to be caused by Chinese and Western cultural differences,different degrees of formality,and speakers’ subject difference,such as speaking styles and positions.In summary,the rational use of interactional metadiscourse in economic conference speech texts helps speakers to better interact with the public.According to the comparative analysis of economic conference speech texts in China and America,the present study expands the scope of interactional metadiscourse research and also provides some insights into the rational application of interactional metadiscourse in English speeches,the teaching of related courses and the translation of speech texts.