A Study On The Interactional Metadiscoursal Construction Of Authorial Identity In The Introduction Of Research Articles

Academic discourse not only conveys disciplinary knowledge,but also expresses rich interpersonal meanings,which is an important place to represent the author’s identity.Interactional metadiscourse,as a category of metadiscourse,can help authors realize their interaction with readers,which is an important resource for negotiating the construction of authorial identity.However,the current research on the authorial identities constructed by interactional metadiscourse and their subcategories is not sufficient,and there is a lack of discussion from the perspective of discipline comparison.In addition,as the opening layout of research articles,the writing quality of the introduction directly determines the logic and readability of the paper.In view of this,this study further reviews and expands the interactional metadiscourse framework of Hyland(2005a,2005b),and establishes an analytical framework of interactional metadiscoursal construction of authorial identity.Taking the introduction of research articles as an example,this study extracts 30 introductions from each of the four academic English corpora of Linguistics(Lin DEAP),Philosophy(Phil DEAP),Bioscience(Bio DEAP),and Materials Science(Mat DEAP)to build a small corpus to explore the construction of authorial identity in the introduction of research articles across disciplines.This study uses qualitative and quantitative methods to answer the following two questions:(1)How do authors construct their identities with subcategories of stance markers? What are the similarities and differences in the construction of their identities in the introduction of research articles between soft disciplines and hard disciplines?(2)How do authors construct their identities with subcategories of engagement markers? What are the similarities and differences in the construction of their identities in the introduction of research articles between soft disciplines and hard disciplines?The results show that: Firstly,among the authorial identities constructed by stance markers,authors of all disciplines mostly use hedges,boosters,and attitude markers to construct the identity of opinion holders and evaluators,while they rarely use self-mention to construct the identity of self-triggered interlocutors.Specifically:(1)In the construction of opinion holders,all disciplines tend to use certainty-indicating boosters rather than factasserting boosters to express their opinions;authors of soft disciplines tend to use commitment hedges,while authors of hard disciplines tend to use accuracy-oriented hedges.(2)In the construction of evaluators,all disciplines mostly use assessment markers and hardly use emotional markers;authors of hard disciplines use more significance markers than those of soft disciplines to highlight the research value.(3)In the construction of selftriggered interlocutors,authors of soft disciplines mostly use exclusive plural personal pronouns(we/our)and singular personal pronouns(I)to communicate with readers,while authors of hard disciplines rarely intervene in the text obviously.Secondly,among the authorial identities constructed by engagement markers,authors of all disciplines seldom use reader pronouns to construct the identity of reader-triggered interlocutors,and they are more likely to use other engagement markers to construct the identity of guides.Specifically:(1)In the construction of reader-triggered interlocutors,authors of soft disciplines often use inclusive plural personal pronouns(we/our)and singular indefinite pronoun(one)to shorten the relationship with readers,while authors of hard disciplines seldom mention readers explicitly in the introduction.(2)In the construction of guides,informative asides and shared knowledge expressing tradition and typicality are widely adopted in all disciplines to guide readers,and directives are adopted less frequently.In addition,rhetorical questions are used more frequently by philosophical authors,whereas authors of other disciplines rarely employ this strategy in the introduction of research articles.The reasons for: the above-mentioned characteristics of the construction of authorial identity mainly lie in the differences of disciplinary knowledge structure,the new trends in international publication,and the genre characteristics of introductions.This study theoretically further enriches and develops the classification of interactional metadiscourse and explores the relationship between interactional metadiscourse and authorial identity construction.At the same time,in practice,it reveals the similarities and differences between authors of different disciplines in selfrepresentation and interaction with readers in the introduction of research articles,thus shedding light on the writing and teaching of academic writing.