A Comparative Study of Metadiscourse Markers in the Abstract Sections of Research Articles Written by Turkish and English Researchers

Abstract

The present research aims to investigate interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers in the abstract sections of academic research articles written in Turkish and English. Two disciplines, namely, Special Education and Preschool Education, are selected for the research. Three different types of language use are examined: English articles written by native speakers of English, English articles written by Turkish speakers, and Turkish articles written by Turkish speakers. Following Hyland and Tse’s (2004) metadiscourse taxonomy, a corpus of 300 research articles abstract published by international journals, is used to investigate the metadiscourse markers. After the detailed analysis, the chi-square test is aimed to be used to clarify the probable differences. The results of the study indicate that, in terms of interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers, there are differences across the languages. To be more precise, statistically significant differences were found in the use of frame markers, code glosses, hedges, boosters, and self-mentions. Turkish writers used boosters and frame markers more frequently, while native speakers of English used hedges, code glosses, and self-mentions more. Some suggestions were provided for academic writers to comply with the writing conventions of academic writing, especially research article abstracts.