Guiding and engaging the audience: Visual metadiscourse in PowerPoint slides of Three Minute Thesis presentations

A compelling academic presentation extends beyond the mere linguistic strategies of the presenter. The effective use of diverse multimodal elements in the presentation slides also merits considerable attention. Therefore, this research explores the way presenters use visual components to turn passive listeners into active participants in the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) presentation. For this purpose, this study developed a framework to analyse visual metadiscourse based on Hyland's (2005) model of metadiscourse and visual grammar by Kress and van Leeuwen (2021), exploring the interactive and interactional functions of visual metadiscourse. The realization resources of each visual metadiscourse marker were identified based on 240 PowerPoint slides. This research emphasizes the critical role of visual metadiscourse for presenters in facilitating the guidance and engagement of a heterogeneous listener. The findings of this research could significantly contribute to improving visual literacy for researchers to cater to the need to design various digital genres in academic and professional settings.