Framing argument for specialised knowledge: interactional metadiscourse markers in economics and law research articles

This chapter examines the patterns of interactional metadiscourse use in the disciplines of Economics and Law, and draws upon Hyland’s (2005a) analytical framework of metadiscourse markers along with other integrative frameworks in an approximately 160,000-word corpus of social science empirical research articles in these fields. Both distributional and functional analyses of metadiscourse resources show that there are similarities as well as differences between the two disciplines in terms of how writers structure their argumentative texts for their readers, and how they draw on their understandings of these resources to report the results of their original study to their readers. It is argued that metadiscursive use may be accounted for by the epistemologies behind the existing qualitative and quantitative methods of empirical research alongside a range of experiential, social and identity-shaping variables of the writers involved in this kind of argumentative genre. By contributing additional evidence to current published research, this study aims to provide a greater understanding of metadiscourse in the argumentative writing practices of the research article.