Talking to students: Metadiscourse in introductory coursebooks

English for Specific Purposes, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 3–26, 1999© 1998 The American University. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd\ Pergamon All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain

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Talking to Students: Metadiscourse inIntroductory Coursebooks

Ken Hyland

Abstract—This paper explores the possible role of university textbooks instudents’ acquisition of a specialised disciplinary literacy, focusing on the useof metadiscourse as a manifestation of the writer’s linguistic and rhetoricalpresence in a text. Because metadiscourse can be analysed independently ofpropositional matter, it provides useful information about how writers supporttheir arguments and build a relationship with readers in different rhetoricalcontexts. The paper compares features in extracts from 21 textbooks inmicrobiology, marketing and applied linguistics with a similar corpus ofresearch articles and shows that the ways textbook authors represent them-selves, organise their arguments, and signal their attitudes to both theirstatements and their readers differ markedly in the two corpora. It is sug-gested that these differences mean that textbooks provide limited rhetoricalguidance to students seeking information from research sources or learningappropriate forms of written argument. Finally, by investigating met-adiscourse in particular disciplines and genres, the study helps to restore theintrinsic link between metadiscourse and its associated rhetorical contextsand rectify a popular view which implicitly characterises it as an independentstylistic device. © 1998 The American University. Published by ElsevierScience Ltd

The Genre of Introductory Textbooks

Textbooks are perhaps the genre most commonly encountered by under-graduate students and constitute one of the primary means by which theconcepts and analytical methods of a discipline are acquired. They play acentral role in the learners’ experience and understanding of a subjectby providing a coherently ordered epistemological map of the disciplinarylandscape and, through their textual practices, can help convey the norms,values and ideological assumptions of a particular academic culture. As aresult, ESP writers have often drawn heavily on coursebooks for exampletexts (Arnaudet & Barrett 1984; Currie & Cray 1987; Jordan 1990; McEverdy& Wyatt 1990) and they have received attention in the linguists literature(eg Love 1993; Hewings 1990; Tadros 1985). Thus students, particularly in

Address correspondence to: Ken Hyland, English Department, City University of Hong Kong, Tat CheeAvenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong. (Tel: (852) 2788-8873, Fax: (852) 2788-8894, E-mail: [email protected])

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4 K. Hyland

the sciences, often see textbooks as concrete embodiments of the knowledgeof their disciplines.

However, in addition to gaining an understanding of subject knowledge,students entering university must also acquire a specialised literacy thatconsists of the discipline-specific rhetorical and linguistic practices of aparticular community (Ballard & Clanchy 1991; Berkenkotter et al. 1991).Understanding the written genres in one’s field is essential to full accul-turation and success, but introductory textbooks are obviously not rep-resentative of academic discourse in general. It is thus unclear whether theycan simultaneously both convey scholarship to neophytes and develop the‘‘peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding andarguing that define the discourse of the community’’ (Bartholomae 1986: 4).

Both their purpose and audience set textbooks apart from the moreprestigious genres community members employ to exchange research fin-dings, dispute theories and accumulate professional credit. Thus while theresearch article (RA) is a highly valued genre central to the legitimation ofa discipline as a result of its role in communicating new research, course-books are often depicted as the repositories of codified knowledge (Hewings1990; Myers 1992). This accounts for their somewhat peripheral status inthe pantheon of academic genres where they are often seen by academicsand administrators as commercial projects unrelated to research (Swales1995). It also makes problematic the role of textbooks as models for studentspreparing to advance from participation in an undergraduate culture of‘knowledge-telling’ to a disciplinary one involving ‘knowledge-transforming’(Bereiter & Scardamalia 1987) through reading research sources and writ-ing in specialised genres.

However, while textbooks may appear to be a curriculum genre employingonly a specific classroom-based discourse, the fact that genres are linked toa subject’s methodology and values means they are also likely to containtextual features and conventions of their respective disciplinary communi-ties. Indeed, textbooks exhibit considerable generic heterogeneity, both inthe sense of a typification of rhetorical action (eg Berkenkotter & Huckin1993) and as a shared set of communicative purposes (eg Swales 1990).Most obviously, there are often disciplinary differences in the form andpresentation of textbooks. In business studies, for example, they oftenresemble coffee-table books and display marketing norms in their use ofcoloured diagrams and glossy photographs, while the experimental pro-cedures, taxonomies and electron micrographs common in biology text-books help represent and construct a knowable, objective world. In addition,the roles textbooks play in a given academic environment may differ con-siderably. So while in the sciences (eg Love 1993; Myers 1992) and econ-omics (Hewings 1990; Tadros 1985) coursebooks seem to reinforce existingparadigms, in philosophy and composition they are often important vehiclesfor advancing scholarship and presenting original research (eg Gebhardt1993).

This paper focuses on the use of some critical features of text-level rhetoric

5Talking to Students: Metadiscourse in Introductory Coursebooks

to explore variations in the disciplinary and generic practices of textbookauthors. The analysis of metadiscourse, which influences the personal tenorand rhetorical presentation of information, allows us to examine differencesin the writers’ conception of audience in composing as it constitutes aspectsof texts which are largely independent of propositional content but whichare inevitably local and intimately tied to particular contexts. Analysingtextbooks in this way can therefore shed light on their rhetorical dis-tinctiveness in order to better understand their role in the disciplinaryacculturation of novices. It can also help sharpen our understanding ofmetadiscourse, a traditionally fuzzy term. I will first briefly review somebackground notions and the concept of metadiscourse, then report a studyof extracts from 21 textbooks in three disciplines.

Audience, Purpose and Metadiscourse

Implicit in every act of academic communication is the writer’s awarenessof the social context and professional consequences of the writing. Featuresof discourse are always relative to a particular audience and social purposeand the effectiveness of writers’ attempts to communicate depends on theirsuccess in analysing and accommodating the needs of readers. Academicwriting is thus invariably a persuasive task where a writer seeks to producespecific responses in an active audience. In textbooks as much as researchpapers, authors are not only concerned with simply presenting propositionalfacts, but must attend to the expectations of readers and what they are likelyto find interesting, credible and intelligible. Writers must anticipate theaudience’s likely background knowledge, processing problems and reac-tions to the text, with the understanding that readers are likely to examineit for relevance, informativity and interest. Such an audience thus refers toa particular context of discourse, consisting of the external circumstanceswhich define the rhetorical situation and require the text to have certaincharacteristics in response (Park 1986).

One important means by which texts depict the characteristics of anunderlying community is through the writer’s use of metadiscourse. Allacademic disciplines have conventions of rhetorical personality which influ-ence the ways writers intrude into their texts to organise their argumentsand represent themselves, their readers and their attitudes. This is largelyaccomplished through non-propositional material, or metadiscourse. Meta-discourse is ‘‘discourse about discourse’’ (Van de Kopple 1985) and refersto the author’s linguistic manifestation in a text to ‘‘bracket the discourseorganisation and the expressive implications of what is being said’’ (Schiffrin1980: 231). Metadiscourse is therefore a crucial rhetorical device for writers(Crismore 1989; Crismore & Farnsworth 1990; Hyland 1997b, in press). Itallows them to engage and influence readers in ways that conform to adiscipline’s norms, values and ideology, expressing textual and interpersonalmeanings that their audience is likely to accept as credible and convincing.

However, while metadiscourse is recognised to be an important means of

6 K. Hyland

supporting a writer’s argument and building a relationship with readers, itis often regarded as a semantic device that authors can vary according tostylistic preference. This helps explain why, for example, the variation inmetadiscourse use noted across linguistic cultures (Crismore et al. 1993;Mauranen 1993; Valero-Garces 1996), has not been similarly investigated interms of different disciplines or genres. However, to study metadiscoursewithout appeal to its associated rhetorical environment is to ignore thecontext which conditions its use and gives it meaning. Focusing only on itssurface realisations gives the impression that metadiscourse is a purelywriter-centred phenomenon and either neglects its relationship to particularaudiences or unconsciously calls up a context in an unsystematic way. Inother words, the meaning of metadiscourse only becomes operative withina particular context, both invoking and reinforcing that context with regardto audience, purpose and situation. Its use therefore reflects differencesin the various forms of organised cultural communication recognised andemployed by distinct academic disciplines for particular purposes.

Clearly a text communicates effectively only when the writer has correctlyassessed the reader’s resources for interpreting it. Thus the writer of aresearch article can assume a shared awareness of a codified set of texts,principles and rules that represent the socially constructed ideology of theircommunity (Hyland 1997a). Textbook authors, on the other hand, are unableto invoke community knowledge as the novice lacks experience of thelinguistic forms which give coherence and life to that knowledge. Thetextbook is a writer’s attempt to construct this experience, seeking to makepropositional material explicit to novices while simultaneously socialisingthem to the ways of speaking appropriate to the community. So whiletextbook language is a product of the activity and situations in which it iscreated, textbooks may also include linguistic features which typify genresthat are more central, and prestigious, to disciplinary activity.

A Metadiscourse Schema

Metadiscourse is an essentially heterogeneous category which can berealised through a range of linguistic devices from punctuation and typo-graphic marks (such as parentheses to signal clarifications or underliningto mark emphasis), to whole clauses and sentences (e.g. ‘‘You can see from theabove Table that..’’). However, distinctions between meta and propositionaldiscourse cannot be made from linguistic form alone as they almost alwaysdepend on the relationship of items to other parts of the text. Features mustbe identified functionally and a number of classification schema have beenproposed for this (e.g. Crismore & Farnsworth 1990; Van de Kopple 1985).This study employs a modified version of Crismore et al.’s (Crismore et al.1993) taxonomy which distinguishes textual and interpersonal dimensionsand recognises more specific functions within them. This schema is dis-cussed in detail elsewhere (Hyland 1997c, in press) but is summarised inTable 1.


TABLE 1Metadiscourse Schema for Academic Texts

Category Function: Examples/signals

Textual metadiscourseLogical connectives express semantic relation in addition/but/therefore/thus

between main clausesFrame markers explicitly refer to discourse first/finally/to repeat/to clarify

shifts or text stagesEndophoric markers refer to information in other noted above/see Fig. 1/section

parts of the text 2Evidentials refer to source of information according to X/Y, 1990/Z states

from other textsCode glosses help readers grasp meanings namely/e.g./in other

of ideational material words/i.e./say

InterpersonalmetadiscourseHedges withhold writer’s full might/perhaps/it is possible

commitment to statementsEmphatics emphasise force or writer’s in fact/definitely/it is clear

certainty in messageAttitude markers express writer’s attitude to surprisingly/I agree/X claims

propositional contentRelational markers explicitly refer to or build consider/recall/imagine/you

relationship with reader seePerson markers explicit reference to author(s) I/we/my/mine/our

Textual metadiscourse is used to organise propositional information inways that will be coherent for a particular audience and appropriate for agiven purpose. Devices in this category represent the audience’s presencein the text in terms of the writer’s assessment of its processing difficulties,intertextual requirements and need for interpretative guidance. It comprisesfive sub-classes.

The first is logical connectives, mainly conjunctions and adverbial andprepositional phrases, which link ideas in the text. The second is framemarkers, which signal boundaries in the discourse or stages in the argu-ment. These include items that: sequence material (first, next, 1, 2, 3); labeltext stages (to conclude, in sum); announce discourse goals (my purpose is,I propose that); and indicate topic changes (well, now). The third is endo-phoric markers such as in section 2 and see table 1, which refer to otherparts of the text. The fourth is evidential markers, indicate the source oftextual material. They concern who is responsible for the view cited and aredistinguished here from the writer’s stance towards the view, which is aninterpersonal issue. Finally, code glosses explain or expand propositionalinformation to assist interpretation and ensure the writer’s intention is under-stood. They occur within parentheses or are introduced by phrases like forinstance and namely.

Interpersonal metadiscourse, however, allows writers to express aperspective towards their propositional information and their readers. It

8 K. Hyland

is essentially an evaluative form of discourse and expresses the writer’sindividually defined, but disciplinary circumscribed, persona. Metadiscoursetherefore relates to the level of personality, or tenor, of the discourse andinfluences such matters as the author’s intimacy and remoteness, expressionof attitude, commitment to propositions and degree of reader involvement.

In this category, hedges and emphatics indicate the degree of commit-ment, certainty and collegial deference a writer wishes to convey, signalledby items such as possible, may and clearly. Attitude markers indicate thewriter’s affective, rather than epistemic, attitude to textual information,expressing surprise, importance, obligation, and so on. Relational markersare devices that explicitly address readers, either to focus their attention orinclude them as discourse participants. Because affective devices can alsohave interpersonal implications, attitude and relational markers are oftendifficult to distinguish in practice. Cases of affect however are typicallywriter-oriented and are signalled by attitude verbs, necessity modals andsentence adverbs. Relational markers focus more on reader participationand include second person pronouns, imperatives, question forms and asidesthat interrupt the ongoing discourse. Finally person markers refers to thedegree of author presence in the text measured by the frequency of firstperson pronouns. These features are, once again, intimately related to thewriter’s attention to context and the need to address readers appropriatelyin constructing an effective and persuasive discourse.

Clearly there is a great deal of pragmatic overlap between these categoriesas writers frequently seek to achieve several concurrent purposes, appealingto readers on both affective and logical levels simultaneously. This poly-pragmatic aspect of language blurs an ‘‘all-or-nothing’’ interpretation of howparticular devices are used. Connectives, for example, principally link textualmaterial but can also solicit reader collusion when presenting claims (Barton1995); hedges have both epistemic and affective roles, indicating eitheruncertainty or deference to disciplinary norms of appropriate interpersonalstance (Hyland 1996a); code glosses both supply necessary information andimply a position of superior knowledge to the reader. A classification schemecan therefore only approximate the complexity and fluidity of natural lan-guage use. But while it may give no firm evidence about author intentionsor reader understandings, it is a useful means of revealing the meaningsavailable in the text and comparing the rhetorical strategies employed bydifferent discourse communities and different genres. This involves goingbeyond the taxonomy to identify factors of the rhetorical context which mayinfluence such differences.

Corpus and Procedure

The corpus consists of extracts from 21 introductory coursebooks inthree academic disciplines: microbiology, marketing and applied linguistics,comprising almost 124 000 words (see Appendix A). The average length ofthe extracts was 5 900 words (range 3 305–10 678) consisting of complete


chapters (16) or substantial sections of chapters beginning with the intro-ductory matter and comprising entire contiguous sub-sections (5). Thetextbooks were selected from reading lists for introductory undergraduatecourses and all extracts were among those recommended by teachers ascontaining ‘core’ reading matter. A parallel corpus of 21 research articles(121 000 words/average length 5 771 words) was compiled for comparisonfrom the current issues of prestigious journals recommended by expertinformants in the same three disciplines. The corpora were analysed inde-pendently by myself and two research assistants by coding all items ofmetadiscourse according to the schema outlined above. An interraterreliability of 0.83 (Kappa) was obtained, indicating a high degree of agree-ment.

Findings

Overall, the quantitative analysis revealed the importance of meta-discourse in these textbooks with an average of 405 examples per text; aboutone every 15 words. It should be noted here that the expression of devicesaccording to a word count is not intended to represent the proportion of textformed by metadiscourse. Clearly, metadiscourse typically has clause-level(or higher) scope and I have standardised the raw figures to a commonbasis merely to compare the occurrence, rather than the length, of meta-discourse in corpora of unequal sizes. Table 2 shows that writers used farmore textual than interpersonal forms in this corpus, and that connectivesand code glosses were the most frequent devices in each discipline. Thenumerical preponderance of textual devices emphasises the commoninterpretation of metatext as guiding the reading process by indicatingdiscourse organisation and clarifying propositional meanings.

TABLE 2Metadiscourse in Academic Textbooks per 1 000 Words (%% of total)

Category Biology Applied Linguistics Marketing

Logical connectives 32.3 (43.2) 17.8 (30.6) 34.4 (48.8)Code glosses 9.4 (12.6) 9.6 (15.6) 9.7 (13.8)Endophoric markers 6.4 (8.6) 4.5 (7.3) 2.5 (3.5)Frame markers 2.5 (3.3) 4.6 (7.4) 4.2 (6.0)Evidentials 3.2 (4.2) 5.3 (8.6) 1.0 (1.5)Textual 53.8 (71.9) 42.8 (69.4) 51.9 (73.7)

Hedges 8.9 (12.0) 4.7 (7.7) 5.9 (8.4)Emphatics 5.0 (6.7) 2.4 (3.9) 3.3 (4.7)Attitude markers 4.1 (5.5) 3.5 (5.6) 5.5 (7.9)Relational markers 2.2 (3.0) 6.1 (9.8) 2.5 (3.5)Person markers 0.7 (0.9) 2.2 (3.6) 2.2 (3.6)Interpersonal 21.0 (28.1) 18.9 (30.6) 18.9 (30.6)

Totals 74.8 (100) 61.7 (100) 70.4 (100)

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The tables show some obvious disciplinary variations in metadiscourseuse. The applied linguistics texts comprise considerably more evidentialsand relational markers, the biology authors favoured hedges, and marketingtextbooks had fewer evidentials and endophorics. Perhaps more interestinghowever are the cross-discipline similarities, with all three fields containingcomparable total use and a near identical proportion of textual and inter-personal forms. In particular, all disciplines showed a high use of logicalconnectives and code glosses which together comprised about half of allcases, demonstrating that the principal concern of textbook authors is topresent information clearly and explicitly.

A comparison with the research articles revealed strikingly similar totalfrequencies of metadiscourse in the two corpora, but a considerable dif-ference in the proportion of the two main categories (Table 3). The increasein interpersonal metadiscourse from about a third of all cases in the text-books to nearly half in the RAs shows the critical importance of these formsin persuasive prose.

As can be seen, devices used to assist comprehension of propositionalinformation, such as connectives, code glosses and endophoric markers,were less frequent in the articles while those typically used to assistpersuasion, such as hedges, emphatics, evidentials and person markers,were more frequent. Hedges were almost three times more common in theRAs and represented the most frequent metadiscourse feature, dem-onstrating the importance of distinguishing established from new claims inresearch writing and the need for authors to evaluate their assertions inways that their peers are likely to find persuasive.

TABLE 3Ranked Metadiscourse Categories (Combined Disciplines)

Textbooks Research articles

Items per Items per1000 words % of total 1000 words % of total

Textual 49.1 71.7 34.8 52.6Interpersonal 19.4 28.3 31.4 47.4

SubcategoryLogical connectives 28.1 40.9 12.3 18.5Code glosses 9.6 14.0 7.6 11.5Hedges 6.4 9.4 16.7 25.3Endophoric markers 4.4 6.5 3.2 4.9Attitude markers 4.3 6.3 4.5 6.8Frame markers 3.8 5.5 5.6 8.5Relational markers 3.7 5.4 2.5 3.8Emphatics 3.5 5.1 4.2 6.3Evidentials 3.3 4.8 6.1 9.3Person markers 1.4 2.1 3.5 5.2

Grand Totals 68.5 100% 66.2 100%


TABLE 4Metadiscourse in Textbooks and RAs per 1 000 Words

Biology Applied Linguistics Marketing

Textbook RA Textbook RA Textbook RA

Textual 53.8 40.1 42.8 30.1 51.9 36.671.9% 66.8% 69.4% 49.2% 73.7% 49.7%

Interpersonal 21.0 19.9 18.9 31.0 18.5 37.028.1% 33.2% 30.6% 50.8% 26.3% 50.3%

Totals 74.8 59.9 61.7 60.1 70.4 73.6

When separating the texts by both discipline and genre we find that thetables above mask a number of variations in metadiscourse use. Table 4shows that the overall density levels differed markedly in biology, withalmost 25% more metadiscourse in the textbooks than the RAs, due mainlyto a heavier use of textual forms. Biology was also the only disciplinewhere there was little change in the proportions of interpersonal and textualfeatures between the two genres, while the interpersonal frequenciesincreased dramatically in the applied linguistics and marketing RAs.

Table 5 shows that the use of logical connectives was highest in textbooksin all disciplines and that the RAs contained a higher proportion of hedges,person and frame markers. Biologists showed the greatest variation, bothacross genres and disciplines, with substantial genre differences in mostcategories. While the marketing and applied linguistics texts were more

TABLE 5Proportions of Metadiscourse in RAs and Textbooks

Biology Applied Linguistics Marketing

Category TB RA TB RA TB RA

Logical connectives 43.2 18.8 30.6 18.1 48.8 18.7Frame markers 3.3 8.6 7.4 7.6 6.0 9.0Endophoric markers 8.6 7.7 7.3 4.1 3.5 4.4Evidentials 4.2 16.2 8.6 7.3 1.5 8.0Code glosses 12.6 15.4 15.6 12.1 13.8 9.6Textual 71.9 66.8 69.4 49.2 73.7 49.7

Hedges 12.0 20.0 7.7 25.6 8.4 27.0Emphatics 6.7 5.8 3.9 7.4 4.7 5.7Attitude markers 5.5 2.2 5.6 8.8 7.9 7.0Relational markers 3.0 1.2 9.8 4.1 3.5 4.5Person markers 0.9 4.0 3.6 4.8 1.8 6.0Interpersonal 28.1 33.2 30.6 50.8 26.3 50.3

Total % 100 100 100 100 100 100

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uniform between genres, both contained large differences in hedges andconnectives. Substantial genre variations were also apparent in the use ofevidentials and person markers in marketing and endophoric and relationmarkers in applied linguistics. In general, metadiscourse variations weremore pronounced between genres than disciplines, particularly for highfrequency items, and the textbooks tended to exhibit greater disciplinarydiversity than the RAs.

Discussion

Textbooks, as a specific form of language use and social interaction, bothrepresent particular processes of production and interpretation, and link tothe social practices of the institutions within which they are created. Wemight expect, then, that metadiscourse variations will reflect the differentroles that textbooks and research papers play in the social structures ofdisciplinary activity and anticipate that their use will contain clues abouthow these texts were produced and the purposes they serve. Metadiscourseis grounded in the rhetorical purposes of writers and sensitive to theirperceptions of audience, both of which differ markedly between the twogenres. One audience consists of an established community of disciplinarypeers familiar with the conceptual frameworks and specialised literaciesof their discipline. The other is relatively undifferentiated in terms of itsexperience of academic discourse, often possessing little more than a gen-eral purpose EAP competence in the early undergraduate years (e.g. Leki& Carson 1994). As a result of such contextual differences, what can be said,and what needs to be said, differs considerably. It is therefore interesting tospeculate on the patterns observed and I will consider textual and inter-personal variations in turn.

Textual Features in Textbooks

Textual forms constituted about 70% of all metadiscourse in the cour-sebooks. Such metadiscourse provides an overt framework which not onlyclarifies the schematic structure of the text, but also serves to fill in gapsand explicitly spell out connections to related ideas, thus helping to conveypropositional content more coherently to novices. This is particularly clearin the use of frame markers (1) and endophoric markers (2) which providemetatextual reference to sections, illustrations, reasons, arguments, and soon*:

(1)

In the next section I will focus explicitly on linguistic politeness, using termsof address for exemplification. (ALT3)

*Examples are coded according to discipline (MB is biology, AL is applied linguistics and MK is marketing)and textbooks are marked with ‘T’. Numbers refer to the corpus items.


The Ascolichens will be briefly considered under three large groups cor-responding to the structure of their asci and ascocarps. (MBT6)

This chapter explains some of the approaches used in segmenting consumerand organisational markets and discusses a six-step approach for marketsegmentation and selecting a target market. (MKT3)

(2)

This is very much like the example we gave above at the beginning of chapter1,... (ALT4)

In Section 5.2, in Text 5B, we saw all four in operation simultaneously, ...(ALT1)

We discussed some characteristics of microbial mats in section 17.5 (see Fig17.11a). (MBT1)

... and procedures for differentiating these organisms are discussed later inthis chapter. (MBT3)

Additional information on availability is discussed in a later section on specificmedia. (MKT4)

.... (for reasons that will be explained in chapters 5 and 6),... (MKT6)

While both forms of metadiscourse were also found in the RAs, they tendedto be used differently. Rather than point to explanatory material and relatematerial to a wider context as in the textbooks, for instance, endophoricmarkers were almost exclusively used to refer to tables and graphs, whichaccounts for their heavy frequency in biology. Frame markers were actuallymore common in the articles, but instead of occurring at regular intervalsto structure the discourse for the reader, they tended to cluster in intro-ductions, where they acted to specify the overall purpose of the research,and in discussion sections, where they served to organise lists of points:

(3)

The following generalisations emerged from reviewing the literature... (AL5)

The objective of our work was to... (MB1)

In this paper we show that... (MB3)

Thus the goal of this paper is to show that... (MK1)

The research hypotheses developed for this research are stated as follows..(MK4)

The survey project was guided initially by three research questions:... (AL5)

14 K. Hyland

Thus in the textbooks studied here metadiscourse was principally employedto reduce the cognitive load of propositional material for novices and presentunfamiliar content more comprehensively. This is also apparent in the useof code glosses which were both more extensive in the textbooks and tendedto instruct rather than simply clarify. These devices help convey meaningsthought to be problematic for readers, but while mainly labelled as examplesin both genres, the textbooks contained more cases which aided interpre-tation by either providing a definition (4) or adding information (5).

(4)

Saxicolous (growing on rocks) lichens are probably instrumental in initiatingsoil... (MBT6)

.. limnologists (biologists specialising in freshwater systems) began toexamine.. (MBT2)

The latter organisms belong to a larger group of Bacteria called the purplebacteria (organisms such as Rhodopseudomonas and Rhodobacter). (Thiswhole group is sometimes called the Photeobacteria). (MBT1)

(5)

Cross-cultural variation is a primary barrier—that is, understanding cog-nitively and affectively what levels of formality are appropriate or inap-propriate. (ALT1)

Internal corporate analysis requires the organisation to identify its resources(financial, human labour and know-how, and physical assets),... (MKT2)

.. describe the case of Long Island Trust, historically the leading bank in thislarge New York suburban area. (MKT2)

Audience and purpose variations between these genres are also apparent inthe contrasting use of evidential markers, the ‘‘metalinguistic representationof an idea from another source’’ (Thomas & Hawes 1994: 129). For readersof research papers, claims are inseparable from their originators and agreat deal of explicit intertextuality is required from authors to organisepropositional material in a way that is both coherent and appropriate fortheir peers. Citations are also part of the writer’s rhetorical armoury insecuring ratification of new knowledge claims by establishing a researchniche, providing persuasive support for arguments and demonstrating thenovelty of assertions*.

However, the method described by McFadden (1989) and Pakes and Pollard

*The writer’s stance in relation to the facts presented, which helps to create an authorial persona and apresence in the text, is an interpersonal feature of metadiscourse.


(1989) is directly applicable for profit model estimation using cross-sectionaldata. (MK3)

There is no consensus opinion on the kinetics of partitioning: some authorshave suggested that sister chromosomes ‘‘jump’’ to their separated positionsin preparation for division (Begg & Donachie, 1991; Hiraga et al., 1990;Sargent, 1974), whereas more recent measurements suggest that movementof the chromosomes is continuous (van Helvoort & Woldringh, 1994). (MB2)

... within the research that has been done on academic listening, hardly anyhas been conducted in contexts where English is a second language (Arden-Close, 1993; Flowerdew & Miller, 1992; Jackson & Bilton, 1994). (AL4)

.... we build on the work of Narasimhan (1988), Raju et al. (1990) and Rao(1990). (MK1)

The textbook writer, however, is less concerned with convincing a scepticalprofessional audience of a new claim than with laying out the principles ofthe discipline. The emphasis is on the established facts rather than whooriginally stated them or one’s stance towards them, and as a result, unspeci-fied sources replace intertextual citations:

Surface structures of the pathogenic Neisseria have been the subjects ofintense microbiologic investigations for some time. Gonococcal outer mem-brane proteins demonstrate... (MBT3)

Many experts believe super-stores will continue to spread. If so, existingsupermarkets may suffer. (MKT7)

Clearly rules for polite behaviour differ from one speech community toanother. (ALT3)

Psychological studies of conversational exchanges and formal interviews haveshown... (ALT4)

For a textbook audience then, the writer transforms the facts themselvesfrom the potentially disputable status of the RAs to the relatively uncon-troversial statements which require no citational backing.

Perhaps most obviously, author appeals to dissimilar audiences (andknowledge bases) result in differences in cohesive patterns, particularly inthe use of logical connectives. In the professional writing there were rela-tively few explicit connectives as writers are able to code the reasoninglexically and allow the reader to infer propositional relevance by virtue oftheir shared disciplinary understandings. Thus in the RAs cohesion dependsprincipally on the ability of specialist readers to construct an underlyingsemantic structure from their knowledge of lexical relations and their fam-iliarity with similar discourses (e.g. Halliday & Hasan 1976; Myers 1991).Domain knowledge specific to microbiology, for example, allows the in-

16 K. Hyland

formed reader to infer lexical chains between entities and unpack theconnections between these sentences:

(7)

Transformation-dependent erythromycin resistance indicates that an aden-osine methylase gene originating from Enterococcus faecalis, a mesophile, isexpressed in C. thermosaccharolyticum. The plasmid pCTC1 appears to bereplicated independently of the chromosome, as indicated by visualization ofrecovered plasmid on gels, and retransformation using recovered plasmidpCTC1 is maintained in C. the thermosaccharolyticum at both 45 and 60C.Restriction analysis showed little or no rearrangement occurred upon passagethrough the thermophile. (MB7)

However, textbook passages discussing biological processes typically signalthe intended connections more explicitly, allowing the reader to see relationsbetween entities through the cohesive markers:

(8)

Despite these potential differences in the rates of DNA synthesis within aparticular region of DNA, the overall rate of DNA replication is higher ineukaryotes than in prokaryotes. This is because the DNA of eukaryotes hasmultiple replicons (segments of a DNA macromolecule having their ownorigin and termini) compared to the single replicon of the bacterial chro-mosome. Consequently, even though there is much more DNA in a eukaryoticchromosome than in a bacterial chromosome, the eukaryotic genome can bereplicated much faster... (MBT5)

Thus while both extracts contain a heavy use of repetition to signal prop-ositional connections, textbook authors cannot assume a knowledge of lexi-cal relations to achieve cohesion and must rely on introducing such relationsexplicitly through a range of metatextual devices. Although this means ofclarifying the links between unfamiliar terms is most obvious in the sciencetexts, similar differences were found in the other disciplines, although stu-dents of applied linguistics received considerably less guidance from con-nectives. The fact that lexical repetition and constant theme patterns areused more extensively in those textbooks provides learners with a morecognate cohesive environment to the RAs in that discipline, and thereforegreater preparation for the skills they will need to search for knowledgeclaims and supporting evidence in RAs.

Interpersonal Features in the Textbooks

While differences in textual metadiscourse point largely to variations ofaudience between the two genres, the findings for interpersonal meta-discourse also indicate something of their contrasting purposes. Williams(1989) has observed that argumentative writing lends itself to the use ofinterpersonal metadiscourse and Crismore and Farnsworth (1990) andHyland (1997b, in press) found a heavy use of interpersonal forms in per-


suasive texts of different discourse types. This is confirmed in this study,where the RAs contained 60% more interpersonal devices overall (Table 3),with hedges and person markers particularly prominent.

Several studies have described how levels of certainty are affected bythe transformation of statements from new claims in research articles toaccredited facts in textbooks. Latour & Woolgar (1979) and Myers (1992)observe that textbooks contain a higher proportion of unmodified assertionsthan RAs because they largely deal with ‘‘arranging currently acceptedknowledge into a coherent whole’’ rather than seeking agreement for newclaims (Myers 1992: 9). In research articles hedges relate to both thepropositional accuracy and subjective appropriacy of statements as onlyclaims which appear to be legitimate and which incorporate a sensitivity toreaders are likely to be ratified (Hyland 1996a, 1996b). When qualificationsare omitted the result is both greater certainty and less professional defer-ence, reflecting a different attitude to information and readers. The textbookauthor does not have to persuade an expert audience of a new interpretationor anticipate the consequences of being proved wrong because most claimsare presented as accredited facts.

The examples below are representative of how statements are differentlytreated in the two genres. As can be seen, claims about similar issues carryheavier qualification in the RAs, demonstrating the writer’s awareness ofboth the limitations of knowledge and the possibility of expert refutation:

(9)

Transferring the information contained in DNA to form a functional enzymeoccurs through protein synthesis, a process accomplished in two stages—transcription and translation. (MBT5)

It therefore seems likely that these genes may contribute to a general chro-mosome-partitioning mechanism of wide importance. (MB2)

Thus, peer writing conferences foster more exploratory talk, promote cog-nitive conflict, encourage students to take a more active role in their ownlearning processes and enable students to recognise the impact of their ownwriting on others. (ALT6)

It would appear that student writers need more than facts and processes towrite successfully and as reviewers need specific techniques if they are toprovide useful critiques to each other. (AL7)

Consumers reflect their culture, its style, feelings, value systems, attitudes,beliefs and perceptions. (MKT4)

It is likely that the variance in consumers’ socialisation experiences, in part,directs a shopper’s affinity towards certain shopper roles. (MK4)

However, textbook writers do not eschew hedges altogether, and theirpresence suggests that the genre is not simply a celebration of academic

18 K. Hyland

truths. This is particularly true where authors speculate about the future orthe distant past or when they generalise; thus even disciplinary novicesmight challenge a baldly assertive presentation of the following statements:

(10)

... earliest cells could also have obtained energy by chemoorganotrophic mech-anisms, most likely simple fermentations. Photosynthesis is also a possibilitybut seems less likely than... (MBT1)

But important breakthroughs are still possible because consumers probablywill continue to move away from conventional retailers. Convenience prod-ucts, for example, may be made more easily available by some combination ofelectronic ordering and home delivery... (MKT7)

... the teacher generally exerts a good deal of control over the structure of theinteraction and, to some extent, the content of that interaction. (ALT6)

Women appear to use language that expresses more uncertainty (...) thanmen, suggesting less confidence in what they say. (ALT2)

The textbooks also differ in employing hedges to clearly distinguish thefalse assumptions of the past from the certainties of the present, contrastingqualification and emphatics as in this extract:

(11)

It was argued that the simple sporangiospores of the zygomycetes could bedeveloped after only a short period, while the more elaborate fruit bodiesof the ascomycetes would require a longer build-up, and the even largerbasidiomata of the Coprini would need the longest preparation of all. (...)

We now know that the various components of the substrate are far fromexhausted after the initial flushes of growth and sporulation. What has reallyhappened is that Coprinus has seized control by suppressing most of the otherfungi. Hyphae of Coprinus are actually... (MBT2)

However examples are not limited to conventional disclaimers or broadissues. Although variations in hedging between the corpora suggest thattextbook writers generally seek to present what is taken-for-granted asfact, the presence of items distinguishing degrees of certainty indicates areluctance to assert that all claims represent unequivocal truth. This isparticularly evident in the science texts, which most closely approach theRAs in their use of modality. While often regarded as prototypical examplesof the constructedness of academic thought, the science textbooks in thiscorpus actually exhibited a greater reluctance to upgrade claims and con-tained a much higher frequency of hedges than the other disciplines in thecorpus. The degree of qualification in these texts thus indicates that authorsare often prepared to move beyond what may be safely assured to thetenuous and uncertain.


(12)

Basidiolichens produce basidiospores presumably in the same manner as...(MBT6)

It is believed that pili may function to overcome electrostatic repulsion...(MBT3)

This probably explains some of the outbreaks of ‘‘red mould disease’’ in slicedand wrapped bread. (MBT4)

Although the initial stimulus leading to the accumulation of cyclic AMP maydiffer from that involved in heat activation, the rise in cyclic AMP itself appearsto be the metabolic event that actually causes the shift from dormancy togermination by enzyme activation. (MBT7)

Such examples suggest that, in addition to a student audience, writers maybe aware of the expert readership which evaluates, recommends and usescoursebooks (Swales 1995), thus necessitating protection against possiblerefutation. In addition however, authors are perhaps alive to the role oftextbooks in socialising neophytes into the rhetorical practices of theirdiscipline. A cautious attitude to facts is critical to doing science and toacquiring an appropriate cognitive schema. It appears that microbiologystudents may be at a greater advantage in this respect than their peers inthe two other disciplines examined.

Not only did the textbooks and RAs contrast in terms of writers’ expressedapproach towards facts, but the use of attitude, relational and person markersalso reveals a markedly different interpersonal stance between genres anddisciplines. The relative absence of person markers in the textbooks, forexample, immediately suggests a distinct writer–reader relationship to thattypically cultivated in the research texts and this is supported by the greateruse of relation markers. The pragmatic value of these devices is to bring thereader directly into the discourse as a text participant, and in the RAs thisgenerally takes the form of rhetorical questions about the topic, or the useof imperatives to engage the readers or selectively focus their attention:

(12)

... to what extent does this invalidate the use of the CAT with candidates ofdifferent backgrounds? (AL2)

What information do purchasers regard as important when choosing a publicrelations consultant? (MK2)

To see the intuition behind our result, consider the smallest and largestdiscounts... (MK1)

It needs to be noted that the quality of the tapes varies. (AL3)

Consider the following excerpts from an EC paper. (AL7)

20 K. Hyland

Such uses are typically seen as treating readers as equals with the writer bydrawing them into the discussion (Webber 1994: 264), but while imperativesand questions also occur in the textbooks, professional deference is largelyreplaced by a less egalitarian relationship. This is based on an unequaldistribution of disciplinary knowledge so when the writer explicitlyaddresses the reader it is often in the role of primary-knower:

(13)

Now, let’s look at the size of stores and how they are owned... (MKT7)

By this point you have probably realised that doing good research is not easy.As a result, it shouldn’t surprise you that many research projects are donepoorly. You should also be aware that some research is intentionally mislead-ing. (MKT6)

... the examples here will give you a general idea of what we mean by linguisticstrategies of involvement. (ALT4)

As you read this excerpt, pay particular attention to the roles that each studentassumes and the structure of the student–student interaction. Try to describethe type of language that is generated and the type of language functions thatare carried out. Also, assess the extent to which this type of student–studentinteraction creates opportunities for students to use language for classroomlearning and second language acquisition. (ALT6)

You may think that because it has passed through an animal’s digestive tract,every... (MBT2)

This unequal relationship also permits textbook authors greater freedomin expressing their opinions towards propositional content. Overall, thefrequency of attitude markers was similar in the two genres and mainlyconsisted of examples which emphasised the authors’ judgements of import-ance or their reactions to results:

(14)

Further, it would be of interest to compare the results obtained using themethod... (MK3)

Nevertheless, it is interesting because it shows a reduction which does notfollow... (AL3)

This is not too surprising...... (MBT6)

These are extremely important in academic writing where they can be used asa.. (ALT1)

The textbook authors however intruded far more into their texts to offerexplicitly evaluative comments or to expressly suggest courses of actionthrough the use of modals of obligation:


(15)

Their most recent find was the rare zygomycete, Heliococephalum. And Iexpect more novelties to turn up in the years ahead. (MBT2)

The author cannot support either extreme position since he believes neitherapproach is always correct. (MKT4)

My own view is that Krashen’s hypotheses do not, on closer inspection,conform to the three linguistic questions. (ALT5)

In one sense comprehensible input is so blindingly obvious that is has to betrue, ... (ALT5)

‘‘Cohesion’’ and ‘‘coherence’’ are common terms that need to be considered inteaching... (ALT2)

The cost of implementing this plan must, of course, be related to the expectedpayoff. (MKT2)

Again, there is a clear implication here that the writer is an expert in fullcommand of the topic informing an audience which is both less knowl-edgeable and which requires minimal professional deference.

In sum, the various distinctive aspects of metadiscourse in the two genresindicate clear differences of purpose and audience. The textbooks werecharacterised by an elaborate discursive style that clearly ordered materialand elucidated propositional connections, and an interpersonal stance thatemphasised an expert role towards both information and readers. Theresearch writers, on the other hand, typically addressed their readers asexperts and used both textual and interpersonal metadiscourse to draw onshared understandings and emphasise solidarity. So while the patterns ofmetadiscourse in the textbooks sought to clarify and inform, those of RAsserved to exclude outsiders and allow writers to control the knowledge theyconstructed.

Conclusions and Implications

This analysis suggests that the primary goal of textbooks authors is tomake intellectual content accessible rather than to provide undergraduateswith the means to interact effectively with other community members. Thuswhile the metadiscourse practices employed to facilitate knowledge transfercan make textbooks easier to read, the different strategies used in RAs maymean that students find it difficult to refer to the research literature in theirstudies or to develop appropriate rhetorical skills. The differences discussedhere therefore emphasise the pedagogical limitations of employing textbookextracts in courses for academic research writing and serve to underminetheir utility as complementary sources of content knowledge when usedwith RAs. In other words, students need to be steered away from using

22 K. Hyland

textbooks as models. Too close a familiarity with the ways that textbooksaddress readers, organise material and present facts may mean that learnersare poorly prepared when assigned research articles by their subject lec-turers or ESP teachers or when asked to write argumentative prose.

Essentially, textbooks provide students with little understanding of themeta-textual requirements of an academic audience or show how argumentsare constructed to anticipate the reactions of a relatively egalitarian com-munity of peers. But while undergraduates are not expected to participate inprofessional dialogues, they nevertheless have to gain control of appropriateargument forms in both their reading of research materials and in persuasivewriting in order to participate in particular intellectual arenas.

Problems of reading relate to the fact that learning a discipline throughthe linguistic forms of textbooks does not introduce students to the fullrange of conventions within which the socio-cultural system of the disciplineis encoded. All language use is a social and communicative activity so, inaddressing readers in this way, textbooks inevitably develop a rather skewedview of disciplinary practice: offering explicit assistance in extracting infor-mation but providing only minimal training in the kinds of relationsemployed in research discourse and the social functions of academic argu-ment. With regard to writing, appropriate use of metadiscourse plays animportant part in creating successful texts. An awareness of audience isrecognised as crucial to the development of effective argument strategies(Johns 1993; Park 1986), but a lack of appropriate metadiscourse knowledgemeans students are likely to produce writer-based prose. Because manytertiary students experience difficulty in adapting their prose for readers(Cheng & Steffensen 1996; Redd-Boyd & Slater 1989) it seems vital thatthey should receive appropriate models of argument to allow them to practicewriting within the socio-rhetorical framework of a given discipline.

Finally, while this paper has focused mainly on genre differences, it isclear that some features of textbook metadiscourse are ‘intertextual’ in thesense they reflect an indebtedness to a specialised literature. On the basisof this admittedly small sample, the data suggests that students of appliedlinguistics, for example, are likely to gain an understanding of authorialstance in research writing through exposure to the appropriate use of personmarkers and citation practices. Marketing students, on the other hand, maylearn something of how research writers in their discipline typically addressreaders through attitude and relational markers. In biology the inclusion ofhedges in textbooks may assist undergraduates in acquiring an appropriateschema of scientific research through an understanding of the provisionalnature of academic claims. Thus while audience and context significantlyinfluence the language required for argument and the background knowl-edge that can be appealed to, textbooks are not blandly uniform and, invarious ways, partly represent the discourse of their parent cultures.

These differences remind us that discourse communities are not mono-lithic entities. They include groups of individuals at various levels of experi-ence and stages of membership, from apprentices to experts, who may


participate at different levels of engagement and in various genres of inter-action. However, while textbook authors principally address the potentialprocessing problems of an uninitiated readership in representing disci-plinary subject matter, embedded in the conventions of this genre we alsoglimpse the ways that students may be enculturated into the discoursalpractices of their new disciplinary communities.

(Revised version received June 1997)

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(Revised version received June 1997)

Appendix: Textbook and Article Corpus

Textbooks

MicrobiologyAlexopoulos, C., & Mims, C. (1993). Introductory mycology (3rd ed.). John Wiley.Atlas, R. M. (1989). Microbiology: fundamentals and applications (2nd ed.). Macmillan.Brock, T. & Madigan, M. (1994). Biology of micro-organism (7th ed). Prentice Hall.Kendrick, B. (1992). The fifth kingdom (2nd ed.). Focus Information Group.Koneman, E. et al. (1992). Colour atlas and textbook of diagnostic microbiology (4th ed.). Lippin-

cott.Moore-Landecker, E. (1990). Fundamentals of the Fungi (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall.Onions, A., Allsopp, D., & Eggins, H. (1981). Smith's introduction to industrial mycology (7th

ed). Edward Arnold.

MarketingCateora, P. R. (1990). International marketing (7th ed.). Irwin.Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (1994). Principles of marketing (6th ed.). Prentice Hall.Lovelock, C.H. (1991). Services Marketing (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall.Luck, D., Ferrell, O., & Lucas, G. (1989). Marketing strategy and plans (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall.Lusch, R., & Lusch, V. (1987). Principles of marketing. Kent Publishing.McCarthy, E., & Perreault, W. (1990). Basic marketing: a management approach. Irwin.Stanton, W., Etzel, M., & Walker, B. (1994). Fundamentals of marketing (10th ed.). McGraw

Hill.

LinguisticsBloor, T., & Bloor, M. (1995). The functional analysis of english: a Hallidayan approach. Arnold.Brown, H. D. (1994). Principles of language learning and teaching (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall.Cook, V. (1993). Linguistics and second language acquisition. St Martins Press.Holmes, J. (1992). An introduction to sociolinguistics. Longman.Johnson, K. (1995). Understanding communication in second language classrooms. CUP.Schiffrin, D. (1994). Approaches to discourse. Blackwell.Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. (1995). Intercultural communication. Blackwell.

Journals

MicrobiologyApplied and Environmental MicrobiologyMolecular MicrobiologyWorld Journal of Microbiology & BiotechnologyCurrent Microbiology

26 K. Hyland

Journal of Industrial MicrobiologyApplied Microbiology & BiotechnologyInternational Journal of Food Microbiology

MarketingMarketing ScienceJournal of Marketing ManagementJournal of the Academy of Marketing ScienceJournal of Marketing ResearchJournal of MarketingJournal of International Consumer MarketingInternational Journal of Research in Marketing

Applied LinguisticsInternational Review of Applied LinguisticsApplied LinguisticsEnglish for Specific PurposesResearch in the Teaching of EnglishTESOL QuarterlySystemSecond Language Research

Ken Hyland is an Associate Professor at The City University of HongKong. He has a PhD from the University of Queensland and has taught inBritain, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand.His articles on language teaching, academic discourse and written com-munication have appeared in several international journals.