Identification of metadiscourse markers in bachelor’s degree theses in Spanish: Introduction of a text mining tool

• Carla Míguez-Álvarez ^[1] ; Luis G. Varela ^[1] ; Miguel Cuevas-Alonso ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidade de Vigo

     Universidade de Vigo

     Vigo, España

     
• Localización: Revista española de lingüística aplicada, ISSN 0213-2028, Vol. 36, no. 1, 2023, págs. 329-351
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.1075/resla.20055.mig
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen

  • This article introduces a text mining tool that can automatically extract information using Hyland’s analysis model as a theoretical framework to analyse the use and characteristics of metadiscourse in large quantities of academic texts. To verify its validity, we present the results obtained using this tool on various bachelor’s degree theses with a particular focus on the field of engineering. Our results on a 6.9 million-word corpus extracted from 680 bachelor’s theses available online show that interactive metadiscourse markers are prevalent in engineering bachelor’s theses as well as in the authors’ metadiscourse patterns. In addition, we compared our results with previous research on metadiscourse markers. Our study can be used to identify the usage of various types of metadiscourse markers during the production of texts and for the development of software applications involving quantitative linguistic methods for the production of academic texts.

• Referencias bibliográficas
  • Ädel, A. (2006). Metadiscourse in L1 and L2 English. John Benjamins.
  • Akbarpour, M., & Sadeghoghli, H. (2015). The study on Ken Hyland’s interactional model in OUP publications. International Journal of Language...
  • Alexa, M., & Zuell, C. (2000). Text analysis software: Commonalities, differences and limitations: The results of a review. Quality and...
  • Ananiadou, S., & McNaught, J. (2005). Text mining for biology and biomedicine. Artech House.
  • Anthony, L. (2012). AntConc (Version 3.3.5) [computer software]. Waseda University. Available from http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/
  • Anthony. (2013). A critical look at software tools in corpus linguistics. Linguistic Research 30(2), 141–161.
  • Azorín, F., & Sánchez-Crespo, J.L. (1986). Métodos y aplicaciones del muestreo [sampling methods and applications]. Alianza.
  • Barlow, M. (2000). MonoConc Pro (Version 2.2) [computer software]. Available from http://www.athel.com/mono.html
  • Behnam, B., & Mollanaghizadeh, N. (2015). A comparative study of metadiscourse markers in some selected news programs on VOA: The case...
  • Breeze, R. (2016). Negotiating alignment in newspaper editorials: The role of concur-counter patterns. Pragmatics, 26(1), 1–19.
  • Cheaffer, R.L., Mendenhall, W., & Ott, L. (2007). Elementos de muestreo (6th ed.). [elements of sampling]. Grupo Editorial Iberoamérica.
  • Cohen, A.M., & Hersh, W.R. (2005). A survey of current work in biomedical text mining. Briefings in Bioinformatics, 6(1), 57–71.
  • Crismore, A. (1983). Metadiscourse: What it is and how it is used in school and non-school social science texts. Retrieved from https://books.google.es/books?id=NfHmnAAACAAJ
  • Crismore, A., & Farnsworth, R. (1990). Metadiscourse in popular and professional science discourse. In W. Nash (Ed.), The writing scholar:...
  • De la Calle, G., García-Remesal, M., Nkumu-Mbomio, N., Kulikowski, C., & Maojo, V. M. (2012). e-MIR2: A public online inventory of medical...
  • Hyland, K. (1998). Persuasion and context: The pragmatics of academic metadiscourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 30(4), 437–455.
  • Hyland, K. (1999). Talking to students: metadiscourse in introductory course books. English for Specific Purposes, 18(1), 3–26.
  • Hyland, K. (2005). Metadiscourse: Exploring interaction in writing. Bloomsbury Publishing. Metadiscourse markers in Spanish: A text mining...
  • Hyland, K. (2010). Metadiscourse: Mapping interactions in academic writing. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 9(2), 125–143.
  • Hyland, K., & Tse, P. (2004). Metadiscourse in academic writing: A reappraisal. Applied Linguistics, 25(2), 156–177.
  • Ivorra Pérez, F. M. (2014). Cultural values and their correlation with interactional metadiscourse strategies in Spanish and US business websites....
  • Jiang, F. K., & Hyland, K. (2017). Metadiscursive nouns: Interaction and cohesion in abstract moves. English for Specific Purposes, 46,...
  • Jin, X., & Shang, Y. (2016). Analyzing metadiscourse in the English abstracts of BA theses. Journal of Language Teaching & Research,...
  • Kilgarriff, A., & Grefenstette, G. (2003). Introduction to the special issue on the web as corpus. Computational Linguistics, 29(3), 333–347.
  • Kuhi, D., & Mojood, M. (2014). Metadiscourse in newspaper genre: A cross-linguistic study of English and Persian editorials. Procedia...
  • Kuteeva, M., & Mauranen, A. (2018). Digital academic discourse: Texts and contexts. Introduction. Discourse, Context & Media, 24,...
  • Le, E. (2004). Active participation within written argumentation: Metadiscourse and editorialist’s authority. Journal of Pragmatics, 36(4),...
  • Lee, J. J., & Casal, J.E. (2014). Metadiscourse in results and discussion chapters: A crosslinguistic analysis of English and Spanish...
  • Lee, J. J., & Deakin, L. (2016). Interactions in L1 and L2 undergraduate student writing: Interactional metadiscourse in successful and...
  • Lin, K.L., & Evans, S. (2012). Structural patterns in empirical research articles: A crossdisciplinary study. English for Specific Purposes,...
  • Livingstone, S., & Lunt, P. (2013). Mediated frameworks for participation. In M. Böck & N. Pachler (Eds.), Multimodality and Social...
  • Mauranen, A. (2010). Discourse reflexivity – A discourse universal? Nordic Journal of English Studies, 9(2), 13–40.
  • McGrath, L., & Kuteeva, M. (2012). Stance and engagement in pure mathematics research articles: Linking discourse features to disciplinary...
  • Mur Dueñas, P. (2007). ‘I/we Focus on…’: A cross-cultural analysis of self-mentions in business management research articles. Journal of English...
  • Mur Dueñas, P. (2011). An intercultural analysis of metadiscourse features in research articles written in English and in Spanish. Journal...
  • Orgeira-Crespo, P., Míguez-Álvarez, C., Cuevas-Alonso, M., Doval-Ruiz, M. A. (2020). Decision algorithm for the automatic determination of...
  • Saidian, S., & Jalilifar, A. (2016). “Mayhem! Absolute Mayhem!” Exploring the promotional metadiscursive features in the sportscasts of...
  • Saki, M. (2019). Metadiscourse and stance-taking in prefaces: A diachronic analysis. In S. Carter-Thomas & C. E. Hamilton (Eds.), Science,...
  • Salager-Meyer, F. (1994). Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse. English for Specific Purposes, 13(2),...
  • Scott, M. (2012). WordSmith Tools (Version 5.0) [Computer Software]. Available from http:// www.lexically.net/software/index.htm
  • Shokouhi, H., Norwood, C. & Soltani, S. (2015). Evidential in Persian editorials. Discourse Studies, 17(4), 449–466.
  • Sorahi, M., & Shabani, M. (2016). Metadiscourse in Persian and English research article introductions. Theory and Practice in Language...
  • Suau Jiménez, F. (2015). Quality translation of hotel websites: Interpersonal discourse and customer’s engagement. Onomázein, 32, 152–170.
  • Tajeddin, Z., & Alemi, M. (2012). L2 learners’ use of metadiscourse markers in online discussion forums. Issues in Language Teaching (ILT),...
  • Thompson, S.K. (1992). Sampling. John Wiley & Sons.
  • Vande Kopple, W. J. (1985). Some exploratory discourse on metadiscourse. College Composition and Communication, 36, 63–94.
  • Vande Kopple, W. J. (2002). Metadiscourse, discourse, and issues in composition and rhetoric. In F. Barton & C. Stygall (Eds.), Discourse...
  • Wei, J., Li, Y., Zhou, T., & Gong, Z. (2016). Studies on metadiscourse since the 3rd millennium. Journal of Education and Practice, 7(9),...
  • Xiao, W., & Sun, S. (2020). Dynamic lexical features of PhD theses across disciplines: A text mining approach. Journal of Quantitative...
  • Yoon, H., & Römer, U. (2020). Quantifying disciplinary voices: An automated approach to interactional metadiscourse in successful student...
  • Zhang, M. (2019). Exploring personal metadiscourse markers across speech and writing using cluster analysis. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics,...