Metadiscourse in Arabic and English Research Article Abstracts

Abstract

The rhetorical device of metadiscourse has been perceived to be crucial in understanding the dynamic nature of theacademic text. Studies on this rhetorical strategy in Arabic academic texts or in those written by Arabic-speakingwriters are limited. This study fills this gap by examining 44 paired abstracts (Arabic and English) published inEnglish research articles by Arab scholars. Using Hyland’s (2005) model, the findings indicate the overuse ofinteractive markers compared to the interactional ones in both sets of abstracts. Within the interactive category,Arabic abstracts relied on transition markers while their English counterparts relied on frame markers andcode-glosses. Regarding the interactional category, the English texts employed them more with exception toself-mentions as they were given similar attention in both language groups.