Based on the current researching status of metadiscursive nouns at home and abroad, this research elaborates on exploring what, how, and why metadiscursive nouns are used to mediate writer-reader interaction between Chinese writers and native English writers, which mainly has the following three-aspect significance：
(1) For Chinese English scholars, having a better command of proper language resources, especially noun resources in academic writings, is the basis and assurance of academic success. With appropriate noun resources, the information we provide in the academic papers will be more persuasive and acceptable. Meanwhile, metadiscursive nouns are a necessary bridge for us to interact with readers, assisting us in showing our positions and stances, and arguing for ourselves. We use metadiscursive nouns in academic discourse to negotiate opinions and to establish consistent author-reader relationships. Therefore, it is important to compare and analyze the differences in the practice of metadiscursive nouns between Chinese writers and native English authors. The findings of this investigation could help academic writers employ more appropriate functions of metadiscursive nouns, leading them to form more persuasive academic papers.
Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Concepts Related to Metadiscursive Nouns
For a pretty long period of time, linguistic experts and language specialists have been interested in different aspects that nouns can perform in discourse or syntax. This section reviews the major concepts by various scholars whose connotations are related to metadiscursive nouns. These noun-derived concepts partly function as metadiscursive nouns, with a primary focus on roles of cohesive linking between language fragments.
2.1.1 Container Nouns
Vendler (1967, 1968) is the earliest one who proposed a term as “container nouns,” whose function is quite similar to metadiscursive nouns, when he tried to differ facts from events with a philosophical view. He explained the essence of container nouns like this: the selection of a copula verb with nouns like fact or idea can function syntactically as containers for that-clauses, for example, in the sentence “That he died is a fact” (Vendler, 1968, p. 73). Vendler noticed that container nouns as “duty” and “possibility” are likely to be followed by a to-clause, and “fact” and “idea” by a that-clause. He summarized this syntactic pattern as this: “container noun is nominalization” or “nominalization is container nouns.”
Vendler was among the first who probed into the function of nominalization or clause acting as a noun, a valuable complement to other nouns. Nonetheless, he made little effort to cover the full range of nouns that can function as containers.
Scholars like Menzel (1975), Montague (1979), and Asher (1993) followed Vendler’s steps as well afterward, exploring container nouns from a somewhat similar perspective. Still, none of them probed into th
