The term, metadiscourse, was first coined by Zellig Harris in 1959, who defined it as way of understanding language in use, representing a writer ’s or speaker’s attempt to guide a receiver ’s perception of a text (H arris, 1970). Since then, the definition of metadiscourse has undergone a variety of interpretations.
The researchers following Harris believed that the term, metadiscourse, has close links with Halliday’s functional view of language. Thus, metadiscourse was a major tool in realizing the two metafunctions: interpersonal and textual ones. According to Williams (1981), writers communicated with the readers on two levels, namely, on the level of primary discourse and on the level of metadiscourse. Based on this, Williams (1981: 47) defined metadiscourse as “discourse about discoursing”. V ande Kopple (1985: 83) had a similar definition of metadiscourse as follows:
Adel (2006) noted the deviation in the definition and attributed it to two different research areas: one adopting a narrow definition (reflexive model in ?del’s (2010) term) and the other ad opting a broad definition (interactive model in ?del’s (2010) term). According to ?del (2010 ), the na rrow definition is concerned with that metadiscourse, as discourse about discour se, was the explication of the writer ’s awareness of the text itself . On the other hand, the broad definition referred to the language that indicated the interaction between the writer and the reader.
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2.2 Metadiscourse in Business Discourse
Hyland (2005) pointed out that business discour se works to create that point of view . The use of metadiscourse in writing was an effective way in engaging the stakeholders, including customers, shareholders, regulato rs etc and to help to c reate a pos itive corporate, personal or product im age, and with this kind of engagem ent, better persuasion can be achieved. This statem ent proved to be true in the study of metadiscourse across different business genres. Bhatia (1993) found that in the genre of mail sales promotion letters, frame markers, imperatives and hedges were the key elements that engage reader s and lead them to buy or s upport the product. Another case of metadiscourse used in advertis ement is the study of Fuertes-Olivera et al in 2001, which proved that those MDs were extens ively used in advertising slogans and headlines to convey a persuasive m essage under an informative mask. In the genre of magazine advertising, metadiscourse assisted copywriters in crea ting solidarity with readers to achieve rhetorical, and ultimately commercial, objectives. Its feasibility has also been proved in othe r genres, like com pany annual reports. Hyland (1998) compared the usage pattern of MDs in CEO’s letters and com pany’s annual reports and analyzed the function of these item s from the perspective of logos, pathos and ethos. It turned out that MDs occurred qu ite frequently in business text and the rhetorical power of metadiscourse was that it helped companies to create a reliable and amiable image and thus it is m ore likely that the customers were persuaded. Xie’ s (2012) finding suggests that in business negotiation context, communicative intention of the speakers could largely determine the function of MDs.
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CHAPTER THREE THEO RETIC FOUNDATION .................. 14
3.1 Communication in Business English as Lingua Franca..
