Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, cilt.1, sa.1, ss.15-26, 2012 (Scopus)
This study investigates metadiscourse in the dissertation abstracts written by Native Speakers of Turkish (NST),
Turkish Speakers of English (TSE) and Native Speakers of English (NSE) in the Social Sciences to determine
how they make use of metadiscourse devices. It attempts to determine whether student writers from a shared
cultural background (Turkish) tend to use similar rhetorical features to those of their mother tongue or harmonise
themselves with the language (English) in which they are writing. Metadiscourse as a rhetorical device for the
effective use of language facilitates writers in guiding their readers, conveying their ideas, establishing and
determining the social distance of the reader-writer relationship, and creating an involved style of writer persona
or a more remote stance. In that sense, interactive resources employed by writers help readers to find the
information needed and interactional resources convey to readers the personality of the writers and their
assertions. In addition, using ‘more personal’ resources is a way of keeping readers more intentionally within the
text to interpret what is proposed by the writers personally and to judge them. The overall aim of the study is to
compare and contrast 90 abstracts of dissertations produced by native Turkish speakers (30), native English
speakers (30) and Turkish speakers of English (30) in the Social Sciences and to consider how writing in English
(L2) deviates from writing in Turkish (L1) and becomes closer to the target language in terms of the
metadiscourse elements, that is, interactive resources (transitions, frame markers, endophoric markers,
evidentials and code glosses) and interactional resources (hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagement
markers and self-mentions).