The Effect of Rhetorical Styles on Metadiscourse Choices of Culturally Diverse Authors

Abstract

There is a perception that the influence of culture-specific rhetorical styles means that academic writing can include a great deal of variety. This study aims to test this hypothesis by exploring the role of rhetorical styles in the choice of inter- actional metadiscourse by academic writers with different cultural backgrounds. Linguistics research article abstracts by L2 writers from Asian and Slavic countries were used in this contrastive study based on Hyland’s (2005a) model of metadiscourse. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis methods, the study revealed that English-language academic discourse by Slavic writers contained a larger number of hedges and attitude markers and a smaller number of boosters. In contrast to Slavic writers, Asian scholars left far fewer traces of themselves and took more explicitly involved positions. The paper contributes to intercultural pragmatics and may have some implications for English as a lingua franca in academic settings.