The Importance and Role of Interactive Meta-discourse Markers in Discourse Study of Persian Scientific Articles

Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی

Authors
1 University of Sistan & Baluchestan
2 Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies
Abstract
The study of scientific articles, as the main genre of scientific productions and an important means of information exchange among the members of the scientific community, has received increasing attention during the past few decades. In scientific discourse study, textual structure and coherence require the writers to use various meta-discourse markers, including interactive and interactional meta-discourse markers, and their appropriate strategies. In the current research, the category of interactive meta-discourse marker based on Hyland's model is studied. We use a corpus-based approach to analyze Persian scientific research articles in the field of humanities and to find out the importance and role of interactive meta-discourse elements in Persian scientific papers.

For this purpose, we randomly select and analyze 800 abstracts of scientific research articles from 16 fields of humanities from the Comprehensive Portal of Humanities. Examining the data reveals the importance of the use of meta-discourse in the text in such a way that approximately one marker of interactive meta-discourse marker is found among every 15 words. Also, the analysis of the corpus indicates that frame markers are the most frequently used interactive meta-discourse marker in the corpus, and transition and code glosses are in the next rank with a little distance from frame markers. Endophoric and evidentials markers obtained the lowest frequency in the corpus. At the end, suggestions and corrections are provided to make Hyland’s concept more compatible with the discourse features of Persian scientific articles.

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Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 13 July 2025