Metadiscursive Nouns in Doctoral Dissertations: A Comparison of Native and Nonnative Speakers of English

Year 2019, Volume: 15 Issue: 1, 74 - 87, 25.03.2019

Fatma Yuvayapan

https://doi.org/10.17244/eku.458121

Cited By: 2

Abstract

In today's academic world, speaking to readers and
creating a credible authorial self in academic texts by means of linguistic
devices are essential to become a competent member of an academic discipline.
Among these linguistic devices, metadiscourse receives a prominent place.
Studies have suggested the key role of metadiscourse in achieving a persuasive
academic claim-making. Surprisingly, far too little attention has been paid to
the role of nouns in this process. Considering this gap, this study explicated
the use of metadiscursive nouns in doctoral dissertations written by American
academic writers of English and Turkish-speaking academics of English in a
corpus of 60 doctoral dissertations by using the taxonomy of metadiscursive
nouns suggested by Jiang and Hyland (2016). Specifically, it focused on how
these nouns were employed by native and nonnative academic writers of English
to signal their authorial stance in their doctoral dissertations. The frequency
analysis was performed through Wordsmith Tool 6.0. Log likelihood statistic was
applied to find out whether there was a statistical difference between these
two groups of academic authors regarding the use of metadiscursive nouns. The
results showed that both groups of academic writers displayed similarities on
the overall use of metadiscoursive nouns. In terms of categorical use, similar
employment of metadiscursive nouns was also observed between the two corpora.
Entity was the most frequently applied category, which was followed by
attribute and relation. The frequency counts of these linguistic devices
revealed their prominent role in establishing interaction in academic genres by
offering writers a way of organizing their texts and mitigating their stance.
Hence, they might be integrated to the curricula of academic writing courses.

Keywords

Academic writing, Doctoral dissertations, Metadiscursive nouns

Doktora Tezlerinde Üstsöylem İsimleri: Anadili İngilizce ve Anadili İngilizce Olmayan Yazarların Karşılaştırılması

Abstract

Günümüz
akademik dünyasında, çeşitli dilsel ögeler kullanarak okuyucularla iletişim
kurmak ve akademik yazılarda kabul edilir bir yazar duruşu sağlamak, akademik
disiplinlerde etkin bir üye olmak için gereklidir. Bu dilsel ögeler arasında
üstsöylem ögeleri önemli bir yere sahiptir. Araştırmalar üstsöylem ögelerinin
ikna edici sav desteklemedeki anahtar rolünü ortaya koymuştur. Fakat isimlerin
bu süreçteki rolü çok az incelenmiştir. Bu bağlamda, bu çalışmada üstsöylem
isimlerinin rolü Amerikalı akademik yazarlar ve Türk akademik yazarlar
tarafından yazılan 60 doktora tezinden oluşan bir derlemde Jiang ve Hyland
(2016) tarafından oluşturulan bir taksonomi kullanılarak incelenmiştir.
Özellikle, üstsöylem isimlerinin anadili İngilizce olan ve anadili İngilizce
olmayan yazarlar tarafından yazar duruşunu sağlamak amacıyla nasıl kullanıldığı
araştırılmıştır. Analiz Wordsmith Tool 6.0. programı kullanılarak yapılmıştır.
Log-likelihood analizi de bu iki grup yazar arasında üstsöylem ögelerinin
kullanımına yönelik istatiksel fark olup olmadığı bulmak amacıyla yapılmıştır.
Sonuçlar bu iki grup yazar arasında üstsöylem isimlerinin genel kullanımında
fark olmadığını göstermiştir. Kategorik açıdan da benzer kullanımlar
görülmüştür. Tüzellik kategorisi en çok kullanılan kategoridir ve bu kategoriyi
atıf yapma ve ilişki kurma kategorileri takip etmiştir. Bu dilbilimsel ögelerin
derlemdeki sıklıkla kullanımı, onların akademik yazım türlerinde organizasyonu
ve yazar duruşunu oluşturarak iletişimi sağlamaktaki önemli rolünü ortaya
göstermiştir. Bu nedenle, bu ögeler akademik yazım derslerinin müfredatlarına
eklenebilir.

Keywords

Akademik yazım, Doktora tezleri, Üstsöylem isimleri

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