A Contrastive Study of Metadiscourse in English and Persian Editorials

انگيزه اصلي اين پژوهش مقابله اي ، از نياز به كنكاش بيشتر درباره ي تاثير عوامل فرهنگي و قواعد ژانري بر استفاده از عناصر فراگفتماني بر مي خيزد. در راستاي چنين انگيزه اي پيكره اي مشتمل بر 60 سر مقاله (انگليسي و فارسي) از 10 روزنامه ي ايراني و آمريكايي انتخاب شده و بر اساس الگوي فراگفتماني هايلند (2005) مورد تجزيه و تحليل قرار گرفت. از ميان نتايج تجزيه و تحليل ، مي توان به نقش مهم نشان گرهاي عاطفي ، به عنوان يكي از زير مقوله هاي عناصر فراگفتمان ، در ايجاد فضاي اقناعي اشاره نمود. به طور كلي ، نتايج حاصله نشان داد كه قواعد ژانري نقشي تعيين كننده بر استفاده ي مولفان اين ژانر داشته اند و اين باعث برخي شباهتها در استفاده از اين عناصر شده است. تفاوتهايي نيز در چگونگي استفاده از اين عناصر بين مولفان ايراني و آمريكايي مشاهده شد كه در پرتو تفاوتهاي فرهنگي و زباني مورد تحليل قرار كرفت

The original impetus for this cross-linguistic study came from a need to explore the effect of cultural factors and generic conventions on the use and distribution of metadiscourse within a single genre. To this end, the study as a contrastive rhetoric research, examined a corpus of 60 newspaper editorials (written in English and Persian) culled from 10 elite newspapers in America and Iran. Based on Hyland’s (2005) model of metadiscourse, both interactive and interactional metadiscourse resources were analyzed. The results disclosed that genre conventions had a determining role in the writers’ choice of some metadiscourse resources that contributed to some similarities in the use and distribution of metadiscourse resources across English and Persian data. In addition, some differences were found between two sets of editorials which were attributed to cultural/linguistic backgrounds of both groups of editorialists. The interactional category and attitude markers proved to be the predominant metadiscourse category and subcategory in newspaper editorials genre. Overall, the findings suggested that metadiscourse has a decisive role in the construction of persuasion in newspaper editorials genre.