Interactive and Interactional Markers in ISI and NonISI Applied Linguistic Journal Articles Written by Iranian Authors: A Contrastive MetaDiscourse Analysis of Method Section

Metadiscourse as a selfreflective linguistic tool has received considerable attention in recent years. Besides, it plays a leading role in exploring variations in the way authors pen a manuscript. The present study aims at investigating variations in the use of both interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers among ISI and nonISI articles written by Iranian authors in the field of Applied Linguistics. The corpora in the present study comprised a total of 8 Research Articles (RAs) in ISI and nonISI journals published in 2016 and 2017. We described the distribution of interactive and interactional markers in Method sections using Hyland’s (2005) model as a framework. The results of the quantitative analysis disclosed that genre expectations of journals had a determining role in the writers’ choice of some metadiscourse markers. Owing to this fact, similarities were found in the use and distribution of metadiscourse markers across ISI and nonISI data. In addition, a significant difference was found between the types of interactive metadiscourse markers as used in ISI and nonISI journals. Moreover, the findings revealed similarities in employing the type of interactional metadiscourse markers in our corpora. Our study may promise some pedagogical implications for material development and English for Specific Purposes (ESP).