IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sagope/v11y2021i2p21582440211008870.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Metadiscourse and Voice Construction in Discussion Sections in BA Theses by Chinese University Students Majoring in English

Author

Listed:
  • Jian-E Peng
  • Yuting Zheng

Abstract

Voice is considered essential in academic writing, and metadiscourse is an important device contributing to voice. This study explores the use of metadiscourse and voice construction in Bachelor of Arts (BA) theses written at the onset and final stages by university undergraduates majoring in English in China. A corpus consisting of the discussion sections in the first and final versions of 35 BA theses was built, annotated, and analyzed. Two academics from this university were then invited to evaluate 10 pairs of the texts and specify textual elements that conveyed voice and to provide further comments in a follow-up interview. Results showed that the students used significantly more evidentials, hedges, and boosters in the final versions. The reviewers perceived minor growth in voice strength from the sample texts, and they commented that both content-related features and metadiscourse contributed to voice. This study highlights the importance of cultivating undergraduates’ awareness of voice construction and the use of metadiscourse in academic writing.

Suggested Citation

  • Jian-E Peng & Yuting Zheng, 2021. "Metadiscourse and Voice Construction in Discussion Sections in BA Theses by Chinese University Students Majoring in English," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(2), pages 21582440211, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:11:y:2021:i:2:p:21582440211008870
    DOI: 10.1177/21582440211008870
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440211008870
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/21582440211008870?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ghuzayyil Mohammed Al-Otaibi & Abeer Abdulhadi Hussain, 2024. "The use of interactional metadiscourse markers by Saudi EFL male and female college students: the case of a gender-sensitive topic," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-14, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:11:y:2021:i:2:p:21582440211008870. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.