STANCE AND ENGAGEMENT DISCOURSE MARKERS IN JOURNAL’S “AUTHOR GUIDELINES”

Over the past decade, there has been an increasing interest in the study of interactional metadiscourse markers in different contexts. However, not much research has been conducted about the discourse of journal author guidelines, especially the use of meta-discourse markers in this genre. Therefore, this corpus-based study had three main aims: 1) to delve deep into the types, frequencies and functions of stance and engagement markers based on Fu’s (2012) interactional metadiscourse taxonomy, 2) to compare the distribution of stance and engagement features in journal author guidelines and 3) to investigate whether there is a significant difference between macro/micro interactional metadiscourse markers in journal author guidelines. A corpus of 280 author guidelines produced by seven leading international academic publishers in eight academic sub-disciplines in the humanities and social sciences was compiled and analyzed. The results of the analysis showed that engagement features (reader-oriented) enjoyed higher frequency of use in journal author guidelines. Moreover, the difference between the frequency of stance and engagement features was statistically significant. Furthermore, differences reported between macro and micro interactional metadiscourse were statistically significant. The extensive use of macro interactional metadiscourse markers indicated a high degree of interactionality of journal author guidelines. The present study gives us considerable insight into the dialogic nature of a totally neglected academic genre.