investigation of (meta)discourse markers in elt coursebooks

the present study aimed to investigate representation of discourse markers and metadiscourse markers in conversations and readings of general elt coursebook series used in the language centers of iran. to this aim, four elt coursebooks popularly taught in language centers of this country were analyzed based on fung and carter’s (2007) framework regarding discourse markers and hyland’s (2005) framework regarding metadiscourse markers. chi-square tests of significance were used to probe any significant difference among the four series and also within each series concerning the use of the main categories of discourse and metadiscourse markers based on the two models. the findings from the study displayed the discourse and metadiscourse markers representations in three levels of the corpora, and also revealed significant differences within each coursebook series as well as across the four series concerning the use of these markers. the findings may have pedagogical implications for course designers in making informed decisions as to proper coursebooks in language programs, for teachers in providing them with useful insights into the nature of the coursebooks they are to teach, and by extension for students who need to learn the use of discourse and metadiscourse markers through textbooks.