A Corpus-based Study of Metadiscoursal Boosters in the Abstracts of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Theses Written in Thailand and in Inner-circle Countries
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Proceedings from 55th Kasetsart University Annual Conference |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | http://annualconference.ku.ac.th/ |
| Keywords | boosters; metadiscourse; abstracts; theses; Applied Linguistics; Linguistics; inner-circle countries |
| Description | This corpus-based study investigated the use of boosters, markers of certainty used to increase the force of propositional content of an utterance, found in the English abstracts of linguistics and applied linguistics master theses written in Thailand and in inner-circle countries. A representative sample of 80 abstracts of master theses was separately complied and constituted as comparable corpora. The abstracts written by the two groups of writers were then compared using the well-recognized list proposed by Hyland (2005). The functional analysis together with contextual consideration revealed both similarities and differences of the rhetorical behaviors of these two groups of authors. Overall, there was a noticeable inclination in the higher use of boosters by Thai authors, particularly the verbal category of boosters. The differences of uses might be attributable by an awareness of rhetorical necessity in academic writing sensitized by both writer groups as well as by a culturally-based norm of academic writing inhered in the disciplinary genre of abstracts of theses. The pedagogical implication of this study can be beneficial to academic writing course particularly ESL and EFL writing classes. |
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