Abstract
Abstract
This study investigated meta-discourse markers of voice in humanities research articles based on Hyland’s classification. The research questions were: a) What lexical tools are used to express author's voice and how frequent are they? b) Are there significant differences between the use of hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self-mentions, pronouns, and directives? Authors' uses of discourse markers of voice were coded and quantified. These expressions were compared across types of meta-discourse categories. The data included fifty randomly-selected research articles published in indexed Iranian journals in the last decade. The research method was a mix of qualitative (text analysis) and quantitative procedures (frequency counting and statistics). The results showed that 1) in Persian articles written in the humanities, hedges for the cautious expression of statements, boosters for definite expression of ideas, and attitude markers for the expression of author's feelings about his propositions were the most frequently used type of discourse markers, 2) the use of first person pronouns to express the author's voice clearly, pronouns referring to the reader of the article and directives were very infrequently observed, and 3) inferential tests showed that frequencies were significantly (p≤0.5) different across type of stance and engagement markers.
Main Subjects
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