Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 10:4 (2019) ► pp.512–537

Interactional metadiscourse of gender in Persian

The case of conference presentations

| University of Isfahan | Sun Yat-sen University
| Jahrom University
The present study sets out to investigate an important aspect of gendered performance, namely, the presence of interactional metadiscourse in conference presentations delivered in Persian. The study pursues two primary objectives: firstly, to compare the quantity and quality of interactional metadiscourse markers as expressed by male and female academics; secondly, to investigate some other factors influencing the phenomenon under investigation. The data include twenty-four conference presentations by twelve males and twelve females. The quantitative analysis showed a statistically significant difference in the use of interactional metadiscourse by male and female presenters. However, the qualitative analysis helped the authors to identify more similarities than differences. In point of fact, such factors as academic status and nativeness had caused the speakers to use different metadiscourse strategies.
Keywords: gender, community of practice, conference presentation, interactional metadiscourse, core and peripheral members, professional identity, academic status
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Preliminaries
  • 3.Data and methods
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Analysis of the data
    • 5.1Hedges
    • 5.2Boosters
    • 5.3Attitude markers
    • 5.4Engagement markers
    • 5.5Self-mentions
  • 6.Gender and non-gender factors in interactional metadiscourse
    • 6.1Gender, conference presentation style and interactional metadiscourse
    • 6.2Gender, non-native presenters and Interactional metadiscourse
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 January 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.16049.amo
References
Ädel, Annelie
2006 Metadiscourse in L1 and L2 English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arundale, Robert B.
2006 “Face as relational and interactional: a communication framework for research on face, face work and politeness.” Journal of Politeness Research 21: 193–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Paul
2008 Language, Gender and Sexuality. London: Equinox.Google Scholar
Baker, Paul and Giuseppe Balirano
(eds) 2018 Queering Masculinities in Language and Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beeman, William O.
1986 Language, Status and Power in Iran. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Bergvall, Victoria L.
1999 “Towards a comprehensive theory of language and gender.’ Language in Society 281:273–293. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallace L.
1982 “Integration and Involvement in Speaking, Writing and Oral Literature.” In Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 35–53. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.Google Scholar
Coates, Jennifer
(ed) 1998 Language and Gender: A Reader. Oxford: Wiley.Google Scholar
2016 Women, Men, and Language: A Sociolinguistic Account of Gender differences in Language. (3rd ed.). London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Crismore, Avon
1984 “The rhetoric of textbooks: Metadiscourse” Journal of Curriculum Studies 16 (3): 279–296. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crismore, Avon, Raija Markkanen, and Margaret S. Steffensen
1993 “Metadiscourse in persuasive writing: A study of texts written by American and Finnish university students.” Written Communication 10 (1): 39–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dudley-Evans, Tony
1994 “Genre Analysis: An Approach to Text Analysis for ESP.” In Advances in Written Text Analysis, ed. by Malcolm Coulthard, 219–28. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet
1992 “Think practically and look locally: language and gender as community-based practice.” Annual Review of Anthropology 211: 461–90. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003 Language and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ehlich, Susan, Miriam Meyerhoff, and Janet Holmes
2014 The Handbook of language, Gender and Sexuality. (2nd edn.) Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel
1980 Power, knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Translated by Colin Gordon. Brighton: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
Francis, Becky, Jocelyn Robson and Barbara Read
2001 “An analysis of undergraduate writing styles in the context of gender and achievement.” Studies in Higher Education 26 (3): 313–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1981 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Anchor.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet
1988 “Paying compliments: a sex-preferred positive politeness strategy.” Journal of Pragmatics 12 (3): 445–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Janet and Miriam Meyerhoff
1999 “The community of practice: Theories and methodologies in language and gender research.” Language in Society 28(2): 173–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hyland, Ken
1996 “Talking to the academy: Forms of hedging in science research articles.” Written Communication 13 (2): 251–81. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1998 “Exploring corporate rhetoric: Metadiscourse in the CEO’s letter.” Journal of Business Communication 35(2): 224–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hyland, Ken and Polly Tse
2004 “Metadiscourse in academic writing: a reappraisal.” Applied Linguistics 25 (2): 156–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hyland, Ken
2005 Metadiscourse. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger
1991 Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levon, Erez and Ronald Beline Mendes
(eds) 2016 Language, Sexuality and Power: Studies in Intersectional Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin
1975 Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
McIlvenny, Paul
(ed) 2002 Talking Gender and Sexuality. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mills, Sara
2002 “Rethinking politeness, impoliteness and gender identity.” In Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis, ed. by Lia Litosseliti and Jane Sunderland, 69–90. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003 Gender and Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mumby, Dennis K. and Cynthia Stohl
1991 “Power and discourse in organization studies: Absence and the dialectic of control.” Discourse and Society 2 (3): 313–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Elinor
1992 “Indexing Gender.” In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, ed. by Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin, 335–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rowley-Jolivet, Elizabeth and Shirley Carter-Thomas
2005 “The rhetoric of conference presentation introductions: Context, argument and interaction.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics 15(1): 45–70. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simpson, Paul, and Andrea Mayr
2010 Language and Power: a Resource Book for Students. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sutton, Laurel A.
(ed) 2017 Context Counts: Papers on Language, Gender and Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Swales, John M.
2003 “Review of language of conferencing.” Applied Linguistics 24 (4): 549–51. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Talbot, Mary M.
2010 Language and Gender. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah
(ed) 1993 Gender and Conversational Interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
1994 Gender and Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Taromi, Tahereh, Giti Taki, and Pakzad Yusifian
2018. “Gensiat dar maqalat e’lmi farsizaban: motale’h peikareh-bonyad nashangarhaye fara-goftamanu” [Gender in the Persian scientific articles: A corpus study of metadiscourse markers].” Pazhuashhaye Zabanshanasi [Researches in Linguistics] 10(1): 23–42.
Thompson, G.
2001 “Interaction in academic writing: Learning to argue with the reader.” Applied Linguistics 22(1): 58–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Paul
2002 “Modal Verbs in Academic Writing.” In Teaching and Learning by Doing Corpus Analysis: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Teaching and Language Corpora. ed. by Berhard Kettemann and Georg Marko, 305–324. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vande Kopple, William J.
1985 Some Exploratory Discourse on Metadiscourse. College Composition and Communication 261: 82–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ventola, Eija, Celia Shalom, and Susan C. Thompson
(eds) 2002 The Language of Conferencing. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Zareifard, Raha and Batool Alinezhad
2014 “A study of interactional metadiscourse markers and gender in the defense seminars of Persian speakers.” Journal of Educational and Social Research 4 (1): 231–238.Google Scholar