Research Paper: Interpersonal Meta discourse Markers in Sunday Newspaper Editorials of Pakistan: A Corpus-based study

Abstract

Metadiscourse markers are linguistic devices which use to ensure coherence in a text while adopting a communicative attitude towards readers. The editorial of newspaper deals with ongoing social issues because of their critical role in the representation of a society. It is important to investigate editors’ choice of linguistic devices and how they use of metadiscourse features in the presentation of ongoing issues in a thought evoking way. The present study deals with the analysis of the features of metadiscourse markers in editorials of Sunday newspapers of Pakistan. It is both quantitative and qualitative in nature. The editorials of Pakistan’s leading English newspapers are Dawn and The Nation. are collected and Hyland and Tse (2004a) model of Interpersonal metadiscourse is used as the theoretical framework. Findings revealed the significant use of metadiscourse markers in both corpora in which the interactive markers are more consistent than interactional markers along with few variations regarding hedges, boosters, and engagement markers. Altogether, the results state that editorial writers tend to use persuasive elements as they direct their readers through text using metadiscourse markers ultimately making the editorials reader-friendly. It emphasizes the importance of the use of metadiscourse features in developing a reader-writer relationship.