Interactional metadiscursive markers in dissertation abstracts: Contribution to the discursive characterization of the genre

Abstract

A Final Degree Project (TFG) is a requirement in Spain for all graduate candidates. These texts must include an abstract, the writing of which is not usually the subject of instruction. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the characterization of the summary genre by analyzing the interactional metadiscursive markers (Hyland, 2005a and 2005b) found in a corpus of TFGs and to determine whether the use of these markers allows us to establish different writer profiles. The corpus consists of 91 abstracts written in Spanish by students of the Applied Languages degree at a Spanish university. A mixed methodological approach has been adopted, descriptive for the discursive characterization of the texts and inferential for the determination of the profiles. The macro-textual analysis has allowed us to observe that the students’ summaries present five basic rhetorical moves. The micro-textual analysis reflects that the most frequent interactional markers are personal markers, boosters, and attitudinal markers. The statistical analysis has allowed us to identify two profiles of writers, based on the greater or lesser use of personal markers, attitudinal markers, and boosters.