A Review of Recent Metadiscourse Studies: The Iranian Context

Abstract

While studies of metadiscourse in a European or US context have been conducted since the 1980s and have reached a relatively wide audience, studies of metadiscourse outside of these areas have a more recent history (if any) and have not attracted much attention. One country in which research into metadiscourse has gained ground in the past decade is Iran. The first author has helped to bring this about and the second author is one of the active researchers into various aspects of metadiscourse in Iran. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of studies of metadiscourse that have taken place in the Iranian context. These have been carried out by master‘s and doctoral-level students in the past decade. A close observation of these studies reveals three areas of metadiscourse-related studies: metadiscourse use in writing in English, cross-linguistic comparison of metadiscourse in English and Persian, and metadiscourse in EFL reading comprehension. Studies related to each area will be reviewed and evaluative summaries at the end of each section will be presented. The implications for metadiscourse research and instruction will also be discussed.