Metadiscourse in Research Article Genre: A Cross-Linguistic Study of English and Hausa

Abstract

The aim of conducting this study came from a need to explore contrastive study in using metadiscourse features between English and Hausa in research article genre. This study investigated what metadiscourse features are frequently used across two languages in research article genre. A sub-corpus of ten research articles was compiled from each language. The study adopted Hyland’s (2005) typology of metadiscourse features. The results of the study show that there are certain commonalities and differences in using the features across the languages. In terms of similarity, both groups of writers typically used all categories of metadiscourse features. They are almost having a similar frequency of boosters and attitude markers. On the other hand, writers from Hausa research article typically had a high frequency of self-mention, whereas writers from English had a low frequency of the feature. One remarkable feature in Hausa sub-corpus is the use of proverbs and idioms. This study recommends raising awareness of students in relation to linguistic and social conventions of their disciplines.