Metadiscourse in the research abstracts of an interdisciplinary field: a case study of computational linguistics

Jingwen Yang ()
Additional contact information
Jingwen Yang: Jilin University

Palgrave Communications, 2025, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Scientific world is now privileging an interdisciplinary solution to problems, and the academic discourse it rests on is typically sensitive to its disciplinary context, but the discursive features of emerging interdisciplinarity remain under-investigated. This study aims to examine the deployment of interactive and interactional metadiscourse in research abstracts spanning three fields: computational linguistics, computer science, and applied linguistics. Based on a corpus of 270 abstracts in leading journals across the fields, the analysis demonstrated that writers in computational linguistics employed a greater frequency of both interactive and interactional metadiscourse in contrast to their counterparts in applied linguistics and computer science. Specifically, frame markers and self-mentions are predominantly utilized, reflecting the interdisciplinary essence of computational linguistics. Interestingly, apart from self-mentions, other interactional metadiscoursal elements are the second most frequently utilized category in computational linguistics abstracts. This observation underlines the field’s interdisciplinary nature, extends the common thread of disciplinary variation revealed in the literature, and points to addressing the disciplinary needs of these neighboring disciplines. In addition, pedagogical implications are also raised regarding the teaching of research writing.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-025-04582-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palcom:v:12:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-025-04582-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/palcomms/about

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-04582-9

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Palgrave Communications from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().