Chapter 3. Methodology
3.5. Data Analysis
3.5.2. Data Analysis for Research Sub-Question 2
My approach to textual analysis for the second research sub-question incorporated Hyland’s (2005) taxonomy of metadiscourse, as illustrated Table 3.8, and Fairclough’s (1995) approach to textual analysis. Both approaches were largely based on Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics which acknowledges three metafunctions of language: ideational, interpersonal and textual. Nevertheless, the ideational metafunction seems to be played down in all metadiscourse taxonomies (cf. 2.1.3.1 ‘Systemic Functional Linguistics’) but the advantage of this omission is that the identity of the academic author— which is often closely identified with their disciplinary vocabulary, and, by extension, their ideational metafunction—can be protected to a great extent.
Table 3.8 Examples of metadiscourse items used in this research (Hyland, 2005)
Category Function Example
Interactive
Endophorics referring to other parts of the text
see Figure 2, as noted above Code Gloss elaborating more
information
in other words, can be defined as Evidentials representing ideas from
other sources
(Authors, Year), Smith suggests Frame Markers signalling boundaries and
structure
This paper aims to, Secondly
Transition Markers signalling steps in the argument
However, Furthermore
Interactional
Attitude Markers expressing affective attitude towards the statement
Unfortunately, remarkable Self-Mention displaying the authorial
presence
I, my, We, our, us
Hedges expressing incertitude
towards the statement
seem, might Boosters expressing certainty towards
the statement
undoubtedly, show
Engagement Markers addressing readers during the discourse
You, one,
It should be noted
Hyland’s (2005) taxonomy of metadiscourse contains a list of 407 lexical items to signal the interaction of academic writers as members of the academic community, suggesting the identity in their writing. There are two categories as in (a) interactive and (b) interactional. The interactive category involves the writer’s approach to organising their text in a way that reflects their assessment of their audience. The interactional category involves the writer’s interaction with their audience by opening up space for them to experience the writer’s personality.
However, Hyland’s (2005) taxonomy of metadiscourse is not definitive and he acknowledges that there can be other lexical items which work as metadiscourse items but are not evident in his list.
To expand and add other lexical items which function as metadiscourse items but are not evident in the list, I adopted two approaches: synonyms and Fairclough’s (1995) approach to textual analysis.
As the textual analysis in my study was manual, I read through all the sample texts used in the analysis. For synonyms, when I read the sample texts and found lexical items emerging from the actual papers which function as metadiscourse items but are not included in Hyland’s list, I put them into relevant categories. These new lexical items are synonyms of the words in the list, for example, the emerging metadiscourse item ‘indubitably’ which is a synonym of ‘undoubtedly’ in the category of boosters. In other cases, the new lexical items have the same function as the metadiscourse items in the list, for example ‘Having said that’ for transition and ‘noticeably’ for attitude. Therefore, I did not create any new categories for the metadiscourse taxonomy, only new lexical items.
As for Fairclough’s (1995) approach to textual analysis, I focused on those features which are relevant to the issues of authorial identity: intertextuality, meaning relations between sentences and modality/evaluation.
Intertextuality refers to the level of dialogicality in the text. Intertextuality can appear in the form of (a) quotes or attributed sources with a little modification, (b) interpretations of the sources and (c) a reference without explicit sources. These are classified into the evidential category of metadiscourse. Examples are full quotes, words with quotation marks, and words which refer to a group of persons without explicit sources such as ‘analysts’ and ‘linguists’.
Meaning relations between sentences refers to the fact that words can be used to connect several ideas from many sentences into a coherent concept. These relations are realised using transition markers. Hyland’s taxonomy includes all transition markers in one big category for analysis. Therefore, in this study I sub-divided them into addition, contrast, comparison, concession and cause and effect in order to more fully understand how two or more sentences are formed as a coherent argument.
Modality/evaluation refers to the fact that the writers exchange knowledge with the readers. It can be in the form of judgement and stance and it can signal the assumption expressed by the writers towards their audience. These lexical
items can be added in the metadiscourse category of attitude, booster, hedge or engagement marker, depending on their functions. Examples include ‘accepted’ in ‘It seems generally accepted that …’, ‘even so’ and ‘convincingly’ in ‘Having demonstrated convincingly that …’
By adding other metadiscourse items which emerged from the actual papers written by the professor participants and adding Fairclough’s features as in intertextuality, meaning relations and modality/evaluation to Hyland’s metadiscourse taxonomy, the total number of metadiscourse items in my study was 610 items, compared to Hyland’s list of 407 items.
Other related new lexical items are as follows:
Variations of verb forms in the metadiscourse taxonomy: Hyland’s taxonomy is inconsistent with verb forms. There are 3 forms of the verb ‘appear’ as in ‘appear’, ‘appears’ and ‘appeared’ in Hyland’s list but only one form of ‘note’. Therefore, I included other forms such as ‘noted’ and ‘notes’ when they function as a metadiscourse item.
Previous works of the professor participants cited in the sample texts: I included their previous works as self-mentions rather than evidentials because evidentials and intertextuality are generally about other sources of information. Therefore, the terms ‘Bracton’, ‘Wonnicott’ and ‘Woodworth’ used as references in their own texts were considered as self-mentions in this study.
It should be noted that the list of metadiscourse items in this study was expanded along the research journey. It contained both the items from Hyland’s existing list and the items emerging from the actual papers written by the professor participants during the mark-up process in NVivo which underwent three stages.
3.5.2.1. The Initial Stage of Textual Analysis
After the sample texts had been stored in NVivo ready for the data analysis, I read through all the sample texts for references and quotes which belong to the category of evidentials and intertextuality in order to mark up the words which did not belong to the actual authors. Then, these references and quotes were removed for the next process of data analysis. The reason why I had to remove references and quotes out of the texts was because they might contain all kinds
of metadiscourse items ranging from self-mentions, attitude markers and modality evaluation which the actual author, i.e. the professor participants, did not really use and the inclusion of them in the textual analysis might affect the findings about the textual dimension of their authorial identity. Still, these quotes were counted as part of the textual analysis in the category of evidentials in the metadiscourse taxonomy.
Because these quotes were removed out of the sample texts, I had two versions of each sample text: (a) the full version with all references and quotes and (b) the main version without any references and quotes. I then counted the number of words in each version as a basis for the measurement of frequency in the next stages, as shown in Table 3.9.
Table 3.9 The number of words in each paper from the ‘FULL’ version to the ‘MAIN’ version
Paper Prof Bracton Prof Wonnicott Prof Woodworth Full Main Full Main Full Main
Paper 1 (Oldest) 9,403 5,710 4,841 4,663 20,047 13,814 Paper 2 6,495 5,327 8,421 6,884 13,010 9,216 Paper 3 6,595 4,745 5,637 4,602 21,353 13,954 Paper 4 16,049 9,917 7,557 5,452 18,902 13,328 Paper 5 (Newest) 13,008 6,105 10,484 8,854 13,787 8,310
3.5.2.2. The Intermediary Stage of Textual Analysis
I proceeded to conduct a textual analysis of the ‘MAIN’ version of each sample text since this version contains only the words which belong to the actual author. To facilitate the process of finding metadiscourse items, I used Word Frequency Tool and Text Search Tool in NVivo to list all the words from all 15 sample texts and then looked for lexical items which fit Hyland’s list of metadiscourse items. I marked up each metadiscourse item in vivo—using its original form—because the categorisation of all metadiscourse items was to be done in the final stage of textual analysis.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that not every lexical item retrieved from Word Frequency Tool and Text Search Tool functions as a metadiscourse item. Therefore, I needed to read through all the sample texts again to determine which instances of the lexical items function as metadiscourse items. Some examples are provided in Table 3.10. Further details can be found in Appendix H: Metadiscourse Items in Phase 2
Table 3.10 Examples of lexical items in the actual sample texts to determine whether they function as a metadiscourse item
Metadiscourse? Example in the Context Reason
- there is no figure representing conviction ratesThis ‘figure’ is beyond the textual structure of the paper
- see Figure 8.1 This ‘figure’ is within thetextual structure of the paper
- [It] requires WTO members toprotect copyright according to the Berne system.
In this case, ‘according to’ means ‘in accordance with’.
- iTunes is closely associated withApple's portable digital player device, the iPod, which according
to Apple sold over 730,000 units
in the last quarter of 2003
In this case, ‘according to’ suggests that the author refers to the information given by others.
- new forms of distribution [are] made possible by the internetThis ‘possible’ is not about attitude.
- It is perfectly possible for individuals to take action- There are a number of possible exceptions available in domestic law
This ‘possible’ is about the author’s implicit assumption. So, it is hedging.
- [The views on the Internet] are presumed to be true until proved false.This proof is an action which can be done by other people.
- It proved a highly successfulstrategy
This proof denotes the author’s implicit attitude.
At the same time as reading the whole sample texts to determine each instance of lexical items, I also looked for other metadiscourse items from the two approaches I mentioned: synonyms and Fairclough’s (1995) approach to textual analysis. These new lexical items were metadiscourse items emerging from the actual papers. An example of emergent metadiscourse items is shown in Figure 3.4.
In many cases, however, the same lexical item can have two distinctive metadiscourse functions. For example, the lexical item ‘indeed’ in Hyland’s taxonomy of metadiscourse can function as either a booster or a gloss, depending on the context. To distinguish between these two distinctive metadiscourse functions, I created three mark-up items as shown in Figure 3.5. I first assigned the lexical item with the suffix ‘-O’ to indicate that it was an ordinary lexical item at the moment; hence, ‘indeedO’. Then, I created two more items—‘indeedB’ for booster and ‘indeedG’ for gloss. Afterwards, I read through all instances of ‘indeedO’ in their context to mark them up with either ‘indeedB’ or ‘indeedG’ according to their appropriate category. In this case, the mark-up item ‘indeedO’ was also a basis for my verification of the classification.
Figure 3.5 Three mark-up items: ‘indeedO’ is a basis for the classification of ‘indeedB’ (a booster) and ‘indeedG’ (a gloss)
3.5.2.3. The Final Stage of Textual Analysis
When I finished marking up all metadiscourse items in the sample texts, I moved on to categorise all items into several groups according to Hyland’s metadiscourse taxonomy as shown in Figure 3.6. Any mark-up items ending with the suffix ‘-O’ such as ‘indeedO’ were excluded from the categorisation because they were used only as a reference basis, as mentioned in the intermediary stage. With regard to the category of transition, metadiscourse items belonging to this category were sub-divided into smaller groups based on Fairclough’s features of meaning relations between sentences which are addition, contrast, comparison, concession and cause and effect.
After this stage of textual analysis, I counted the number of metadiscourse items in each group and measured the frequency of metadiscourse items in relation to the main version of each text. Then, I presented statistical findings of the textual analysis for the second phase before I highlighted key features regarding the statistical findings in order to point out significant changes in their writing over time (see Appendix I: Examples of Metadiscourse Use over Time). Afterwards, I looked into details those key features of the changes and then I put them as excerpts to be included in the textual findings report for the professor participants.
The key features which signal the textual dimension of authorial identity over time were classified into five sections as in (a) referencing, (b) getting message across, (c) argumentation, (d) expressing attitude, and (e) being an academic author.
After I finished writing the textual findings of the data analysis in this phase, I wrote up a report summary for each professor participant and I sent it to them along with my research showcase poster to arrange a second interview session.