A Diachronic Study of Interaction in Chinese Academic Writing Through the Lens of Metadiscourse

Metadiscourse provides a framework for understanding interaction in discourse by examining the linguistic resources that the writers employ to organize their text and involve their readers. The studies in metadiscourse use in Chinese academic writing reveal that Chinese scholars maintain an impersonal style and adopt an authoritative stance. We investigated the changes in interaction in Chinese academic writing during the past 40 years by exploring metadiscourse use in 90 Chinese research articles from the top five Chinese academic journals in Applied Linguistics in 1980, 2000, and 2020. The analysis shows significant decreases in metadiscourse use during this period in both interactive and interactional features, and changes in linguistic choices of metadiscourse demonstrate a shift to guidance and persuasion with more logical arguments, objective evidence, and relevant literature, possibly suggesting that Chinese scholars now use metadiscourse mainly to clarify and inform, presenting knowledge as codified facts, privileged rather than negotiated or constructed. We also find that metadiscourse use significantly increased in 2000 before its decrease in 2020, unveiling Chinese scholars’ earlier efforts to guide and involve.