A Content Analysis of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ Regarding Metadiscourse Elements

Abstract

Metadiscourse is an appealing field of inquiry which plays an important role in organizing and producing persuasive writing, based on the norms and expectations of people involved. The fuzziness of the term Metadiscourse remains obscure as it is seen in the literature. Having based this work on Ken Hyland’s framework for Metadiscourse, the researchers applied his definition and classification of the term. Hyland describes Metadiscourse as the linguistic resources used to organize a discourse or the writer’s stance towards either its content or the reader. He has divided Metadiscourse into two broad groups: Interactive and Interactional. The former being subcategorized into: Transitions, Frame markers, Endophoric markers, Evidentials, and Code-glosses. And the later being divided into Hedges, Boosters, Attitude markers, Engagement markers, and Self-mentions (Hyland, 2005). Focusing on these categorizations, the researchers would try to shed light on the Metadiscourse features applied in “Alice in Wonderland”, selected from the ‘Complete Illustrated Lewis Carroll’, and see how and to what extent Lewis Carroll has applied these Metadiscourse markers to make his story more impressive and persuasive. Of course, Hedges have not been counted in this novel because of the many works done about this marker earlier. The results of the study showed that the frequencies in Interactive/Interactional Metadiscourse groups have no meaningful differences. However, the frequencies demonstrate that the author has been fully aware of the norms of writing. The results of the study have pedagogical implications for teaching English Literature for literature students and language learners at pre-, upper-, and high-intermediate levels of language learning courses.