ELSEVIER Journal of Pragmatics 30 (1998) 437455 jolu'nal of Persuasion and context: The pragmatics of academic metadiscourse Ken Hyland* English Department, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hongkong, China Received 1 March 1997; revised version 12 November 1997 Abstract Metadiscourse refers to aspects of a text which explicitly organise the discourse, engage the audience and signal the writer's attitude. Its use by writers to guide readers and display an appropriate professional persona is an important aspect of persuasive writing. Its role in establishing and maintaining contact between the writer and the reader and between the writer and the message also makes it a central pragmatic concept. Based on a textual analysis of 28 research articles in four academic disciplines, this paper seeks to show how the appropriate use of metadiscourse crucially depends on rhetorical context. The study identifies a taxonomy of metadiscourse functions and suggests that metadiscourse reflects one way in which context and linguistic meaning are integrated to allow readers to derive intended interpretations. It is argued that metadiscourse provides writers with a means of constructing appropriate contexts and alluding to shared disciplinary assumptions. The study of academic metadiscourse can therefore offer insights into our understanding of this concept and illuminate an important dimension of rhetorical variation among disciplinary communities. 1. Introduction Metadiscourse, commonly characterised as 'discourse about discourse', is a rela- tively new concept but one which is increasingly important to research in composi- tion, reading and text structure. Based on a view of writing as a social and commu- nicative engagement between writer and reader, metadiscourse focuses our attention on the ways writers project themselves into their work to signal their communicative intentions. It is a central pragmatic construct which allows us to see how writers seek to influence readers' understandings of both the text and their attitude towards its content and the audience. Phone: +852 2788 8873; Fax: +852 2788 8894; E-mail: enhyland@cityu.edu.hk 0378-2166/98/$19.00 © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved PII S0378-2166(98)00009-5