Interactive Markers in Medical Research Articles Written by Iranian and Native Authors of ISI and Non-ISI Medical Journals: A Contrastive Metadiscourse Analysis of Method Section

Abstract—The present study is concerned with the issue of whether there were any significant differences between the two groups- Iranian writers of ISI and non- ISI medical journals- in terms of the number and types of interactive markers. To this end, a corpus of 90 'method sections ' of ISI and non- ISI English medical research articles written by Iranian and non- Iranian writers published between 2005 and 2010 were selected. Then, Hyland's (2005) taxonomy of metadiscourse markers was used as the model of analysis. After performing detailed quantitative and qualitative analyses of interactive markers, Chi- Square tests were run. Although the different groups of writers were found to have employed all sub-types of interactive markers, they were different by the use of them. The findings revealed significant differences between the ISI and non-ISI groups in binary comparisons (p=0.05). The differences may be attributed to the writers ' mother tongue, culture and also to their lack or limited awareness of the rhetorical conventions of English medical academic research writing. Index Terms—metadiscourse analysis, interactive marker, method section, medical research article, Iranian