Metadiscourse in Book Reviews in English and Brazilian Portuguese: A Corpus-Based Analysis

Book reviews play different roles in academia. They are used in the selection of what books to read and purchase (Carvalho, 2001) and as a vehicle for publication and visibility, especially for graduate students and novice scholars (Hyland, 2000; Motta-Roth, 2001). Scholars and graduate students must do a great amount of reading in order to stay up to date in any given field, as scientific knowledge has become more and more widespread. This task is undeniably challenging given the amount of time and resources needed for such updating (Carvalho, 2002; Suárez & Moreno, 2008). Academics need to be selective about the information they read and often resort to academic reviews of various sorts to help in the discernment of what is valuable to spend time and resources on. In this context, book reviews enact a particularly important function as they provide valuable information regarding how new books may contribute to the development of a given field (Suárez & Moreno, 2008). Further, book reviews are invaluable tools in helping academics select what to read given the normally short length and evaluative and descriptive nature of the genre (Carvalho, 2002)