Gender-based Study of Metadiscourse in Research Articles’ Rhetorical Sections

This study investigated whether or not male and female writers of academic research articles were different in the use of interpersonal resources in English. In order to carry out the study, 32 applied linguistics research articles with the standard macrostructure of empirical research articles (Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion/Conclusion) were selected from amongst the highest ranked journals. The results of the current study indicated that, with respect to both interactive and interactional features, there were no significant gender-based differences in the overall distribution of interpersonal resources in the four sections of the articles (p-value 0.05). It also confirmed the view that writing differences are not gender-specific, but rather section-specific. In this line, identification of male and female EFL learners’ use of metadiscourse elements will provide guidelines to EFL teachers to tailor their teaching methods and avoid mismatches between classroom practices and learners’ language use.