Comparative Genre Analysis of Interactional Metadiscourse Markers in Research Article Abstracts of Medical Law and IT Law

Abstract

With the assistance of studies in genre analysis of writing in both professional and academic settings, features of different disciplines have been highlighted. However, hybrid disciplines received scant attention. The present study aimed at investigating the use of interactional metadiscourse markers (MMs) in two legal hybrid disciplines: medical law and IT law. Two tools were adopted to collect data: corpora consisting of 150 research article (RA) abstracts selected randomly from two high- impact factor journals and structured open-ended email interview with seven well-known scholars. For the analysis, Hyland's (2005) model of interpersonal MMs and thematic analysis were used. The results indicated that writers in medical law and IT law followed the steps of hard disciplines writers by preferring an objective writing style driven by data rather than by personal interpretations. In the light of these results, ESP instructors and curriculum designers can help writers in the said fields follow the conventions of hybrid disciplines. It is recommended that future studies be conducted to unveil the writing styles of more hybrid disciplines.