“I'm telling you”: The use of interactional metadiscourse in Chinese live streaming commerce

Abstract

As an emerging form of mediated communication, live streaming commerce (LSC) has established itself as a distinctive business genre. This study examines the use of interactional metadiscourse by streamers in Chinese LSC. Using Hyland's interactional metadiscourse model, we analyzed a corpus of 60 LSC videos sourced from Alibaba's Taobao Live platform to identify patterns and functions of metadiscourse in fostering parasocial interaction. The findings reveal that streamers' promotional speech was rich in interactional metadiscourse. Among stance resources, self-mentions and boosters were used frequently, whereas hedges and attitude markers were less common. Engagement markers mainly included audience references, followed by questions and directives, with minimal use of personal asides and shared knowledge. These metadiscourse resources contribute to parasocial interaction. Stance resources enhance source credibility by presenting streamers as expert and trustworthy product endorsers. Engagement resources foster mutual awareness by cultivating a sense of co-presence between streamers and reviewers in personalized interactions, while also enhancing homophily by highlighting perceived similarities between the two. Collectively, these interactional metadiscourse strategies create an interactive online shopping discourse, fostering a heightened level of parasocial interaction, in which viewers are drawn into in an illusionary, reciprocal communication and form imagined friendships with streamers in the digital space.