METADISCOURSE MARKERS IN CONCLUDING SECTIONS OF POSTGRADUATE THESES

Academic discourse tends to provide spaces for interaction between the author and the readers, in other words, the author exhibits the awareness of the reader. Metadiscourse is a set of tools that enable the author and the reader to relate and interact. It is the linguistic features that focus on the interaction between the author and the reader, ensuring that the coherence of the text is maintained. By using metadiscourse markers, writers can identify their position by reflecting themselves in the text, display their communicative intentions, influence their readers, or use avoidance statements (Hyland, 1998b, 2005a, 2005b). Metadiscourse, which is defined as the views that the author makes explicit references to the content of the text, the arrangement of the discourse and the reader about his own stance (Hyland, 1998b, s. 438), enables the author to communicate effectively with the reader. Metadiscourse attracts great attention especially in the fields of linguistics and (foreign) language teaching, and it has been observed that studies on metadiscourse have been increasing in recent years. The aim of this study is to determine the metadiscourse markers used in the conclusion sections of postgraduate theses written in the field of linguistics. 72 graduate theses selected by proportional sampling method among 241 postgraduate theses written in Turkish in the field of linguistics between the years 2001-2021, reached by the Presidency of the Council of Higher Education, the National Thesis Center, were determined as the sample of the study. The study was structured with the qualitative research method. The data were obtained through document scanning, one of the qualitative data collection techniques, and analyzed with the Metadiscourse Model organised by Hyland (2005a). As a result of the study, the appearance of metadiscourse determinants in master's and doctoral theses was discussed and interpreted.