Book Review: Feng (Kevin) Jiang, Metadiscursive Nouns: Interaction and Persuasion in Disciplinary Writing

However, the authors avoid underestimating their readers and instead highlight that researchers have the autonomy and responsibility to make decisions about their research projects. Another merit of the book is the large number of examples of different studies to demonstrate the range of possibilities of linguistic research on social media. Each chapter features detailed case studies contributed by linguists who have conducted social media research using various methods. One particularly fascinating example is Ashraf Abdullah’s illustrative description of his study on Second Life, which combines participant observation and corpus methods (p. 53). The authors also draw upon their own experiences in the field. The examples and case studies cover a wide range of research, including studies on multiple languages and utilizing various data collection and analysis methods. This breadth and diversity of examples serve to illustrate the potential of linguistic social media research comprehensively and make research work more transparent for students. While the chapters on methodological frameworks are well-written, their focus on topics that are not directly related to social media research can make these sections feel disconnected from the overall theme of the book. It may have improved the coherence of the book if these chapters were more closely tied to the topic of social media. Additionally, readers may question whether the authors could have included a more extensive introduction to internet linguistics if the book had placed less emphasis on these fundamental topics, which are already covered in many existing guides. Overall, this book is a valuable contribution to research guides for linguistic studies of social media. It is particularly useful for students who are interested in using social media as a research topic, especially those who are interested in discourse studies, ethnography, and corpus linguistics. While advanced researchers may find most of the content too introductory, Chapter 4 provides valuable insights for anyone considering using social media data in their research.