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The Use of Interactional Metadiscourse in the Construction of Gender

Identities among Malaysian ESL Learners

Article in 3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies · March 2016
DOI: 10.17576/3L-2016-2201-16

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 3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies – Vol 22(1): 207 – 220

The Use of Interactional Metadiscourse in the Construction of Gender Identities

among Malaysian ESL Learners

ROSLINA ABDUL AZIZ

Universiti Teknologi MARA Pahang, Malaysia
leenaziz71@gmail.com

CHIN CHIU JIN

Multimedia University, Malaysia
jennychin@yahoo.com

NOLI MAISARAH NORDIN

Universiti Teknologi MARA Pahang, Malaysia
nolinordin@pahang.uitm.edu.my

ABSTRACT

The study investigates how interactional metadiscourse resources are used to articulate and construct gender
identity among ESL learners in Malaysia. The main purpose of the study is to provide language practitioners
with empirical data of how gender is projected in the academic writings of ESL learners and to what extent
learners’ writings are affected by their gender. The data can then be utilised for the design and development of
more effective academic writing courses in Malaysia. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed on
the similarities and differences in the use of interactional metadiscourse resources, namely; hedges, boosters,
attitude markers, engagement markers and self mentions between male and female ESL learners involved in the
study. The findings of the quantitative analyses show no obvious differences in the writing style of female and
male writers in the study, while the qualitative findings reveal slight differences in the way writers position
themselves in the reader/writer interaction and in the expression of agreement statement.

Keywords: interactional metadiscourse; gender; identities; argumentative writing; ESL learners

INTRODUCTION

Gender and writing has been a subject of academic interest for some time. A large body of
research that examines gender differences in writing was mainly conducted in the L1 context
involving both child (Kanaris 1999, Franchis 2000) and adult participants (Meinhoft 1997,
Franchis et al. 2001). According to Kubota (2003), despite its status as one of the three
essential elements (besides class and race) in a writer’s agency and identity, gender has been
rather neglected in the second language writing. Recently, however, there has been some
interest shown in the relationship between writing and gender in the ESL context, particularly
in relation to L2 learners’ success in academic writing. Among these studies, one was
conducted by Dana (2008) on gender differences in academic writing of ESL learners in the
University of Melbourne, and another was by Abbas and Sheena (2012) on how male and
female undergraduate learners differed in their argumentative writing in English. These
studies are unfortunately too small in number to adequately address the issue of gender
differences in L2 writing. Thus, there is the need for more investigation to be conducted in
this area to contribute to the understanding of how gender constructs and shapes learners’
writing preferences and behaviour, especially in the academic setting.
Writing is central in the academic setting as it is the key assessment tool used by
tertiary institutions in awarding value to the extent of learners’ understanding; likewise it is
the means through which learners consolidate their understanding of a subject matter.
Learners’ ability to respond and engage in various writing tasks (essays, reports, proposals
and theses) determines their success and failure in the higher learning institutions. Academic

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writing constitutes some distinct features that distinguish it from any other forms of writing.
It needs to contain a ‘reasoned argument’ based on a considered evaluation of various
perspectives (Francis et al. 2001). The argument needs to be communicated to the reader in
an assertive and confident style, which according to Clarke (1994) is a style less available to
female students and academics.

METADISCOURSE

Halliday’s (1978) macro-functions of language, which include ideational, interpersonal and

textual, lay a very important theoretical foundation for the concept of metadiscourse.
Metadiscourse, according to Vande Kopple (1985), fulfills Halliday’s interpersonal and
textual functions of language. Vande Kopple (1985) defines metadiscourse as linguistic
material, which does not add propositional information, but employed by the author to signal
his/her presence in a text. The same definition is also echoed by Crismore, Markkanen and
Steffensen (1993), who state that metadiscourse encompasses the linguistic material in
written and spoken texts, which speakers and authors use to help the listener or reader
organise, interpret and evaluate information given in a text (1993:40). Similarly, they also
view the linguistic material as not having any contribution to the propositional content of a
text.
Preferring the term resources over material, Hyland (2000) defines metadiscourse as
the resources employed to organise a discourse or writer’s position towards a proposition or
the reader (p.109) and later adds that the resources are also useful to communicate to the
reader the author’s attitude towards a proposition (Hyland & Tse 2004). The notion of
metadiscourse can be quite simply summarised as an important means to facilitate
communication, support the writer’s position and build relationship with audience (Hyland &
Tse 2004:159).
Vande Kopple (1985) suggests two main categories of metadiscourse; textual and
interpersonal. Textual metadiscourse concerns textual connectives employed in organising a
text and directing the reader, while interpersonal metadiscourse is engaged as a means to
establish a writer-reader relationship and interaction and as a way to convey the writer’s
personal stance as well as degree of commitment toward a proposition (Vande Kopple 1985).
The former category is realised through text connectives and code glosses, while the latter
through illocutionary markers, validity markers, narrators, attitude markers and
commentary. Maintaining the same metadiscourse categorisation, Crismore et al. (1993)
refine each category by further sub-diving textual metadiscourse to textual markers and
interpretive markers. Logical connectives, sequencers, reminders and topicalisers are added
under textual markers. While the interpretive markers see the removal of temporal
connectives and narrators and the creation of code glosses, illocution markers and
announcement. More recently, Hyland and Tse (2004) have introduced an interactional
metadiscourse model, which is founded on three key principles of metadiscourse, namely
that:

1. metadiscourse is distinct from propositional aspect of discourse;

2. the term ‘metadiscourse’ refers to those aspects of the text that embody writer-reader
interactions;
3. metadiscourse distinguishes relations which are external to the text from those that
are internal.
(Hyland & Tse 2004, 159)

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These key principles become the basis to a framework that conceptualises

interpersonal relations in academic writing. The interpersonal relations are realised through
two main domains; interactive and interpersonal resources. The researchers explain that
interactive resources help organise the author’s flow of propositions with the use of textual
connectives that include transitions, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidentials and
code glosses. Interactional resources, on the other hand, concern the writer’s involvement in
the interpersonal relationship and interaction with the reader. They help the writer control the
level of personality and intimacy in a text, establish the desired relationship with the data,
arguments and readers, express his/her attitude and commitment and finally control the
reader’s involvement in the text (Hyland & Tse 2008, p.1237). They are realised as hedges,
boosters, attitude markers, engagement markers and self-mentioned. Hyland and Tse’s
model not only provides an update on the categorisation made by Vande Kopple (1985) and
Crismore et al. (1993), but also refines the categories. The specific and comprehensive
examples given for the sub-categories enable distinction between and within sub-categories
to be carried with ease, and for these reasons, the model is employed in this study as the
framework to analyse interactional resources in the argumentative essays of the Malaysian
learners involved in this study.

METADISCOURSE AND WRITING

Metadiscourse, according to Hyland (2004), is a pivotal rhetorical device for writers as it

“represents writers’ attempts to present and negotiate propositional information in ways that
are meaningful and appropriate to a particular disciplinary community” (p. 136). He adds
that successful academic writing would be characterised by the writer’s ability to control the
level of personality in his or her texts, establish relation with the reader, evaluate his/her
material and acknowledge alternative views. Academic writing, in other words, should go
beyond mere representation of an “external reality”; instead, an avenue for writers to build
“credible representation of themselves and their work” and establish social relations with
their readers (Hyland 2004, pp. 133-134).
In the ESL context, the use of metadiscourse is most visible in persuasive writing, as
it is one of the more common genres that students in tertiary education have to produce
(Hyland 1998), but more importantly, it involves the writer interacting with the reader
(Hyland 2004). In essence, argumentative essay writing is a social practice (Kuteeva 2011),
which requires the writer to understand and anticipate the reader’s expectations of how ideas
should be communicated, at the same time possessing the mastery of the linguistic features
that are used to convey meaning. The linguistic features here refer specifically to
metadiscourse. It is for these reasons the investigation of interactional resources are
employed by ESL learners in constructing their gender identities in this study which involves
an analysis of argumentative essays.

GENDER IN ESL WRITING

There have been very few studies that focus specifically on gender differences in ESL
writing. They include Morris (1998), Dana (2008) and Abbas and Sheena (2012).
Interestingly, two of the studies (Morris 1998, Dana 2008) came to an almost similar
conclusion with regard to female learners’ writings i.e. they are more superior in comparison
to male learners’ writings. Morris (1998) stressed that even though female and male learners’
texts generally had comparable quality in terms of accuracy and readability, female learners
who exhibited higher level of conformity to essay guidelines performed more superior than

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their male peers. Adherence to guidelines proved to be advantageous to female learners as

they were richly rewarded in return (Morris 1998, Dana 2008).
Female learners were also found to outshine their male peers in the study conducted by
Dana (2008). The texts written by female learners were found to contain more complex
structures. In comparison to the male learners, female learners recorded higher frequencies in
paraphrasing when integrating sources (instead of direct quotation) and using hedges in thesis
statements to soften arguments. In addition, the arguments presented by female learners were
also more developed and organised.
On the contrary, Abbas and Sheena (2012), in their investigation on the differences in
the quality, rhetorical organisation, and selected lexico-grammatical features of
argumentative texts written by male and female learners from a university in Iran, found that
male learners performed better than female learners. Male learners obtained higher mean
scores for all the dimensions of ESL composition, which include content, organisation,
vocabulary, language use and mechanics. In addition, they were also reported to be more
assertive and argumentative in voicing their stance in comparison to the female learners, who
were reported to be less assertive and argumentative. The researchers related the female
learners’ lack of assertiveness and argumentativeness to the Persian culture, in which a
woman is expected from childhood to be less talkative, argumentative and assertive (Abbas
& Sheena 2012, p. 5790).
Learners’ success in academic writing, as evidential from the findings of the studies by
Morris (1998) and Dana (2008), relies heavily on their ability to meet the expectation of
academic writing convention. Their understanding of the academic writing convention and
ability to fulfill its requirement would then place them as more superior and successful
writers (Morris 1998, Dana 2008). The findings of these studies reject the notion of gender
dichotomy, which stereotypes female writers as having lack of confidence and assertiveness
in their writing and thus less superior than their male counterparts. Writers’ success,
especially in the academic setting, is determined by how well they adapt to the
conventionalised nature of the genre and may less likely be constrained by gender identities.
Nevertheless, strong cultural influence could also be an important factor in shaping
how learners write, as attested by Abbas and Sheena (2012). The researchers highlighted how
Persian culture has, to an extent, shaped and even limited female learners’ voices in their own
writing, hence supporting the existence of gender-specific discourse that is shaped from
childhood (Lakoff 1977). The findings of this study provide important empirical evidence on
how significant gender is in shaping and influencing learners’ discourse. More importantly,
these findings highlight that gendering may be so deeply rooted that without adequate
training in the academic writing convention, learners could find themselves disadvantaged or
even marginalised.
The understanding of how profoundly academic writing can be positively as well as
negatively affected by gender, ignites the interest to investigate this relationship further
among ESL learners in Malaysia. The main purpose of the study is provide language
practitioners in Malaysia with empirical data of how gender is projected in the academic
writing of ESL learners in Malaysia and examine the gender differences in the employment
of interactional metadiscourse resources (Hyland & Tse 2004, Hyland 2005) in learners’
articulation and construction of their gender identities, which can then be utilised in the
design and development of more effective academic writing courses. More specifically, this
study is guided by the following research questions:

1. What are the similarities and differences between male and female ESL learners in the
use of interactional metadiscourse resources, namely hedges, boosters, attitude
markers, engagement markers and self-mentions?

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2. What are the key interactional metadiscourse devices used by male and female ESL
learners in this study?
3. To what extent does the use of interactional metadiscourse resources reflect the
articulation and construction of gender identity among ESL learners in this study?

METHODOLOGY

CORPUS DATA

The learner corpus for this study consists of 269 argumentative essays written by 166 female
and 103 male students from two higher learning institutions in Malaysia; Universiti
Teknologi MARA (UiTM) and Multimedia University (MMU). The corpus stands at
approximately 149154 word tokens, with an average of 550 words per essay. The essays were
compiled from third semester’s students, who have completed two semesters of English
language proficiency courses at their respective universities. At the time the essays were
compiled, the students were finishing their third semester language proficiency course, in
which they were required to write argumentative essays as part of the syllabus requirements.
Table 1 below summarises the learners’ profiles.

TABLE 1. Learner profile

UiTM MMU
Level of study Diploma Pre-degree
Semester of study Semester 3 Semester 3
Years of formal 11 to 13 years – during 11 to 13 years – during
instruction of English primary and secondary primary and secondary
school years school years
2 semesters – at university 2 semesters – at university
level level

No participants 155 undergraduates 114 undergraduates

No of word tokens 78832 70322

WRITING TASK

The writing task was treated as a class assignment, which the learners had to complete within
class hours. Learners were given 2 hours to draft and produce a complete essay of not less
than 500 words. Only the final draft of the essay was collected and analysed. Access to
reference materials was not allowed during the actual writing process, but learners were
allowed a brainstorming session with their respective lecturers prior to the two-hour
intervention. A list of five topics was given to the learners. The topics were taken and
adapted from the suggested topics listed by the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics,
University Catholic Louvain in their corpus collection guidelines for contribution to
International Corpus of Learner English-ICLE (Granger, 2002). The topic selection was
made by considering the Malaysian learners’ level of proficiency and culture, and the topics
are as follows:

1. In the words of the old song “Money is the root of all evil”.
2. Crime does not pay.

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3. Most university degrees are theoretical, thus, do not prepare students for the real
world. They are therefore of little value.
4. Some people say that in our world, dominated by science, technology and
industrialisation, there is no longer a place for dreaming and imagination. What is
your opinion?
5. Terrorism is wrong. There cannot be any justification for it.
DATA ANALYSIS

Using AntConc 3.2.1, a freeware concordance program developed by Laurence Anthtony

(2010), the concordances of possible interactional metadiscourse were obtained for each
gender, and the items were manually analysed with their co-text to determine their function
as metadiscourse. Only items or expressions with metadiscoursal value are classified as
metadiscourse. For instance, about that is used as a preposition as in “a story about slavery”,
thus, not as a hedging device, will not be counted in the analysis. Since there is a difference
in the number of scripts by female and male students, which has resulted in the unequal size
of female versus male sub-corpora, the total number of matches for the metadiscourse items
found the data have to be normalised to 1,000 occurrences. Normalisation enables
comparison to be made within and between sub-corpora.
This study utilised Hyland and Tse’s (2004) interactional metadiscourse as the
operational model. Only the interactional metadiscourse resources are analysed in this study,
and they include hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagement markers and self-mention
(Table 2).

TABLE 2. Interactional metadiscourse model

Category Function Example

Interactive
Transitions Express semantic relation between main in addition/ but/ thus/ and
clauses
Frame markers Refer to discourse acts, sequences, or text finally/ to conclude/ my purpose here is
stages
Endophoric markers Refer to information in other parts of the noted above/ see Fig,/ in section 2/
text
Evidentials Refer to source information from other According to X (Y, 1990)/ Z states/
texts
Code glosses Help readers grasp functions of ideational namely/ e.g./ such as/ in other words
materials
Interactional
Hedges Withhold writer’s full commitment to might/ perhaps/ possible/ about
proposition
Boosters Emphasise force or writer’s certainty in in fact/ definitely/ it is clear that
proposition
Attitude Markers Express writer’s attitude to proposition unfortunately/ I agree/ surprisingly

Engagement Markers Explicitly refer to or build relationship Consider/ note that/ you can see that
with reader
Self-mention Explicit reference to author(s) I/ we/ my/ our

FINDINGS

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE EMPLOYMENT OF INTERACTIONAL METADISCOURSE

RESOURCES

Table 3 displays an almost similar density in the use of all the five interactional resources
among female and male learners in this study. This finding suggests that writers of both
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genders conduct interactions with readers in an almost similar way (Hyland & Tse 2008).
Both female and male learners exhibit greater use of hedges, boosters and engagement
markers, features that Holmes (1988) categorises under a more personalised and engaging
style associated with female discourse.
Nevertheless, there are some gender differences recorded in the use of hedges and
engagement markers. Both resources showed higher average use by female learners with the
average of 38.7 and 15 for engagement markers and hedges respectively, in comparison to
36.9 and 11.4 average use of the same resources by the male learners. This is consistent with
the findings of previous studies that reported higher employment of hedges by female writers
(Morris 1998, Dana 2012). Despite these differences, both genders recorded frequent uses of
both resources, which can be deduced by the similar percentages of the use of these
resources. Female learners employed approximately 55% and 15% of engagement markers
and hedges respectively, which was almost similar to the 54% and 16% employment of the
same resources by male learners. According to Hyland and Tse (2008), it is common for
academic writing to contain heavier use of these resources, as they are means for writers to
create a shared context (p. 1238), in which reader-writer interaction can be established.
Franchis et al. (2001) in their investigation of gender differences in the writing style of
L1 learners, reported that both genders had almost similar use of tentative language;
consisting more cautious and tentative style of discourse which Lakoff (1973, 1975)
characterised as ‘women language’. The finding suggests a lack of gender difference in
academic writing and that female and male writers have the tendency to employ more
cautious language in academic discourse. Fanchis et al. (2001), citing Rubin and Green
(1992), added that academic writing is less likely to elicit gender differences due to the
formal and conventionalised nature of the writing (p.322). Even Lakoff (1973, 1975)
acknowledged that academic discourse contains many of the traits characterised to belong to
women language such as being tentative and cautious. The lack of gender differences in this
study is consistent with the current contention that there is no one-to-one relation between
gender and language (Hyland & Tse 2008), and in the academic writing context, men and
women exhibits far more similarities than differences (Franchis et al. 2001).
TABLE 3. Interactional resources in learner corpus

IM Resources Female Male

Frequency Frequency
Tokens per 1000 % Tokens per 1000 %
words words
Attention Marker 560 5.9 8.3 293 5.4 7.8
Booster 1178 12.5 17.3 694 12.7 18.5
Self-mention 296 3.1 4.4 167 3.1 4.4
Engagement Markers 3751 39.7 55.3 2017 36.9 53.6
Hedges 1421 15 14.7 625 11.4 15.7

ENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE EMPLOYMENT OF INDIVIDUAL INTERACTIONAL

METADISCOURSE RESOURCE

In addressing the second research question, the key markers or devices used by the learners
were identified and examined. The quantitative data obtained from these analyses were
supplemented with qualitative data from the contextual analysis of the resources.

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KEY ENGAGEMENT MARKERS

TABLE 4. Key Engagement Markers

Female Male +-Female/Male

Tokens Frequency Tokens Frequency
per 1000 per 1000
words words
we (inclusive) 990 10.5 475 8.7 +1.8
our (inclusive) 548 5.8 184 3.4 +2.4
us (inclusive) 226 2.4 140 2.6 +0.2
you 149 1.6 145 2.6 -1

Inclusive we, us, our and you were the key engagement markers employed by the learners as
summarised in Table 4. These markers are normally employed to refer to shared knowledge,
but they were mostly used by the learners to engage readers and enter personal relationship
with them as shown by the following examples:

Female:
If we have money, we can build up a happiness and warm family. We can try
to give our children having a good education outside the country. F91 MMU

Male:
In fact, if we have no money, we cannot buy goods, clothes and other
necessary that we need. Without money, we can not do anything. M87 MMU

Both male and female learners used this strategy in their writing, and this made their writing
more conversational as illustrated in the extracts above. The communicative style of writing
is common among ESL learners, who often draw on the informal form to strengthen their
arguments (Hinkel 2002).
There were, however, slight gender differences in the use of three of the key markers;
we, our and you. The number of female learners was found to exceed that of male learners in
the use of we and our, while male learners appeared to use more of pronoun you than the
female learners. Generally, both female and male writers used these markers as a means to
engage readers, but female learners were found to have more tendency to include themselves
in their arguments with the use of we and our. While the male learners’ preference for the
pronoun you suggests the tendency for some of them to exclude themselves from their
arguments as exemplified below:

Male:
If you are criminal and also drugs supplier, then you got caught by policeman
and have a serious change of your action and as a result you got death
punishment. At that time you will felt so stupid … BB005M UiTM

Male:
This is happen because during you have money, you will fool around with the
money but if you don’t, you started to cheated everyone around you including
your family, your friend and even ownself. DIA005M UiTM

It is interesting to observe that female and male learners differ in the way they position
themselves in an argument. The former has the tendency to transmit a sense of togetherness
and cooperation by equating themselves in their arguments (Mason 1994), while the latter

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seems to project an aura of dominance and authority by separating themselves from the
reader (Leaper 1991, Mulac, Bradac & Gibbons 2001).
KEY HEDGES

TABLE 5. Key hedges

Female Male +-Female/Male

Tokens Frequency Tokens Frequency
per 1000 words per 1000 words
should 176 1.9 122 2.2 -0.3
most 153 1.6 88 1.6 0
would 133 1.4 92 1.7 -0.3
may 121 1.3 38 0.7 +0.6

As summarised in Table 5, only four key hedges were most often employed by learners,
and they include should, would, may and most. Asian learners in general are very cautious
and indirect in expressing their opinions (Ahmad 1995); thus, modals such as should, would
and may would be common occurrences in their writing. The use of hedges to soften
arguments, as attested by Morris (1998) and Dana (2008) is welcome and can be
advantageous in academic writing.
Even though the overall findings show higher use of hedges by female learners (Table
3), the figures in Table 5 above show that male learners recorded slightly higher average use
of two of the key hedges; could and should, whereas female learners showed higher average
use of may. The male learners were found to use would and could mostly in stance making
and in the expression of probability as exemplified in the following extracts. The use of these
hedging devices tones down the writers’ argument or proposition (Hyland 2005) creating a
‘softer’ style of writing.

Male:
Therefore, I would like to make a stand a say that Money is not the root of all
evil. There are several factors on why I would say so. M2 MMU

So, to oppose the point of practicing theory in life, I would have to say, “Do
one even go to a university just to repair little minute things like a mere
plug?” M114 MMU

Money could distribute the levels between poor and wealth, money could
control the power dominantly and money could easily get you involved in
criminal activities. M5 MMU

The employment of may by female learners, in comparison to the use of could and
would by male learners, created a relatively more cautious and overly tentative tone, and this
was further heightened by repetition of the word as shown below.

Female:
The babies may also become their earning method in order to traffick the
drugs. But, it may also leads to the deceased of babies. And, they may not feel
guilty about the dead of the people that had been used by them. F23 MMU

These findings reveal that although female and male learners have similar choice and
range of hedging devices, they differ slightly in the pattern of use of these devices. Female
learners’ preference for may coupled with its repetitive use makes them sound slightly more

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tentative than their male counterparts, whose inclination for could and would transmits a
relatively more assertive tone.
KEY BOOSTERS

TABLE 6. Key boosters

Female Male +-Female/Male

Tokens Frequency Tokens Frequency
per 1000 words per 1000 words
always 160 1.7 88 1.6 +0.1
must 158 1.7 70 1.3 +0.4

Hyland and Tse (2008) in their investigation of gender difference in book reviews
found that female and male writers differ in their use of boosters. Female boosting was often
associated with positive comments, while male writers often used them to underpin their
confidence in a judgement (Hyland & Tse 2008: 1239). Franchis et al. (2001) also observed
that men writers used boosters more frequently and adopted a bolder style of writing than
women writers. This study also observed a slight gender difference in the frequency of use of
the key booster (always, must) as shown in Table 6. Female learners appeared to use these
boosters slightly more frequently than the male learners, which is contrary to the findings of
Franchis et al. (2001).
Despite the differences in the figures, there existed a consistency in the pattern of use of
these boosters across gender, and they were mainly employed by writers of both genders for
the purpose of exaggerating and emphasising their commitment to arguments. However, the
narrow range of the boosters used resulted in a lot of repetitions, which were apparent in the
essays written by both male and female learners. While exaggeration and overstatement are an
appropriate and effective means of persuasion in conveying the writer’s commitment (Hinkel,
2002), repetition of the same boosters as exemplified below could result in a writing sounding
very casual and conversational and further cause a writer to fail in delivering a strong
conviction as intended.

Female :
The first obvious reason that why crime does not pay is that crime is always
unacceptable by a society. The happening of crimes has always put the society
in a state of heebie-jeebies. Crimes always make people around to feel anxious
but not joyful as crimes like murders are not accepted by them. F52 MMU

Male:
Social problem is always the problem that linked to money. One of the
problems are robbery. Robbery is one of the bad activities that evil people
always planning to do and had already done it. It is because doing the robbery
is always give a good income if we succeed of it. Bad people always targeted a
bank … BM007M UiTM

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KEY ATTITUDE MARKERS

TABLE 7. Key attitude markers

Female Male +-Female/Male

Tokens Frequency Tokens Frequency
per 1000 per 1000
words words
even 139 1.5 100 1.8 -0.3
agree 92 1.0 43 0.8 +0.2
usually 51 0.5 43 0.8 -0/3

Table 7 shows slight differences in the use of the key attitude markers. Female learners
recorded slightly more frequent uses of one of the key attitude markers (agree), while more
male learners used the other two markers (even and usually). Despite these differences, the
analysis of the individual use of these markers does not reveal much difference in the purpose
of such use. The employment of these markers helps the writers express their attitude towards
their propositions (Hyland 2004). As shown in the following extracts, female and male
learners used these markers for a similar intent i.e. to assert their presence to the readers.

Female:
As we can see that crimes in Malaysia increases from day to day or even
month to month. The crimes is very related to money….The criminal will do
anything to get money even to have to kill people. OM017F UiTM

Male:
As a result, the people live miserable lives, some with no shelter or even insufficient
food as well. All this misery is cause by corruption ….Corruption does not only affect
governments, even ordinary workers can be corrupted. M37 MMU
KEY SELF-MENTION

TABLE 8. Key self-mention

Female Male +-Female/Male

Tokens Frequency Tokens Frequency
per 1000 words per 1000 words
I 225 2.4 135 2.5 -0.1
my 62 0.4 24 0.2 +0.2

The use of self-mention, especially the first person pronoun I, by male learners, as seen in
Table 8, was slightly higher than that of female learners. Self-mention is used as a direct way
of expressing involvement and views, and this is commonly achieved with the employment
personal pronoun I or we. According to Ohta (1991) and Scollon (1994), Asian L2 learners
favour the inclusive we over the first person pronoun I as they prefer the collectivist way of
expressing identity or opinion (Ohta 1991, Scollon 1994). This was found to be the case in
the use of we and I in this study, in which inclusive we recorded higher average use (between
9-11 average) in comparison to I.
In this study, self-mention appeared most often in the introduction to express learners’
stance and/or in the conclusion for the restatement of the stance in I + adv + agree/disagree
cluster. Female learners were found to prefer this structure, and the combination of self-
mention with boosters such as strongly, definitely or totally, is used to assert a strong
agreement statement, making them appear more assertive in voicing their agreement, in
comparison to their male counterparts whose self-mention was often accompanied by
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modality to create more subtle and toned-down statements. The following extracts illustrate
the difference.

Female:
I strongly agree that money is roots of all evil and we should control our
greed so that we will not go too far, beyond our humanity. F73 MMU
In my stand, I agree that most university degrees are theoretical and do not
prepare us for the real world. My argument is based on three main points
which are cost, space and the rehabilitative values.F27 MMU

Male:
Therefore, I would like to make a stand a say that Money is not the root of all
evil. There are several factors on why I would say so. M2 MMU
So, to oppose the point of practicing theory in life, I would have to say, “Do
one even go to a university just to repair little minute things like a mere
plug? M114 MMU

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The main findings of this study suggest far more gender similarities than differences in the
employment of interactional metadiscourse resources in the persuasive writing among the
ESL learners involved. Consistent with recent contention that there is no one-to-one relation
between gender and academic writing style (Franchis et al. 2001, Hyland & Tse 2008),
female and male writers in this study exhibited a similar style of writing. Despite the
suggestion from literature that women writers have the tendency to adopt a more cautious and
tentative style of writing (Abbas & Sheena 2012), the findings of this study reveal that the
same style also sits well with male learners, supporting the contention that learners’ writing
especially in the academic setting is not only shaped by their gender identities, but also
constructed by social practices drawn by a particular social setting and negotiated by the need
to adhere to their disciplinary discourses (Hyland & Tse 2008). The convention of academic
writing propagates cautious and considered tone (Franchis et al. 2001), whereas interactional
metadiscourse resources such as hedges, boosters and engagement markers are normally used
to achieve the required style and tone.
Nevertheless, there is evidence of slight gender differences in the use of key
metadiscoursal devices, especially in the expression of agreement/disagreement. While the
male learners prefer the more subtle and softer way of voicing their stance by cushioning
their agreement statement with a choice of modality (e.g. I would like to make a stand..), the
female learners seem to prefer the bolder and direct approach, and agreement statement was
found to consist of the combination of self-mention and boosters, without the softening effect
of any hedging device (e.g. I strongly agree). The bolder approach to agreement statement by
the female learners in this study further shows that in academic writing, the traditional
stereotyping of women language as being overly anxious, cautious or nervous (Lakoff 1973,
1975) is perhaps no longer accurate, as writers’ language is “not determined by their gender
but constructed, negotiated, and transformed through social practices informed by particular
social settings, relations of power, and participation in disciplinary discourses” (Hyland &
Tse 2008: 1246).
The present study also identifies a slight gender difference in the way writers position
themselves in the reader/writer interaction, which is traceable through the employment of
engagement markers we and you. Male learners’ preference for the pronoun you, seems to

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position them higher than the reader; evoking a sense of authority and dominance. This is a
communication style often associated with men, who, according to researchers, use language
to enhance social dominance (Leaper 1991, Mulac, Bradac & Gibbons 2001). On the
contrary, female writers’ preference for the inclusive we builds a rapport with the reader and
puts them at one with the reader. This is typical of women language, which according to
Mason (1994), would consist of features that transmit a sense of cooperation and selflessness.
With regard to the range of metadiscoursal devices employed by the learners, it was
found that learners generally used very restricted range of devices that made repetition of the
same devices to be fairly common in the learners’ writing. Regardless of their genders,
learners were found to be using the same devices with almost similar density, suggesting that
if not all, most of them share a somewhat similar range and choice of metadiscoursal devices
in their language repertoire. Hinkel (2005) highlighted that L2 writers often employ ‘‘a
severely limited range of hedging devices, largely associated with conversational discourse
and casual spoken interactions (p. 47)’’, which were also employed in the writing of some
learners in this study. This is expected, as the learners involved in the study had had very
little exposure to persuasive writing prior to data collection and were still in the process of
learning the convention of the genre when the data were collected. It is also indisputable that
learners’ restricted range and choice of metadiscoursal devices could have a direct relation to
their proficiency in the L2. Learners’ language proficiency could possibly constrain their
expression of ideas and identities, resulting in overuse and repetition of generic structures and
devices.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Some of the findings of this study were presented at the Asia Pacific Corpus Linguistics Conference, Auckland,
New Zealand, February 2012.

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