Trine Dahl:

This paper deals with the concept of metadiscourse as manifested in research articles in English and Norwegian within the disciplines of economics, linguistics and medicine. The study is a part of the KIAP project, which investigates writer manifestation in such texts. The metadiscoursal elements focused on here are divided into two categories: locational metadiscourse, comprising references to the text and its parts; and rhetorical metadiscourse, comprising verbs signalling discourse acts. The results show that in terms of language, English uses most metadiscourse, closely followed by Norwegian. In terms of discipline, economics uses a little more than linguistics; texts from these two disciplines use a lot more metadiscourse than medical texts, especially locational metadiscourse. The results are discussed in terms of writing traditions within the two languages, indicating that both represent so-called reader-oriented cultures, and in terms of scientific traditions, indicating a close relationship between linguistics and economics.