A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON INTERACTIVE META-DISCOURSE USED IN RESEARCH ARTICLE DISCUSSIONS PUBLISHED IN HIGH- AND LOW-RANKING ELT JOURNALS BY INDONESIAN AUTHORS

Many studies concerning meta-discourse markers have been conducted by
researchers in some parts of academic texts in applied linguistics and linguistics
field. However, it has not been conducted yet in the research article discussions at
different ranking ELT journals. Therefore, this research aimed to investigate how
Indonesian authors used the interactive meta-discourse markers in research article
discussions published in high-ranking and low-ranking ELT journals and
investigating the differences of the usage of interactive meta-discourse markers used
by them in both groups of journals. This research used a quantitative approach with a
comparative design that investigated 32 research article discussions published in
high-ranking and low-ranking ELT journals in 2020. The data were taken by using
the purposive sampling technique and they were analyzed by using genre-based
discourse analysis or communicative purpose analysis (CPA) principle following the
meta-discourse’s framework of Hyland (2005). The results showed that Indonesian
authors of high-ranking and low-ranking ELT journals used all of the interactive
meta-discourse in research article discussions, but the most frequent marker used by
them was transition markers. Moreover, Indonesian authors of high-ranking ELT
journals used more transition, frame marker, endophoric, and code glosses markers
than low-ranking ELT journals. Meanwhile, the evidential marker was more often
used by Indonesian authors of low-ranking ELT journals. These findings inform the
importance of using the interactive meta-discourse markers in writing the research
article discussion for Indonesian authors.
Keywords: ELT journals, high-and-low ranking journals, interactive meta�discourse, research article discussion.