ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book proceeds with the account of the data and method used in the study. It presents the general findings of the study, giving an overall picture of how meta-discursive nouns are used to develop textual interaction and construct academic knowledge in research articles. The book discusses the interactive feature of meta-discursive nouns in the two most frequent patterns, showing how they help to formulate cohesive flow of discourse and meaningful message. It turns to the interactional function of meta-discursive nouns, presenting the results of how the nouns in the two most frequent patterns express writers’ authorial stance towards material and audience and how writers engage readers in texts through these nouns. The book reports the results of the two patterns separately and shows how the interactional function varies across disciplines and rhetorical divisions of research articles.
