Metadiscourse in postgraduate thesis supervisions at UK and Taiwanese universities

Abstract

This study investigates metadiscourse in master's thesis supervisions at universities in the UK and Taiwan, an established yet underexplored academic spoken genre that functions as a vital mechanism for effective research management and support, particularly within increasingly diverse cohorts of national and international students. Drawing on Hyland's interpersonal model, a self-compiled corpus of over 34,000 words of authentic supervisory interactions was analyzed to identify and compare the use of metadiscourse related to participants' discourse roles and the academic contexts in which the supervision occurred. Interactive metadiscourse exhibits similar distribution patterns across the UK and Taiwanese corpora, which reflects a shared awareness of disciplinary conventions and tacit genre knowledge, contributing to coherent discourse structuring and enhancing the comprehensibility of information-dense academic interactions in both contexts. In contrast, notable differences are observed in interactional metadiscourse, likely attributable to the hybrid academic values of Taiwan's modern higher education system and international students' adaptation to host institutional norms, that is negotiating knowledge in ways that are meaningful and appropriate within their respective discourse communities. Supervisors' dynamic role shifts, enabled by the strategic deployment of metadiscourse, suggest that effective supervision is not a static exertion of authority but a responsive and negotiated practice attuned to students' evolving needs and the epistemic demands of the unfolding supervisory encounter.