The importance of studying metadiscourse

This essay focuses on metadiscourse, a name for elements of texts that convey meanings other than those that are primarily referential. The essay provides some theoretical background to the study of metadiscourse, briefly reviews a taxonomy of metadiscourse, and explores four reasons why the study of metadiscourse is interesting and important: (a) Such study shows how intricately structured language is (b) Such study opens up intriguing questions about ethics and language use (c) Such study reveals differences in how metadiscourse is used in similar texts in different languages (d) And such study provides reasons why metadiscourse deserves a special place in second-language instruction.