Abstract Metadiscourse is a widely used term in current discourse analysis and language education, referring to an interesting, and relatively new, approach to conceptualizing interactions between text producers and their texts and between text producers and users. Essentially metadiscourse embodies the idea that communication is more than just the exchange of information, goods or services, but also involves the personalities, attitudes and assumptions of those who are communicating.
This contrastive study aims to probe whether the evolution of metadiscourse exists or not. For this purpose, two well-known TV programs in the United States, the Big Bang Theory and Growing Pains are chosen respectively. Based on an analysis of 6 episodes of 2 dramas ( 3 from each sitcoms) comprising 10006 words, the research intends to present how American people employ metadiscourse in their daily life and identify the similarities and differences of the use of metadiscourse in the Big Bang Theory and Growing Pains which have an interval of twenty-two years.
This study suggests that there’s more interactional metadiscourse in both Growing Pains and the Big Bang Theory because of the feature of the modern American sitcoms: The oral communication of daily life is casual and people focus on expressing their attitudes and thoughts. As to the different use of the metadiscourse, it is likely to find that Growing Pains and the Big Bang Theory have distinct emphasis. The differences of metadiscourse in the two well-known sitcoms are in fact a subtle reflection of some differences during the 22 years.
Key Words: metadiscourse; similarities and differences; sitcoms
摘要:
元话语是当今语篇分析和语言教育中广泛使用的术语，指的是一个有趣的和相对较新的概念，它使语篇生产者和语篇之间，语篇生产者和使用者之间的互动关系概念化。本质上来说，元话语包含了一个概念，那就是交流不仅仅是交换信息、物品或者服务，还包括了那些沟通者的个性、态度以及臆定。
这篇对比研究的目的在于探索元话语的演变存在与否。为此，本篇研究首先建立了一个小型语料库，语料库包含了2本剧本中的6集电视情景剧剧情，分别是来自于两部著名的美国情景电视剧：《生活大爆炸》3集，《成长的烦恼》3集，共计10006字。研究旨在揭示美国人如何在日常生活中运用元话语，并且通过对比研究阐述元话语在两部时隔二十二年的电视情景喜剧中的异同。6352
本研究发现在《成长的烦恼》和《生活大爆炸》中人际互动元话语用的比较多，其原因主要是因为现代的美国情景喜剧的特征是日常口语会话是随意的，人们倾向于表达他们的态度及想法。而两部情景喜剧中元话语运用的差异是它们侧重点不同的体现，其微妙的差异实际上反应出这22年中的语言演变。
关键词： 元话语; 异同; 情景剧
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements.i
Abstractii
摘要.iii
1 Introduction 1
2 Metadiscourse 3
2.1 Definitions and Issues 3
2.2 Classifications of Metadiscourse 5
2.3 Hyland and Tse’ s Model 6
3 Metadiscourse in Oral Communication and Historical Evolution 8
3.1 Features of Metadiscourse in Oral communication 8
3.2 Historical Evolution 9
4 Introduction to the Corpus 11
4.1 Corpus Illustration 11
5 Contrast and Analysis of the Data 13
5.1 Interactive Resources 14
5.2 Interactional Resources 17
6 Conclusion 20
Bibliography21
1 Introduction
Since Zelling Harris coined the term metadiscourse first in 1959, it has gained increasing interest in various research fields in recent years as a relatively new concept in discourse analysis. A lot of scholars from all over the world have been working on the research of metadiscourse from various perspectives: rhetoric, semiotics, philosophy, speech communication, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics and other perspectives. Nowadays, the most acceptable description of metadiscourse is that metadiscourse does not add the propositional meaning to the content, but show the writer’s views and attitude towards the discourse and readers, and it also helps to guide and direct the readers to organize, interpret, evaluate and react to the propositional content. 《生活大爆炸》与《成长烦恼》元话语运用比较:http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_3844.html