Functional Analysis of Engagement Markers in Academic Spoken Genre: Discussion Sessions in Focus

Subject Areas : Second Language Education

Seyed Foad Ebrahimi ¹ , Mohammad Javad Tandiseh ²

1 -
2 - Department of English, Boushehr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Boushehr, Iran

Received: 2024-11-01 Accepted : 2025-01-29 Published : 2025-02-10

Keywords: Engagement Markers, Discussion Sessions, Meta-discourse Makers, MICASE, Spoken Genres,

Abstract :

Abstract:

The study investigates the use and functions of engagement markers in students’ nine discussion sessions taken from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) corpus which was analyzed using Hyland’s (2016) taxonomy of engagement markers, including four main functions of listeners’ mention, questions, appealing to shared knowledge, directives, and personal asides. The results showed that a) engagement markers were found to be frequently enough to be considered a significant feature in interactive spoken genres, b) about half of the engagement realizations were dedicated to the listeners’ mention highlighting the engagement of the audiences and listeners adding an interactive sense to the discussion sessions, and c) within the four functions, some engagement markers were more frequent than others suggesting the importance of highlighting these features for students to use when participating in the similar genres. Thus, engagement markers play a pivotal role in the realization of the interactive nature of spoken genres.

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