An Investigation into the Occurrences of Metadiscourse in Moves in Dissertations of Applied Linguistics

The present study tries to investigate the frequency of metadiscourse makers and moves and the occurrence of metadiscourse in certain moves in discussion section in dissertations of applied linguistics. The present study employs the corpus as the research method, using MAXQDA as research tool to conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis. The research finds that the most frequent use of metadiscourse are hedges and transitions, while the lowest is self-mentions, and the central moves are reporting the results and interpreting the results. The research refines the move structure after investigating the corpus. The most frequent occurrence of metadiscourse is hedges in interpreting the results, following the transitions in reporting the results. Self-mentions are the lowest occurrence in any moves.