An examination of the use of spoken interactional metadiscourse markers in EMI lectures from different disciplines

The internationalisation process has encouraged the spread of English-medium instruction (EMI) in universities all over the world. Whereas the purported benefits of EMI are more often than not taken for granted, there are many issues related to what is actually happening in EMI classrooms that still need to be looked into. In this vein, the use of interactional metadiscourse markers when delivering content in the lingua franca and the potential impact of the disciplinary culture are two issues that have hitherto been largely overlooked. Since research studies indicate that teachers in the arts and social sciences tend to use a higher number of metadiscourse markers than those in the hard sciences, the impact of the discipline in classroom discourse deserves further attention. With a view to fill in this research gap, in this paper we analysed the 29,469 interactional metadiscourse markers found in 36 lectures of three different disciplines, namely economics, engineering and history. The overall distribution of interactional metadiscourse markers revealed that engagement markers happened to be the dominant category by an ample margin, followed by self-mentions, hedges, boosters and attitudes markers. In addition, statistically significant differences were found in the use of interactional markers across the three disciplines, a fact that should be considered in professional development courses. The pedagogical implications to be drawn from these findings and some future directions for research are also put forth. • EMI teachers' metadiscourse has received very little attention. • Unlike previous metadiscourse studies, this article analyses classroom interaction. • It examines how the use of interactional markers is influenced by the discipline. • EMI teachers' discipline affects how they make metadiscourse engaging. • Engagement markers are the most frequent interactional metadiscourse elements.