Navigating texts and sources: Interactive metadiscourse in Estonian student writing

Metadiscourse helps academic writers guide readers through the unfolding text and its external sources. Although Baltic academic writing has attracted increasing attention, interactive metadiscourse in Estonian student writing has not been studied systematically. This study applies an Estonian adaptation of the interpersonal model of metadiscourse to a corpus of 40 Estonian-language bachelor’s and master’s dissertations from the humanities and social sciences. Potential markers were retrieved and classified semi-automatically, then validated contextually. Their distribution across fields, study levels and rhetorical sections was examined using normalised frequencies, multiple correspondence analysis and conditional inference trees. Evidentials and endophoric markers – the two most frequent categories – were also analysed by subcategory and in terms of their associated lexical items. Evidentials accounted for more than half of all interactive metadiscourse, followed by endophoric markers. Frame markers were the least frequent. Within the corpus, marker distributions varied most clearly across rhetorical sections: evidentials characterised literature reviews, while endophoric markers were concentrated in introductions and conclusions. Non-integral citations predominated, although integral citation was more prominent in some disciplinary and rhetorical contexts. Whole-text references were the most frequent endophoric subcategory, followed by previewing and reviewing references. The study provides the first systematic corpus-based account of interactive metadiscourse in Estonian university dissertations and contributes to research and instruction on Baltic academic writing.