Metadiscourse in the letter to the editor genre

Abstract

The present research article attempts to examine the close relationship between genre and metadiscourse. To this aim, we will describe the concept of genre with special emphasis on the letter to the editor. Second, we will review and critique existing taxonomies of metadiscourse strategies. Finally, based on the model proposed by Dafouz Milne (2006), we will focus on the explicit interpersonal metadiscourse category, presenting some examples from a corpus composed of thirty six letters to the editor, written by Spanish speaking students completing their second year of the Spanish Baccalaureate.