Reader Engagement in English and Persian Applied Linguistics Articles

There is an increasing interest in the way academic writers establish the presence of their readers over the past few years. Establishing the presence of readers or what Kroll (1984, P.181) calls imagining “a second voice†is accomplished when a writer refers explicitly to their readers using explicit linguistic resources (reader engagement markers). Although there are some cross-disciplinary studies and only one cross-cultural study (Hinkel, 2002) which has investigated how writers in different disciplines/cultures acknowledge the presence of their readers, no contrastive study has ever been reported to have examined how academic writers from Persian and English writing cultures address their readers in their texts.Drawing on 60 applied linguistics articles (20 English articles written by native English applied linguists, 20 English articles written by native Persian applied linguists and 20 Persian articles written by native Persian applied linguists), this study aimed at seeing how native Persian and English writers engage their readers in their articles. Hyland’s (2005a) interactional model of stance and engagement was used as an analytical framework to identify the type and frequency of reader engagement markers in these three groups of articles. The result of the analysis showed significant differences in the way native Persian and English represent their readers. Also, considerable differences were observed in categorical distribution of reader engagement markers.