Discursive interpersonality as an alternative to interpersonal metadiscourse

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new concept, discursive interpersonality, as a flexibilized model of interpersonal metadiscourse (IM). Departing from the proven validity of IM (Hyland, 2005a, 2005b) as a framework to analyse interpersonal relations between writers/speakers and readers/listeners, our argumentation is grounded on our research results, stemming from the study of different academic and professional genres. Since interpersonal metadiscourse is conditioned by contextual variables, such as genre, discipline, language and corpus, as an array of authors suggest (Dahl, 2004; Sala, 2006; Yakhontova, 2006; Giannoni, 2007; Mapelli, 2008; Crismore & Abdollazadeh, 2010; Gotti, 2010; Lorés-Sanz, 2011a; Ivorra Pérez, 2015, 2016; Suau-Jiménez, 2016; Mattiello, 2018; Turiman et al., 2018; Herrando-Rodrigo, 2019), IM would need to be redefined or readapted, including new markers, new lexico-grammatical realizations. As a result and very importantly, propositionality should be considered a theoretical central feature that contributes to interpersonal interactions but that traditional approaches of IM do not accept as such. So, a new, more encompassing concept needs to be coined that accounts for all these essential aspects. Assuming how interpersonal metadiscourse has been defined conventionally (Mauranen, 1993a, 1993b; Hyland, 2005a, 2017), we propose two integrative concepts: discursive turn (Jaworski & Pritchard, 2005), not in its philosophical sense but in one that sees discourse as an identity axis or departure point for analysis, and interpersonality (Lorés-Sanz et al., 2010), considered as an umbrella term broader than IM. Discursive interpersonality might thus open more satisfactory paths for further research in a variety of genres, domains and languages.