Metadiscourse

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"'Students are often told that successful writing in English is 'reader-friendly'. It must fit together logically, be signposted to guide readers, and take the reader's likely responses and processing difficulties into account. But it also needs to work for the writer too, as we communicate for a reason. We use language to persuade, inform, entertain or perhaps just engage an audience, and this means conveying an attitude to what we say and to our readers. These functions are collectively known as metadiscourse: the linguistic expressions which refer to the evolving text and to the writer and imagined reader of that text.' Ken Hyland, from the Preface"