Even though metadiscourse has recently received considerable attention most research revolves
around written not spoken metadiscourse. This book studies spoken metadiscourse in two
academic genres in the engineering field the lecture and the peer seminar. It examines what
motivates metadiscourse and how engineering academics resort to different types of
metadiscourse when they address different audiences. Based on relevance theory (RT) this study
provides a socio-cognitive framework within which metadiscourse is analysed. The author draws
on RT's generic concept of cognitive environment and uses it to describe the academic context
in particular. This theoretical perspective provides novel insights into motivations abilities
and preferences of engineering academics when using metadiscourse in the two genres under
study.
