A comparative study of interactional metadiscourse markers in EFL textbooks written by native and Iranian authors

The present study analyzed the distribution of interactional markers—as a subcategory of metadiscourse—applied in TEFL textbooks written by authors with different first languages. We used Wordsmith software as our instrument and were able to scrutinize a pool of textual data in voluminous books. The findings revealed that all of the books under scrutiny were dotted with these devices, but their distribution were not the same. Variations in using these markers among writers with the same language were less noticeable. It was concluded that writers in the same language learn the same linguistic-cultural conventions, and they roughly use the same range of interactional markers. The slight differences observed could be explained on the assumption that each writer has their own idiosyncratic writing style.