Exploring Gender Differences in the use of Discourse Markers in Iranian Academic Research Articles

The current study attempted to explore the role of gender differences in applying Meta-discourse markers in abstract and discussion sections of articles written in English by native speakers of Persian. A comparative study was also made to probe into the frequency number of hedge and booster in these two sections. To do so, 40 English research articles written by native speakers of Persian were chosen. Accordingly, Hyland's (2005) meta-discourse taxonomy was employed to identify the list of hedges and boosters. The results of quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that gender differences play a significant role on utilizing these devices in the texts. It was also found that Iranian males were more inclined to use boosters in their academic writing while Iranian females prefer to use more hedges to express the information they supplied. This study has pedagogical implications for the writing practices of non-native researchers.