“Strikingly”, an Academic Writer’s Style Can Be Interactional

This paper aims at unveiling the interactional metadiscourse style of a prominent applied linguist, Douglas Biber. Comparisons are made between 25 of his research articles (RAs) to 126 RAs written by other applied linguists. In this work, a Corpus Linguistics (CL) methodological framework is proposed by using AntConc tools. The results show that the author’s interactional stylistic choices convey levels of certainty and uncertainty about his propositions; make his views explicit, comment on the message, and express evaluations (importance and suitability) and emotions (surprise); and directly involve readers in the ongoing discourse by overtly pointing them to other parts in the RAs. Strikingly, Biber’s interactional rhetorical practices are essentially evaluative and engaging, expressing solidarity, anticipating objections, and revealing the extent to which he works to jointly construct texts with his readers. As a result, the author’s tendency to pursue an interactional metadiscourse style reveals how an expert academic writer crafts an authorial style that may empower novice and other expert writers to craft a style that involves the audience in meaningful reading and writing experiences through academic texts.