Towards a pragmatic analysis of metadiscourse in academic lectures: From relevance to adaptation

Reference to discourse entities.

A discourse entity refers to the referent of alleged words in the discourse and is introduced into academic lectures by the lecturer to present his/her alleged reference, alleged owner reference, and comparative reference of discourse elements in academic lectures. These discourse elements include entire lecture, individual section, tables and figures. In order to contribute to the audience’s better understanding of the lecture as a whole, reference can be made to the entire lecture, individual section, tables and figures by the lecturer. Extracts (4) and (5) illustrate the lecturer’s reference to his/her retrospective lectures and his/her prospective lectures, respectively.

(4) In the previous lectures I have gone through the basic mechanism for mind, that is image schemas, prototypes, metaphors, blends and so on.

(5) What I am going to do in the next few lectures is to go over a lot of work that I’ve done, I cannot believe it, over the last 41 years.

The discourse entity of In the previous lectures in (4) indicates a clue to previous lectures made by the lecturer to the audience, which is used in the beginning of academic lectures to provide background schemas for the audience for the incoming information. Similarly, the discourse entity of in the next lectures in (5) is used to draw the audience’s attention to lectures which will come. These two discourse entities assist the audience in theguidance of their better understanding of academic lectures as a whole.

Reference to discourse acts

A discourse act refers to an act that the speaker performs when he/she makes a discourse in a concrete situation and is used by the lecturer to perform his/her act of academic information presentation. By the lecturer’s mentioning what has been talked about, the audience’s attention can be drawn to the academic information and therefore the progression of the lecture is facilitated. Extracts (6) and (7) display the lecturer’s reference to his discourse acts.

(6) At very beginning, I’ve mentioned in previous talks and in Metaphors We Live By, metaphor goes with love, is a journey in which lovers are understood as travellers and relationships as vehicles and difficulties in the relationships as impediment things that get in the way of travelling to its destination.

(7) we’ve discovered that there are twenty one, that every different verb of force, motion if you use different logic of causation like bring, carrying, growing and so on, they all can be used in causal sentences but with different logics.

Discourse acts of I’ve mentioned in (6) and we’ve discovered in (7) are illocutionary force indicators which identify expository illocutionary acts of mentioning and discovering just performed by the lecturer. By indicating such kinds of discourse acts, the audience’s attention can be attracted to the progression of the academic information presentation in order to give the audience a general picture of academic lectures.

Reference to discourse labels

A discourse label refers to a concise abstraction of the intentional discourse act of the lecturer. In the process of giving academic lectures, reference can be made to a discourse act just performed by giving it a discourse label. For example:

(8) So if you try to understand language acquisition in terms of an abstract mathematical system, you will never reach this conclusion.

(9) And that logic was the logic not of the human mind necessarily. It could be the human mind but the logic of the world, and if you are smart you could grasp the logic of the world with your mind. That was the assumption. And that assumption carried through up until 1963.

The discourse label of this conclusion in (8) refers to the audience’s previously-made conclusion. Similarly, the discourse labels of that logic and that assumption in (9) also indicate the lecturer’s retrospective discourses of logic and assumption in academic lectures. Such a concise abstraction of previous discourse acts can reduce the audience’s cognitive burden on their processing of academic information.

Executing illocutionary acts

Illocutionary acts in lectures show the audience that the lecturer has made or will make a statement about the topic. Thus the audience can easily catch the main points of the lecture. For example:

(10) What I claim is that the end state that you put on the top is actually infinity in all the cases. And then there are special cases.

(11) What I argued in the first lecture was that that metaphor did not work. That was false.

The metadiscourse device of I claim in (10) performs the illocutionary act of claiming in the present academic lectures. Similarly, the metadiscourse device of I argued in (11) expresses the illocutionary act of arguing in a previous lecture. These two metadiscourse devices can guide the audience to focus their attention on the main claims presented by the lecturer in academic lectures.

Topic shifting

In the process of giving an academic lecture, a clue is often given to the audience by the lecturer when he/she wants to change the topic. Such a clue is what is referred to as topic shifting. For example:

(12) And as for the people coming on the planes, they came off the planes and she asked them at the moment they came off the planes the same question.

(13) Now there is another really, really important prototype, that is, what we call radical categories – central cases and non-central cases.

The metadiscourse devices of as for in (12) and there is another in (13) provide information that the lecturer is going to change a topic, which can make the audience prepare psychologically for the coming of a new topic. Therefore, by means of the metadiscourse devices of topic shifting, the lecturer can put the audience in a better position to receive new information.

Code glossing

Code glossing, such as for example, for instance, helps the audience to interpret the meaning of some statements or arguments. For example:

(14) Now, can a metaphor be true? And the answer is yes. For example, it is possible for someone to waste one hour of your time.

(15) In terms of selection, verb selects the meaning of the head, it selects the head that will go compatibly with it. For example, if you have a verb like believe. Believe requires a human being . . .

For example in (14) further demonstrates the meaning of the statement a metaphor can be true. Similarly, For example in (15) also shows an example of verb selection. Such metadiscourse devices of code glossing signal the restatement of difficult concepts, statements or arguments in academic lectures in other ways and therefore help the audience to interpret their meaning.

Executing interactive acts

Interactive acts in academic lectures reveal that the lecturer keeps the audience in mind and the interaction between the participants in communication. For example:

(16) Now notice a simple thing: we came crying hither, we came hither. ‘Came’ is literally moving, but there is a general metaphor or that existence is location here, birth is coming into existence, that birth is arrival, death is departure.

(17) Notice that here this is underlying structure, you’ll never guess who John invited; but so is this. You can’t image what kind of party John invited someone to, that is also an underlying semantic structure or deep structure.

The metadiscourse device of notice is used to direct the audience’s attention to a simple thing in (16) and an underlying structure in (17) and influences their interpretation of ongoing discourse; it therefore performs the function of interactions between the lecturer and the audience during academic lectures.

Text connectives

By the lecturer’s using text connectives, his/her lecture can be made coherent. Words like first, second, next help to organise the lecture in a logical way. As for the lecturer, he/she is expected to present what he/she wants to say in a coherent way to avoid confusing the audience. For example:

(18) Now, why is important? First, in terms of philosophy and semantics, it is vitally important. Next, it is important because of what is called distinction between literal meaning andnon-literal meaning.

(19) First, there are many concepts that are graded that have degrees like ‘tall’. But, in addition, there were discovered in the 1970s by a woman named Eleanor Rosch, a very famous professor, one of my colleagues at Berkeley, phenomenon called prototypes.

The metadiscourse devices of First and Next in (18) are employed to organise discourse in a sequential order, and First and in addition in (19) are used to indicate additive relation between main clauses. The metadiscourse devices of text connectives are able to transform dry and difficult discourse into coherent and audience-friendly academic lectures, and can guide the audience in their pragmatic inference of information in academic lectures.

Distinction of contextual effect and processing effort and metadiscourse in academic lectures

The concept of relevance in the relevance theory is defined in terms of contextual effect and processing effort. The relevance of utterance depends both on the size of contextual effect achieved and the amount of mental effort required for deriving them. Under the condition of other things being equal, the smaller the processing effort required, the greater contextual effect achieved, the greater the relevance of utterance will be. Human beings have the natural tendency to maximize relevance because our perceptual mechanisms tend to pick out potential relevance stimuli and our memory retrieval systems tend automatically to activate potentially relevant assumptions. Contextual effect, also known as cognitive effect in recent studies, is achieved when newly-presented information interacts with a context of existing assumption to make a worthwhile difference to the hearer’s representation of the world, and therefore the newly-presented information in a context of available assumptions achieves relevance.

The processing effort needed to achieve contextual effect of an utterance is determined by such factors as the linguistic complexity of the utterance, the logical complexity of the utterance, the accessibility of the context, and the size of the context and the inferential effort needed to compute the contextual effect of the utterance in the chosen context (Ifantidou, 2001: 63). In the process of giving academic lectures, a balance between the contextual effect and the processing effort should be kept in the process of choosing appropriate metadiscourse devices to achieve his/her communicative goals. To realise such a balance, various contextual correlates and linguistic factors should be considered to search for relevance on the part of the lecturer in order to make the audience obtain optimal relevance. In other words, appropriate metadiscourse devices should be chosen in such a way as to spare the audience gratuitous processing effort so that the first acceptable interpretation to occur to the audience is the one that the lecture intends to convey. For example:

(20) Now, that doesn’t mean we have made a full model of the brain or anything like that. What we intended to do is to make a higher-level model of clusters of neurons and we will take about those. These are called localist models, and in them the units are not individual neurons but whole clusters, we will talk about the clusters momentarily.

(21) How do you say a word you say? That is, war arts are not prepared to be defended, and you should not to defend dogmas. War arts are prepared to be used, and you should use them flexibly. Understanding of old war arts can often generate new war arts and new war arts are produced according to old war arts. New war principles and new war arts are produced in principle and kept up with the time, and wonderful war tactics are produced. War tactics seem to be away from the laws of war, but they conform to the laws of war. What you have done has a distance from the rightfulness on the surface, but your core spirit is actually correct. War tactics are away from the laws of war on the surface, but are consistent with the laws of war in practice. This is what is the best war art coming from the understanding and the use of SUN ZI’ARTS of WAR. In other words, we should treat it as the ancient philosophical principles, not to treat it as a dogma, or tag to use.

In (20) the topic about model of clusters of neurons is difficult for the audience to understand, and three metadiscourse devices of that doesn’t mean, what we intended to do is to and we will talk about the clusters momentarily are used to relieve the processing burden on the part of the audience. The metadiscourse in (21) also serves to relieve the processing burden and spare the audience’s gratuitous processing effort, such as How do you say a word you say? That is, This is, In other words and or. As a result, the audience benefits from the ostensive effort made by the lecturer in achieving optimal relevance with minimal processing effort in the interpretation of academic information.

Distinction of explicature and implicature and metadiscourse in academic lectures

As far as the distinction between explicature and implicature is concerned, the concept of explicitness should first be investigated. The definition of explicitness, offered by Sperber and Wilson (1985/1986: 182), is that if an assumption communicated by an utterance is explicit if and only it is a development of logical form encoded by this utterance. According to this definition, an explicitly communicated assumption is explicature and an implicitly communicated assumption is implicature. Explicature is the result of decoding and inference. The explicitly communicated content of an utterance is either the basic proposition expressed by the utterance or any high-level explicatures obtained by embedding the proposition under a speech-act verb or a propositional attitude description. Explicatures are understood in a broader sense in this study. Any explicit use of language to state the structure and the lecturer’s attitude towards the proposition is the explicit aspect of communication. Metadiscourse devices are used to encode information about the explicatures of the utterance. If information is encoded implicitly, the contextual assumptions required for the recovery of this interpretation are required to be immediately accessible. Therefore the excellent lecturer is expected to make his/her intentions explicit by considering the cognitive environment of the audience to achieve better contextual effects. In other words, appropriate metadiscourse devices should be chosen to express lecture information explicitly so that the audience can interpret information with minimal effort. For example:

(22) That is a list of properties and that everything is either in a category or out of a category. And that the defining features are what are called the essence of this category. This is a classical category. It has been around over 2500 years and it doesn’t work. Unfortunately, it would be nice if it worked, but it is not true.

(23) But it took 1600 years for such a great dead body, dead but showing no signs of rigor mortis, to be put in the coffin from its death, this lasted until the times of Roman Empire, and it took 1600 years for Roman Empire to make Egypt become one of its provinces, but actually Egypt hadn’t existed before. So I think the irony and symbolized significance is that the typical symbol of Egypt culture is pyramid and mummy, and the fate of Egypt civilization is precisely pyramid and mummy, it becomes a pyramid of civilization, it becomes a mummy of civilization, or Toynbee’s words, it becomes a fossil of civilization so it disappears.

The adverbial Unfortunately in (22) indicates explicitly the lecturer’s attitude towards classical categorization theory and therefore saves the audience’s gratuitous processing effort. Similarly, the metadiscourse devices of So I think the irony and symbolized significance is in (23) is also an explicit way of showing the lecturer’s attitude towards pyramids and mummies in Egypt. Otherwise it may take the audience much more processing effort to realize the lecturer’s communicative intention, or it may even lead to communication failure.

Distinction of conceptual meaning and procedural meaning and metadiscourse in academic lectures

The distinction between conceptual meaning and procedural meaning is proposed by Blakemore (1987). Here conceptual meaning refers to the meaning which encodes conceptual representations and procedure meaning refers to the meaning which encodes a specification of how to manipulate conceptual representations. Metadiscourse devices in academic lectures can be analysed in terms of conceptual meaning or procedural meaning. In other words, metadiscourse devices encode not only the constituents of conceptual representations which enter into inferential computations, but also information which constrains the computations in which these communications are involved in academic lectures. The meaning of metadiscourse in academic lectures is conceptual if it semantically determines the audience’s decoding of conceptual meaning by encoding conceptual representations which the audience is required to decode in order to understand their meaning. The meaning of metadiscourse in academic lectures is procedural if it pragmatically constrains the audience’s inferential phrase of comprehension by indicating the type of inference which the audience is expected to make in order to satisfy the lecturer’s expectation of relevance and adaptation.

Different kinds of metadiscourse in academic lectures encode different kinds of procedural meanings. For example, but and however encode contrastive procedural meaning, in addition and and encode additive procedural meaning, or encodes alternative procedural meaning, so and therefore encode resultative procedural meaning, because and since encode reasoning procedural meaning, although and even if encode concessive procedural meaning, and frankly and fortunately encode modal procedural meaning. These metadiscourse devices indicate to the audience the type of pragmatic inference which the audience is required to make in their interpretation of information in an academic lecture. For example:

(24) And a modifier can modify the object or what’s measured, no problem, either one depending on the semantics. So in the construction grammar, this is no problem, but in X-bar grammar it’s impossible.

(25) The oriental murmurs about this matter, because the oriental thinks abduction of women is not a good thing, of course, is not an honorary thing. But if women don’t agree to be abducted, they won’t probably be abducted. Therefore it doesn’t seem to be necessary for the oriental to fight this matter.

Metadiscourses So in (24) and Therefore in (25) do not encode concepts or do not contribute to the truth conditions of the utterances, but indicate to the audience the pragmatic inference of resultative procedural meaning which they are required to make in their interpretations of these two utterances. These metadiscourse devices show the pragmatic ways of searching for relevance and making adaptations to achieve contextual effect. On the one hand, appropriate metadiscourse should be chosen on the part of the lecturer in order to make the audience achieve optimal relevance and convey his/her expected contextual effect. On the other hand, the audience is expected to give their attention to the metadiscourse devices relevant to their cognitive environment in order to interpret the lecturer’s communicative intention.

Adaptation to linguistic reality

Linguistic reality is the linguistic elements and the linguistic structures of language, which reflect the nature of rules of that language and concern the way the elements of language are organised together in a certain language. Therefore linguistic reality constrains what words or expressions should be chosen and how words or expressions should be organised in the discourse in order to produce coherent discourse.

Linguistic reality in this study is considered to be linguistic elements in a broader sense, which includes not only the grammatical rules of a language, but also the relationship between the use of metadiscourse and its linguistic contexts in academic lectures. Linguistic context, a factor influencing the choice of metadiscourse in academic lectures, mainly refers to the concrete environment in which linguistic communication takes place, and adaptation to linguistic reality here refers to the occurrence of metadiscourse in academic lectures for linguistic reasons or language usage, such as coherence of discourse.

Based on the linguistic reality, adaptation to the contents in the whole discourse is made in order to choose appropriate metadiscourse. Although metapragmatic awareness varies from one lecturer to another, the lecturer is expected to adjust his/her communicative strategies consciously or unconsciously to make his/her chosen metadiscourse appropriate. The reason is that the process of communicating through language is that of interaction between utterance and its linguistic context. As a result, the choice of appropriate metadiscourse through making adaptations to linguistic reality on the part of the lecturer can lead to the successful communication between the lecturer and the audience. Two examples from George Lakoff’s lecture series in (26) and academic lecturersaudio-taped in classrooms in (27) illustrate this point of view.

(26) And that logic was the logic not of the human mind necessarily. It could be the human mind but the logic of the world, and if you are smart you could grasp the logic of the world with your mind. That was assumption. And that assumption carried through up until 1963. It was assumed that the study of rational structures in the universe, and mathematical logic was supposed to be the mathematics of that structure and rational thought limit the structure of the universe. That was the assumption, just taken for granted about the nature of reasoning and logic.

(27) So we can now sum up in this way. What is scientific thought? First, scientific thought is to understand and recognize the laws of the nature. Second, scientific thought is to understand that anyone should be punished if he violates the laws of the nature. Third, scientific thought is to understand its fundamental problems and grasp its basic things if anything is required to be done well.

Coherence of discourse can be realised in a number of ways. In (26), the whole discourse of George Lakoff centres around the logic about the human mind and the world, which is the assumption made by the lecturer. The use of discourse labels And that logic and And that assumption meets the requirements of the discourse, without which the whole discourse will sound incoherent. Similarly, in (27), text connectives First, Second and Third help the lecturer to illustrate his scientific thought in a logical way. The employment of these three metadiscourse devices also contributes to the coherence of the discourse.

Adaptation to psychological motivations

Psychological motivation refers to the forces acting either on or within a person to initiate behavior and reveals activating properties in doing something or saying something in academic lectures. Academic lectures are, in essence, a cognitive activity involving decoding and inferring. In this kind of cognitive activity, adaptation to the cognitive and psychological state of the audience is needed to achieve optimal relevance.

Viewing academic lectures as a process of adapting to psychological motivations means examining discourse features and making assumptions in terms of the lecturer’s projection of the perceptions, the interests and the needs of the audience. Academic lectures communicate effectively only when the audience’s resources for interpreting and responding to them are correctly assured. This can be achieved in part through the employment of metadiscourse, which can take a variety of linguistic forms constrained by many contextual adaptation factors.

Among them, psychological motivations of the audience have their part to play in the process of their interpretation of academic lectures. The reason is that psychological motivations of the audience are crucial to his/her processing capacity and the application of metadiscourse in academic lectures can help the audience to catch and follow the logical order of the presentation, and therefore relieve the processing burden. For example:

(28) Now those properties form a frame for bachelor. But now there are tricky cases. Suppose you think of an Arab sheikh, who has only three wives and can have four. Is he an eligible bachelor? Take another example ‘the pope’. Is the pope a bachelor? Well, he has not been married. But you know he is really eligible to be married. Oh, not really, possibly he could quit the church to get married but it is sort of odd to call the bachelor a bachelor.

(29) What we are going to do is to understand the imperfective case, potential infinity where things go on and on in terms of iterative case that stops after the infinite number is out. What we claim is that the end state you put on the top is actually infinity in all the cases. And there are special cases.

The main function of code glossing such as for example, for instance, take another example is to help the lecturer to illustrate ideas, concepts or propositions in detail and guide the audience in the interpretation of academic information. In (28) the metadiscourse device Take another example can be regarded as the result of the process of searching for relevance and making adaptations. Before the metadiscourse device Take another example is chosen, searching for relevance and making adaptations are conducted on the part of the lecturer. The audience may be assumed to have little knowledge about what bachelor really means, and more examples are needed in order to offer a clear picture of the concept of bachelor in detail. As a result, adaptations to the cognitive state of the audience are made and the code glossing take another example is chosen to illustrate the issue in detail. Therefore the use of the metadiscourse device Take another example in (28) can be viewed as the result of adapting to the psychological state of the audience, and the metadiscourse device Take another example is chosen to connect the example of Arab sheikh and the pope with the concept of bachelor. This facilitates the understanding of the concept of bachelor on the part of the audience.

Similarly, a general introduction or reminding the audience of the ongoing lecture is necessary when the lecture is relatively long and complicated. As shown in (29), this often happens at the beginning of an academic lecture because this act can provide the audience with a clear idea of the logical sequence and the main content of the ongoing academic lecture. The metadiscourse devices What we are going to do is and What we claim is that are the result of searching for relevance and adapting to the psychological motivations of the audience.

The existence of this kind of metadiscourse can help the audience to get a clear idea of the main structure of the ongoing academic lecture and assist in catching the real intention the lecturer wants to convey. This is because the execution of the illocutionary act of metadiscourse is the act of explaining to the audience the main points under discussion in the academic lecture. In addition, the future tense and imperative mood are often used for such metadiscourse devices to illustrate the main content of the academic lecture.

Example (29) shows the lecturer’s high degree of sensitivity to the linguistic needs of the audience as a result of making adaptations to the psychological motivations of the audience. This is evidenced not only by his/her explaining the word ‘infinity’ which has a specific meaning in the subject, but also by his/her linking it with words that the audience might be more familiar with and even by his/her providing an etymological and linguistic explanation.

In the process of giving academic lectures, the lecturer is required to adapt to the psychological motivations of the audience, and linguistic manifestation of this adaptation constitutes one of the characteristic features of academic lectures as a genre. Among these linguistic features, metadiscourse devices are most frequently used to cater to the psychological motivations of the audience in academic lectures.

Adaptation to social conventions

Social convention refers to the ways of behaving that are considered to be correct and polite by most people in a society. Although there may exist differences in social conventions in different social communities, some common human rules set by social conventions must be abided by, and any violation of these common rules can possibly cause damage to the society and the relationships between people. These common rules include solidarity and politeness, and due attention should be paid to them that constrain human verbal communication in order to guarantee the successful interaction between participants.

As a kind of human verbal communication, academic lectures are also constrained by social conventions and the application of metadiscourse makes the audience clearer about the interactional features of metadiscourse in academic lectures. Therefore the lecturer is expected to search for relevance and adapt to social conventions in which appropriate metadiscourse devices are chosen to communicate with the audience. In so doing, the audience is involved in the process of academic lectures and the solidarity between the lecturer and the audience is strengthened. For example:

(30) Notice that here this is an underlying structure, you’ll never guess who John invited. But so is this, you can’t imagine what kind of a party John invited someone to, that is also an underlying semantic structure or deep structure.

(31) The first relation, I think, is the relation between rightness and benefit. War is surely not a good thing to play with, and can certainly cause people to die. From the moral sense and the humanity sense, war should not happen. But from the law of historical development and practical benefits, war cannot fail to happen.

Metadiscourse of interactive act Notice in (30) conforms to social conventions because it makes the audience believe that the lecturer keeps them in his mind and therefore meets the face needs of the audience. This is also true of metadiscourse devices acting as hedges in academic lectures, such as I think, kind of, sort of, a little bit. They can be regarded as the result of searching for relevance and making contextual adaptations to social conventions on the part of the lecturer. The metadiscourse device I think in (31) presents the lecturer’s modest attitude towards academic research, and is used to help the lecturer to express his/her points of view in a mild way and thus maintain the face needs of the other scholars in the same research field, which is considered to be the necessary virtue possessed by a scholar to strengthen solidarity in an academic circle.

As an essential element in social conventions, politeness helps to build up solidarity between the lecturer and the audience and can be achieved by using such metadiscourse devices as generally, might, perhaps, probably, it seems that. These typical forms of metadiscourse are used to tone down their points of view by mitigating the force of the verb or prediction so as to make them socially more acceptable, and negotiate meaning in face-to-face interaction in academic lectures. For example:

(32) You generally don’t make requests of things that you know are possible in the normal situation. Now you might for certain reasons want to do this, for certain rhetorical reasons you might want to request something impossible of your parents, for example.

(33) Perhaps we all know, there are many floating populations in modern times in China, such as in Shanghai. There are several million immigrants. But are these immigrants what we are talking about? Not really, because immigrants are not equal to the floating population, or just in general, migration of population. Immigrants we’re looking at, in general, are settled in nature. I give immigrants a definition. They immigrate into a place and live there for quite a long time. For how many years do they live in that place to become immigrants? I think the standard is not the same for different people in different places, but the common point is that they immigrate into a place and live there for quite a long time. All my students, I think, most of you might not be growing up in Shanghai.

The topic in (32) makes requests in some situations. In the process of presenting his/her point of view, adaptations to the norms of social conventions are made by the lecturer through employing the metadiscourse devices of generally, might. This is because making adaptations to social conventions and presenting viewpoints in a mild way are considered to be appropriate behaviour. Otherwise it leaves the audience with the impression that the lecturer is a little arrogant and therefore impolite.

Similarly, in (33) a precise definition of the concept of immigrant is offered to the audience by the lecturer. In order to present the academic information in an appropriate way, the use of the metadiscourse devices Perhaps, I think, might plays an essential part in coating the lecturer’s viewpoints. Adaptations to moderateness of social conventions are made to choose appropriate metadiscourse devices of perhaps, I think, might to show politeness accordingly.

It should be noted that metadiscourse is often found to be used with modal verbs to tone down statements, which suggests the politeness concern on the part of the lecturer and reflects the cautions calculated in the mind of the lecturer, and therefore can be regarded as the result of making adaptations to social conventions. For example:

(34) There is a great Shakespeare poem, sonnet 73, and it’s about death . . . Now a lot of complicated English. I think this would take days to unpack all those metaphors. But let’s take a couple.

(35) With regard to life, world, history, and how you should lead your lives. These issues are reflected by a variety of different films. If you are going to enjoy these kinds of films, you don’t have to pay homage to them. They give you something, to say in a dark room, watching films, crying together, laughing together, which brings you that kind of things. These things I think are what cultural appreciators should get from these kinds of films, because the films themselves have already provided these things.

In (34), a Shakespeare sonnet is quoted and used to explain to the audience the complicated nature of the poem and metaphors. The use of metadiscourse I think with modal verb would helps the lecturer to express his/her viewpoint in an appropriate way. In (35), how to appreciate films is discussed. The employment of metadiscourse I think with modal verb should assists the lecturer in presenting his/her idea in a polite way. They can be reviewed as the result of making adaptations to the politeness of social conventions.