A Comparative Analysis of Interactive markers in Native and Non-Native Selected English Short Stories

Abstract

This corpus-based comparative study has been conducted to ascertain the frequency of various interactive markers employed by native English short stories (NESS) authors and non-native English short stories (NNESS) writers in the construction of persuasive narratives. This study was primarily driven by the necessity to examine the similarities and disparities in the utilization and distribution of interactive markers between native (England, America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia) and non-native (Ghana, Singapore, Pakistan, Nigeria, and India) English short stories within a singular genre. The 400 short stories in the two corpus sets prepared for this study were written by both native and non-native English speakers. Interactive meta-discourse markers were analyzed utilizing Hyland's framework of meta-discourse markers. Ant Cont 3.5.7 (2018) was employed to quantify the frequencies of interactive meta discourse indicators in both native and non-native corpora. Comparisons and contrasts were conducted both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results indicated significant discrepancies in the utilization of interactive markers. Native male and female writers employed a higher frequency of markers than their non
native counterparts, regardless of gender. The study's findings indicate that, in general, nativeEnglish short story writers utilized more interactive indicators to enhance their writing compared to non-native writers.