Roles of Visual and Linguistic Metadiscourses in Developing Persuasive Infographic Resumes

Research in English Language Pedagogy

دوره 11، شماره 2 - شماره پیاپی 23، شهریور 2023، صفحه 238-260   

نوع مقاله: Original Article

شناسه دیجیتال (DOI): 10.30486/relp.2023.1982019.1448

نویسنده

Omid Allaf-Akbary^*

University of Mohaghegh Ardabili

چکیده

An infographic resume is an effective medium of exchanging information from job applicants to employers, and it greatly affects and persuades employers to take action. The current study examines both how frequently linguistic and the visual metadiscourse markers (MMs) are employed in infographic resumes and the role they take in creating persuasion. A corpus of 30 infographic resumes totaling about 2463 words was extracted from digital content marketers, software engineers, and service advisors. To compare the employment of the two metadiscourse types, and find out the way visual metadiscourse perfectly coordinated with linguistic metadiscourse in creating persuasive interaction and evoking employers to hire the job applicants, we built on Hyland’s (2019) metadiscourse model and Kumpf's (2000) visual metadiscourse to analyze the corpora. Results indicated that boosters and attitude markers demonstrated higher frequencies than other linguistic MMs and were considered to be meaningful and influential ways of persuasive language. In addition, it was shown that all visual metadiscourse categories were mostly established in the data examined. The findings revealed that both linguistic and visual metadiscourse is significant in establishing the discourse, attracting the audience, and satisfying the employers’ curiosity. They were proved to be essential in persuasive language.

کلیدواژه‌ها

Infographic resume؛ Metadiscourse؛ Visual metadiscourse

اصل مقاله

1. Introduction

Metadiscourse is considered to be one of the essential properties of human communication. It is present in every part of our lives with different modalities. Since language users should predict that their arguments may be negated, they should give an orientation to their speech or writing. That is, language speakers or writers are supposed to evaluate their addressees' knowledge and take their expectations into account. Language users should be aware of how to convey messages to be understood by the discourse community (Hyland, 2019). Hence, metadiscourse makes a relationship between text or speech samples with contexts. Academically speaking, it is crucial to explore the interaction patterns in a variety of genres and languages (Hyland & Tse, 2004). Attitudes, personalities, and assumptions of the writers can be shown in writing as communication to determine the discourse. It dictates the authority of the writers in presenting their attitudes in discourse and even in making the difficult text reader-friendly. Metadiscourse manifests that a text or speech cannot be neutral and it also affects the addressees differently assuming how it is written or spoken (Hyland, 2019). If an author knows who the audience is or what they need, he/she can build a constructive academic persona. That is, the relationship between the author and the audience is made. Metadiscourse contributes to people’s identification of the relationship between language choices and utterances in specific situations. It is believed that metadiscourse can be indicated by other semiotic codes than language meaning that metadiscourse is sometimes realized as visual resources in some of its categorizations. For example, parentheses and colons as realizations of code glosses can be in the realm of metadiscourse (Dafouz-Milne, 2008). Exclamation marks were considered to be metadiscourse realizations (Povolná, 2020). Visual communication indicating multimodality has been examined by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006), and Kress (2010). The literature shows that there is a scarcity of studies on visual metadiscourse, analyzing different non-verbal features. To our knowledge, no study has tackled visual metadiscourse on infographic resumes. An infographic (graphic information) is a delineation of information graphically to make the data easily intelligible at a glance (Tufte, 2001).

 The study of infographic resumes is directed to explore the employment of interactional MMs and other visual features, playing a crucial role in conveying the meaning of the infographics resume. As Ledin and Machin (2020) stated, visual elements can greatly manifest language. It is believed that meaning may be conveyed through images just as conveyed by writing. Visuals are considered means of communication, as suggested in semiotics and multimodal discourse analysis (Kress, 2010). An appealing study of metadiscourse, which applied visual metadiscourse and linguistic elements, has been recently conducted by Al-Subhi (2022). She inspected the employment of linguistic and visual metadiscourse features in Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter and she concluded that visual and linguistics metadiscourse play an important role in constructing the discourse.

The present study attempted to investigate both linguistic and visual metadiscourse on the infographic resume genre and reveal in what ways they are applied to indicate certain strategies. These strategies used in constructing infographic resumes have a significant function in committing the potential employers, directing them to the desired behavior, therefore achieving success for the job applicants. Infographics are a medium of visual language. Infographics is a genre of discourse focusing primarily on visual elements compared to alphabetical language to convey a message (Dick, 2020). Infographic resumes gained a lot of popularity in recent years. The discourse of infographics presents a fertile area for exploration, as it is adapting and conforming to a variety of employment purposes. One of the interesting instances of the rhetorical function of metadiscourse is believed to be in infographics (D'Angelo, et al., 2021; Li, 2021).

 

2. Literature Review

2.1. Metadiscourse

The concept of metadiscourse was initially developed by Harris (1959) to indicate how a writer or speaker tries to guide the reader or speaker through a text or speech, and metadiscourse was later developed by other researchers (Ädel, 2006; Crismore, 1989; Hyland, 2005; Vande Kopple, 1985, 2002). Nevertheless, the concept was not the same for all researchers. Hyland's (2005) model represents that metadiscourse consists of two aspects of communication including interactive and interactional elements. In addition, Ädel (2006) and Ädel and Mauranen (2010), following the reflexive concept, believed that metadiscourse refers to the text itself, organizing the text.

Chen and Hu (2020) investigated how surprise markers were employed between Applied Linguistics and Counseling Psychology. Taking Charles Fillmore's frame semantics, researchers collected a corpus consisting of 320 research articles and examined all the markers for a surprise. Four hundred and thirty-nine 439 markers showing surprise came up to draw out seven interrelated semantic frames. The semantic frames included eight ideationally frame components, five of which occurred more than the others. The analyses showed that a genre-specific surprise frame could be generalized and presented in the articles to determine how to surprise and its linguistic elements were represented in creating technical knowledge.

Yoon and Römer (2020) conducted a study to examine advanced-level learners’ writing to determine exact variations across the discipline in employing MMs. Drawing on Hyland’s (2019) model, they first quantitatively analyzed interactional MMs across disciplines. Scores were quantified for each MM. 829 written texts from 16 different fields were the data for the study. The findings revealed that differences in employing MMs were significant across academic fields. Furthermore, the result showed that disciplines from the same academic division were not highly comparable in using interactional MMs.

Tseng and Liu (2021) attempted to determine how hedges and boosters are employed in discussion parts of research articles. They selected qualitative approaches including narrative inquiry and grounded theory. Considering 30 SSCI-indexed articles in the education specialty, they identified similarities and differences between the two approaches based on the ways propositions are adapted. Broadly speaking, authors following narrative inquiry focused highly on boosters than those following grounded theory in their sentences, while authors relying on grounded perspective were more hesitant in creating a theory. In addition, although both narrative and grounded-theory studies employed boosting and hedging, some small differences were found. 

Al-Subhi (2022) attempted to determine the employment of linguistic and visual MMs across advertisements. The data included 50 advertisements taken from such platforms as Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. The analysis was qualitatively done, building on Hyland’s (2019) metadiscourse model and Kumpf's (2000) visual metadiscourse. The aim was to find out how visual metadiscourse was complementary to linguistic metadiscourse in convincing customers to buy into buying the goods. It was revealed that visual metadiscourse was extremely eye-impressive in the advertisement corpus. In addition, findings revealed that both engagement markers and directives were greatly frequent compared to other textual MMs and they were believed to be essential elements of a convincing message.

Kashiha (2022) aimed to analyze and compare MMs use orienting people in academic and political speech samples. A corpus totaling 40 academic lectures and political speeches, 20 transcriptions each, were collected and analyzed Ädel's (2010) metadiscourse taxonomy to determine the extent to which these two spoken modes employ MMs to commit listeners and engage them with discourse. The results indicated that lectures employed metadiscourse more frequently to guide audiences because of their dialogic nature. Those presenting lectures attempted to direct students into their argumentations and organize linguistic and pragmatic relations between them, conveying information. Moreover, some distinctions were found between the two modes so that MMs were employed on some occasions compatible with academic lectures.

Esfandiari and Allaf-Akbary (2022) examined 220 research articles written by novice and expert Iranian applied linguists in national and international English medium journals. They followed retrospective methods along with semi-structured interviews to get a comprehensive understanding of MMs' employment. To analyze the corpora in three such subsections as introductions, results, and discussion, they drew on Hyland’s (2019) metadiscourse model. After running chi-square tests, they utilized a follow-up stimulated recall via semi-structured e-mail interviews. The MAXQDA was used to examine the interview data. The findings indicated that expert authors employed interactional MMs more frequently than novice authors. It was also shown that the difference between novice authors and expert authors in employing attitude and engagement markers was not significant. The distribution of hedges, boosters, and self-mentions in the novice and expert authors’ articles was significantly different. Qualitative and thematic analyses revealed that MMs play essential roles in delivering the authors’ message and intention to the discourse communities.

Thus, the following research questions were posed to analyze interactional MMs and visual metadiscourse in infographic resumes.

1. Are there any significant differences in the frequency and use of interactional MMs in infographic resumes across three writer groups?
2. How are interactional MMs and visual metadiscourse categories employed in infographic resumes to foreground certain strategies?

 

3. Methodology

3.1. Construction of the Corpus

The data include 30 infographic resumes totaling about 2463 words. All the infographic resumes were randomly selected and sorted out online from three different English academics including digital content marketers, software engineers, and customer service advisors (Table 1.). These three main academics were chosen for their availability and their high commitment to job applications and this may prove the authenticity of the data. an infographic resume is a form of résumé for job applicants needing ways to set themselves apart and persuade persuading employers to hire them. Infographic resumes may not completely replace a traditional resume. However, they’re great visual documents to carry in an interview, to publish on your portfolio site.

 

 

 

Table 1.

Overview of Distribution of Interactional MMs in Infographics Resumes by Academics

Corpora	No. of infographic resumes	No. of words	MMs per 100 words	Relative frequency
Digital content marketers	10	831	69	8.3
Software engineers	10	857	77	8.9
Customer service advisors	10	775	65	8.3

 

3.2. Data Collection Procedure

The current study tries to illustrate the significance of metadiscourse in the genre of infographic resumes. It follows an examination of the interactional resources and visual features employed in infographic resumes. The collected data were examined through qualitative analysis, conducted manually to guarantee its validity. It was carried out in two phases including investigating linguistic metadiscourse use and visual metadiscourse elements.

To achieve this, at first, interactional MMs were identified based on Hyland's (2019) interpersonal metadiscourse model. Then, the frequencies of MMs were calculated and displayed in a table. Through linguistic analysis of textual metadiscourse, all frequencies were normalized to occurrences per 100 words to guarantee a more valid procedure in comparing data.

Following the second phase, we built on Kumpf's (2000) model of visual metadiscourse to analyze the infographic resumes. Visual metadiscourse “complements textual metadiscourse in emphasizing the necessity of rhetoric in technical communication” (Kumpf, 2000, p. 401).  His model consists of ten elements including first impression, heft, convention, chunking, external skeleton, consistency, expense, attraction, interpretation, and style, all of which were qualitatively investigated regarding infographic resumes. This study tries to provide distributional structures of linguistic and visual metadiscourse in infographic resume discourse and the function they have in constructing persuasion in job employment.

 

3.3. Data Analysis Procedure

3.3.1. Interactional metadiscourse analysis

 

To represent the findings, the researcher displayed the overall distribution of interactional MMs in the three different groups of job applicants in Figure 1.

 

Figure 1.

Percentage Distribution of Interactional MMs in Infographic Resumes

 

To analyze the data quantitatively, we run a chi-square test to examine the relationship between the frequencies of interactional MMs between three groups of job applicants.

 

Table 2. Chi-square Test Results across Job Applicants in Infographic Resumes
	Value	df	Asymptotic Significance (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square	26.300a	26	.447
Likelihood Ratio	32.140	26	.189
Linear-by-Linear Association	2.329	1	.127
N of Valid Cases	30
a. 42 cells (100.0%) have an expected count of less than 5. The minimum expected count is .33.

 

No statistically significant difference was indicated through chi-square analysis (χ⁽¹⁾ = 26.3, p = .447). That is, the distribution of interactional MMs across corpora was not significantly different (Table 2).

 

3.3.2. Interactional resources

 

This deals with the ways language users follow interaction by presenting and reflecting on their message. The language users make their ideas and points clear and try to involve readers by leading them to answer the unfolding text. The five categories of interactional resources are explained as follows.

 

3.3.2.1. Hedges

They are considered to show the writer's decision to identify alternative positions and so hold back complete engagement with a proposition. Hedges were not frequent in the infographic resumes (Table. 3). It was highly expected since these types of MMs show uncertainty and may turn down the job applicants' requests for employment. Hedges show no power in the language used by the writers (Yoon & Römer, 2020). Typically, it is indicated by frequent use of hesitations leading to a negative attitude considering the speaker status. Examples are as follows:

• At last, perhaps skills may help you increase your sales strategies. (Customer service advisors)
• Maybe design a new software program to improve the validity of the company. (Software engineers)

 

Table 3.

 Hedges Employed in the Three Types of Infographic Resumes

Infographic resumes	No. of resumes	Used words	Total hedges	Hedges used per person	Hedges used per 100 words
Digital content marketers	10	831	14	1.4	1.6
Software engineers	10	857	16	1.6	1.8
Customer service advisors	10	775	9	.9	1.1

 

As shown in Table 4, to measure the variation in employing hedges regarding infographic resumes, the chi-square was run. The chi-square value showed no significant differences in employing hedges in different types of infographic resumes (X ² = 6, p = .199).

 

 

Table 4. Chi-square Test across Job Applicants in Infographic Resumes in Using Hedges
	Value	df	Asymptotic Significance (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square	6.000a	4	.199
Likelihood Ratio	6.592	4	.159
Linear-by-Linear Association	1.974	1	.160
N of Valid Cases	3
a. 9 cells (100.0%) have an expected count of less than 5. The minimum expected count is .33.

 

3.3.2.2. Boosters

As opposed to hedges, boosters were more frequent in the infographic resumes because they indicate certainty and force of the proposition (Table. 5). The following are examples:

 

• Always believe in my skills in digital marketing. (Digital content marketers)
• Definitely, be able to offer some pieces of advice. (Customer service advisors)

 

 

 

Table 5.

Boosters Employed in the Three Types of Infographic Resumes

Infographic resumes	No. of resumes	Used words	Total boosters	Boosters used per person	Boosters used per 100 words
Digital content marketers	10	831	59	5.9	7
Software engineers	10	857	61	6.1	7.1
Customer service advisors	10	775	48	4.8	6.1

 

As displayed in Table 6, the chi-square was utilized to determine the variation in using boosters concerning infographic resumes. The chi-square value indicated that the difference was not statistically significant (X ² = 6, p = .199).

 

Table 6. Chi-square Test across Job Applicants in Infographic Resumes Using Boosters
	Value	df	Asymptotic Significance (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square	6.000a	4	.199
Likelihood Ratio	6.592	4	.159
Linear-by-Linear Association	1.235	1	.266
N of Valid Cases	3
a. 9 cells (100.0%) have an expected count of less than 5. The minimum expected count is .33.

 

3.3.2.3. Self-mentions

The infographic resumes following follow a very low frequency of self-mention elements. Data indicated that resume writers in all academics did not mostly use first person pronouns pronoun in singular “I” (Table. 7). This pronoun is not missing; it is intentionally left out due to easier reading and brevity. Resumes are written in a telegraphic style. Essentially, some words are eliminated but the sentence is still understood. Here are examples:

• Delivered five lectures by invitation on software programs. (Software engineers)
• Supervised and assessed sale manager presentations. (Customer service advisors)

 

 

 

 

Table 7.

Self-mentions Employed in the Three types of Infographic Resumes

Infographic resumes	No. of resumes	Used words	Total self-mentions	Self-mentions used per person	Self-mentions used per 100 words
Digital content marketers	10	831	5	.5	.6
Software engineers	10	857	3	.3	.35
Customer service advisors	10	775	3	.3	.38

 

As shown in Table 8, to find out the variation in employing self-mentions within infographic resumes, the researcher followed the chi-square. The chi-square value showed that the difference was not statistically significant (X ² = 3, p = .223).

 

Table 8. Chi-square Test across Job Applicants in Infographic Resumes Using Self-mentions
	Value	df	Asymptotic Significance (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square	3.000a	2	.223
Likelihood Ratio	3.819	2	.148
Linear-by-Linear Association	1.500	1	.221
N of Valid Cases	3
a. 6 cells (100.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is .33.

 

3.3.2.4. Attitude markers

They manifest the writer's affective attitude towards propositions. They will lead to noteworthy results. Interestingly, it appears in different forms including adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. This MM was shown to be frequent in three types of infographic resumes showing more agreement voice in writing resumes (Table 9).

• Preferred to design software programs to be used universally. (Software engineers)
• Content appropriately designed in the company. (Digital content marketers)

 

 

 

 

Table 9.

Attitude Markers Employed in the Three Types of Infographic Resumes

Infographic resumes	No. of resumes	Used words	Total attitude markers	Attitude markers used per person	Attitude markers used per 100 words
Digital content marketers	10	831	44	4.4	5.2
Software engineers	10	857	39	3.9	4.5
Customer service advisors	10	775	43	4.3	5.5

 

The chi-square value in Table 10 shows that there was no significant difference in employing attitude markers within infographic resumes (X ² = 6, p = .199).

 

Table 10. Chi-square Test across Job Applicants in Infographic Resumes Using Attitude markers
	Value	df	Asymptotic Significance (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square	6.000a	4	.199
Likelihood Ratio	6.592	4	.159
Linear-by-Linear Association	.071	1	.789
N of Valid Cases	3
a. 9 cells (100.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is .33.

 

 

3.3.2.5. Engagement markers

They are “devices that explicitly address readers, either to focus their attention or include them as discourse participants” (Hyland, 2019, p. 53). These MMs were not certainly found in the infographic resumes since the resume writer did not bring the reader to the discourse through pronouns like “You, We”. While writing the resume, the writer did not address directly the readers. Thus, there was no overt use of pronouns in infographic resumes.

 

3.3.3 Visual metadiscourse

3.3.3.1. First impression

This category describes the suppositions that readers eagerly act on in a record. The first impression of a document affects its acceptance prior to the first word being read by the reader. (Kumpf, 2000). It is considered to be the first meeting with an infographic resume in which the visual cues arouse a prompt reaction from readers. So, a fine first impression is a necessity in infographic resumes since this causes the reader to go into the details and adopt a positive or negative attitude towards the entire infographic resume. For instance, as shown in Figure 2, the employer is first faced with a resume writer’s image and colorful sections in an organized manner and he/she is persuaded to know more about the person who applied for a job. The employer’s expectations are going to be met.

 

Figure 2.

Infographic Resume Showing the First Impression

 

3.3.3.2. Heft

It is related to a concept resembling the bulk or length of a document (Kumpf, 2000). As displayed in Figure 2, the infographic resume was not too long meaning that the number of words used (size) cannot make reading boring. If it were too long, it might not be read. Employers need to receive a short but comprehensive resume. Were it more than one page, its excessive heft could prevent employers from consulting it. The infographic resume writer attempted to figure out the points to be comprehensible for employers. In this example, the infographic resume writer satisfied the heft by providing interpretive texts. It is worth mentioning that the heft is directly coupled with the first impression. when the heft is not met, the first impression will also be affected negatively.

 

3.3.3.3. Convention

This element of visual metadiscourse pertains to the reader’s expectation from the impression of a specific record. It describes how the elements in a document are grouped. (Kumpf, 2000). To put it simply, it includes formatting style of a document or a text. When one designs a document, he/she reads it in appearance and then applies it into different conventions controlling its language (Kostelnick, et el., 1998). For instance, we assume a resume to be composed normally in Times New Roman and consist of full name, e-mail address, academic field, skills, and experience. The points discussed are seen in Figure 3.

 

Figure 3.

Infographic Resume Showing Convention

 

Following Figure 3, the reader can identify it as an infographic resume since it includes images, color, language, figures, and all other elements needed need for an infographic resume.

Data for the current study indicated that the convention of most infographic resumes presents interesting diagrams and catchy sentences. Results showed that the standards related to infographic resumes were perused in most of the resumes.

 

  

3.3.3.4. Chunking

It is defined as arranging a document into individual visual parts to “help readers identify the constituent parts of a document and to show the boundaries of related items” (Kumpf, 2000, p. 409). A careful writer is supposed to separate items into visual parts to assist readers in associating to associate the different parts of a document and to indicate the boundaries of the items. Chunking requires the readers to treat the material in parts instead of presenting the texts without breaks. Visually distinct units affect employers and enjoy their attention. Figure 4 shows that infographic resumes follow the following chunking by presenting different parts of the resume separately. It includes contact, interests, software skills, abilities, and experiences, each of which is separately explained through visually distinct units. Employers can glance at the chunked parts of infographic resumes quickly to get the gist.

 

Figure 4.

Infographic Resume Showing Chunking

 

 

 

3.3.3.5. External Skeleton

 

Kumpf (2000) stated that headers/footers, headings, and page numbers can be considered to show the bone or external skeleton of a document. The external skeleton is directly related to chunking in that chunking assists the document reader to determine the skeleton. The present study indicates that infographic resumes pursue the external skeleton through headings for each part, as shown in Figure 4. The infographic resume in the example consists of five different headings. For example, it starts with the most significant part, contact, leaving the other sections for the next sections. The external skeleton explicitly helps employers orient themselves to their needs. The example, Figure 4, shows that subtitles are graphologically composed in bold and capital letters.

 

3.3.3.6. Consistency

 

It deals with the unity in a document following a consistent style or tone (Kumpf 2000). As displayed in Figure 5, dates are arranged in chronological order, each of which carries a summary with single spacing. It follows one-sided printing. Moreover, the fonts are the same. This shows cohesion in infographic resumes.

 

Figure 5.

Infographic Resume Showing Consistency

 

 

3.3.3.7. Expense

 It focuses on financial issues meaning that the expense of paper and printing should be taken into account. Such details as format, typesetting, and ink quality improve the importance of the text. It deals with the aesthetic factors of a document, depending on the situation, and influences the reader's reaction to the document (Mancini, 2005). Infographic resumes can be printed on bond paper with high quality to persuade the employer to help the job applicants.

 

 

 

3.3.3.8. Attraction

As presented before, the readers are involved in the first impression. So, attraction accounts for the ability to keep readers once committed to the end (Kumpf, 2000). It can be done via employing other visual metadiscourse elements including consistency, chunking, and the external skeleton. This element is obtained in infographic resumes by applying various fonts, lively colors, and other visuals. For instance, as in Figure 6, employers are involved in text effects in which job applicant is introduced. This infographic resume indicates the first impression through a large bold text: Hello! I am … to draw the employer’s attention to the resume. Attractions then follow through colorful texts and distinctive fonts displayed in a sequence.

 

Figure 6.

Infographic Resume Showing Attraction

 

3.3.3.9. Interpretation

 

It refers to tables, graphs, and photos. Most writers often apply these visual elements without interpreting the text (Kumpf, 2000). For instance, many writers focus on the visual metadiscourse by stating, "Findings are shown in the following figure.". Interpretation permits the text to bear visuals in a record meaning that images are supported by the text. for example, the infographic resumes follow some commands in that most of them enjoy those elements, as shown in Figure 7.

 

Figure 7.

Infographic Resume Showing Interpretation

 

 

3.3.3.10. Style

 

It indicates the appearance that a text may have through font style/size and color adorning the text (Mancini, 2005). The data analysis reveals that almost all the infographic resumes followed a lot of styles and several visual options to convey the information to employers and get impressive employment. The infographic resumes are appealingly formatted (Figure 8). The font type, capital thick letters, and colors utilized in the example may be illegible for readers as employers. The text font/size was adapted to encourage employers to read the resume.

 

 

Figure 8.

Infographic Resume Showing Style

 

4. Discussion

The current study examined how linguistic and visual metadiscourse is used in the genre of infographic resumes. It was explored that interactional MMs are sufficiently used in infographic resumes. The most significant feature of infographic resumes is the frequent employment of “boosters” and “attitude markers”. The high occurrence of these MMs is based on the interactional and convincing intentions that the infographic resume writers desire to obtain. Boosters reinforce the job applicants’ claims about their abilities and competence (Zhang & Parvaresh, 2019). Most of the attitude markers used in the infographic resumes were related to attitudinal adverbs used efficiently in the infographic resumes not only to show that they are qualified enough to get a job but contribute to the message of the infographic resume. Attitude markers reinforce the employers’ convincingness, indicating a positive viewpoint on the job applicants via using appropriate adverbs (Ionescu-Ruxăndoiu, et al., 2022). It is worth mentioning that engagement markers suffered from low frequency in infographic resumes since they show reader pronouns and directives (D'Angelo, et al., 2021). So, there are no friendly relationships between job applicants and employers. This is supported by Smith-Worthington ‎and Jefferson (2018) stressing that personal markers may demotivate employers to believe in the job applicants’ abilities being written in the resumes. As for hedges employed in infographic resumes, they were not frequently used since they indicate uncertainty to self-assertion. developing an infographic resume, the job applicants need to present the fact rather than an opinion (Hyland 2019). Moreover, self-mention markers were also less frequent, showing that the resumes were not supposed to be evaluated by the frequent occurrence of first-person pronouns (DeCarlo, 2019; Tompkins, 2020).

In addition, the present study revealed that all visual metadiscourse categories were evident in infographic resumes. The findings indicate that infographic resumes are inherently visual, as shown in employing a variety of visual such elements as fonts, colors, patterns, images, and size. These elements establish the chief structural constituents of infographic resumes attracting employers’ attention, stirring up their emotions, and persuading them to hire the job applicants. Paolucci (2021) stated that one first reads the image, not the text it describes. Thus, infographic resume developers focus mainly on creative visual elements to entice employers.

When the visual elements made the employers interested, they would be persuaded to keep reading the resume. Interestingly, all visual elements are used all together to take a great deal of persuasion. Linguistic and visual metadiscourse convey the message and help the reader understand the text. Linguistic metadiscourse contributes to the content arrangement and directs its message to the requirements of the target audience. Visual metadiscourse establishes the contents by attracting attention (Fechine & Pontes, 2012). Crismore, (2004) argued that “Both print and visual metadiscourse have interpersonal functions that have persuasive, rhetorical effects on readers” (p. 313). At last, writing infographic resumes needs persuasion, obtained through rhetoric, to interact with employers and to develop an idea toward job applicants.

 

5. Conclusion

The current study aimed to investigate the distribution of Hyland’s (2019) interactional MMs and Kumpf's (2000) visual metadiscourse within the infographic resumes written by job applicants in digital content marketers, software engineers, and customer service advisors. The articles were selected from written national and international journals. Interactional MMs in three corpora were extracted and their frequency distribution was compared between writer groups. The findings showed that interactional MMs and visual metadiscourse were highly employed in infographic resumes. It was indicated that there were enough interactional MMs with higher frequencies. Moreover, all visual metadiscourse were greatly observed in the data examined. In reality, an infographic resume is a hybrid interactive process considering textual and visual categories. Both text and image lead effectively to the desired infographic resume. Information is made concrete and persuadable by creating images (Gardner & Luchtenberg, 2000). In conclusion, interactional MMs and visual metadiscourse are complementary to each other.

The findings of the present study have some pedagogical implications. The visual metadiscourse categories should be carefully exposed to the explicit/implicit instruction of metadiscourse use. Teachers are supposed to present all kinds of MMs along with visual categories to present persuasive language. That is, teachers can raise EFL learners’ awareness as an effective use of both types of metadiscourse elements simultaneously.

Although the current study focused on textual and visual metadiscourse regarding three different types of corpora, future studies can compare visual and MMs regarding the infographic resumes in different languages. Future studies can also examine visual and textual MMs in other visual genres. The researchers can examine how infographic resumes are interpreted differently by different employers. Finally, since this study followed a small sample of infographic resumes, large samples remained to be examined in the other studies.

 

مراجع

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