1 Introduction

Explored the role of meta discourse in academic English writing, emphasizing its importance in adjusting discourse intensity, improving text readability, and establishing interaction between authors and readers. Meta discourse not only includes textual means, but also includes nonverbal signals such as punctuation marks. Although parentheses are common in academic writing, there is a lack of consensus on their classification and use. The research aims to construct a framework for the use of parentheses in academic English writing related to science and technology, and analyze the usage characteristics of international and domestic academic communities, exploring the underlying motivations and their impact on the construction of cross-cultural academic communities.

2 Literature Review

Guided meta discourse is used in academic English writing to organize discourse and guide readers' understanding. Unlike interactive meta discourse, which focuses more on the interaction between the author and the reader and the shaping of the author's personal image. Hyland and Jiang (2018) proposed that directive meta discourse is a disciplinary marker, and Cao and Hu (2014) further subdivided it into thirteen subtypes: annotation, conversion, framing, referential, and evidential. Research shows that guided meta discourse exhibits multidimensional cross-cultural differences across different disciplines, authors' academic literacy, and cross linguistic/macro socio-cultural contexts. For example, soft science subjects use certain guiding meta discourses more frequently than hard science subjects, while L2 learners with higher English proficiency tend to use more internal reference and evidence meta discourses. English journal articles typically use more introductory meta discourse than other languages, emphasizing the interaction between authors and readers. Spanish scholars adjust their discourse practice in international English journals to adapt to the mainstream model. The effective use of meta discourse in academic writing published in English by non-native English speaking academic communities is a challenge to building international academic discourse power. The research on the discourse function of academic English parentheses is limited, and existing literature mostly comes from English writing manuals. The classification principles and functional essence still need further study. English and American literary theory regards it as a textual examination, while translation studies focus on the syntactic structure adjustment of parentheses in professional text interlingual conversion.

3 Research Design

This chapter elaborates on the research design, including corpus selection, analysis framework, and coding scheme. The research focuses on the field of marine science and selects professional journals published by Elsevier, Oxford, Springer, and Wiley as the corpus source. The study pays special attention to the Methods section, as it is densely packed with parentheses. A new integrated analysis framework based on Hyland's meta discourse theory has been proposed, which takes into account the characteristics of technical writing and excludes the guiding meta discourse function of transitional language. Research on using Python for data processing, counting the number of single words in parentheses, and conducting statistical analysis through Excel. The two authors independently annotated the function of parentheses in the meta discourse, with high coding consistency. In addition, the study also utilized the BFSU Stanford Parser and BFSU Syntactic Complexity Analyzer tools to analyze the impact of parentheses on the syntactic complexity of text.

4 Results and Discussion

This chapter explores the use of parentheses in academic English writing through quantitative analysis. Research has found that two academic communities have similar preferences for using parentheses as meta discourse in the methodology section, both tending to use four types of guiding meta discourse functions, and there are complex combinations of their use. The total frequency, density, length variation, and average length of parentheses used by international leading communities are higher than those used by domestic leading communities. In terms of table annotations, both communities tend to use extension functions, but the international dominant community has a longer average length and more complex syntactic structure for the text embedded in parentheses. In terms of evidence presentation, both communities tend to use non textual embedded citations, while the international dominant community tends to integrate multiple references or sources within the same bracket. In terms of in table reference, both communities tend to use abbreviations for in table reference, while the dominant community in China has relatively weaker use of visual in table reference. Finally, in terms of table framework, the international leading community uses more parentheses for sequential language categories, which may reflect its reader friendly writing standards.

5 Conclusion

The use of parentheses in academic English writing has complex and diverse syntactic structures and discourse functions, which are often overlooked. The use of parentheses in academic discourse within the domestic academic community is relatively limited, and there is a need to enhance awareness of the accessibility of academic discourse texts and logical discourse. Round brackets are not only used for table annotations, but also for indicating frames, internal references, evidence, etc., which helps balance the text structure and highlight the information focus. Academic English courses and textbooks should pay more attention to the genre literacy of such symbolic resources. As a nonverbal meta discourse tool, parentheses can achieve different discourse functions and play an important role in knowledge construction and dissemination. This study provides a new perspective for the fields of nonverbal meta discourse and meta discourse research.