Abstract

For long, there has been debate over the appropriateness of using simplified literary texts in second language classrooms. In examining the simplified form, the main question is persuasion that is partly achieved through meta-discourse resources, which are “Self-reflective linguistic material referring to the evolving text and to the writer and the imagined reader of the text” (Hylan & Tse, 2004, p. 156). The present study compares the use of interactional meta-discourse resources (IMRs) in terms of the frequency and categorical distribution in the original copy of a novel (i.e., Oliver Twist) and its simplified counterparts. The corpus was analyzed based on the Hyland (2005) model. The frequency and categorical distribution of IMRs were calculated per 1,000 words, and the difference in their distribution was calculated using Chi-Square statistical analysis. The findings indicate a significant difference in the frequency of IMRs between the original and the simplified versions of the Dickensian novel, implying that despite having more complex syntax and semantics, the original novel seems to be more persuasive, at least on the part of IMRs, compared to its simplified counterparts. In terms of categorical distribution, there was no significant difference between them.

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