An analysis of metadiscourse strategies on selected letters of appeal to students’ disciplinary committee in a University in Ogun State, Nigeria

Metadiscourse strategies in letters of appeals have the potentials of either allowing or denying students the opportunity to be given leniencies depending on how they are structured and used. This study investigates metadiscourse strategies in letters of appeal written to Students’ Disciplinary Committee by students, their parents or their guardians. Five (5) letters of appeal were purposively selected from the corpus of letters of appeal sent to the Students’ Disciplinary Committee (SDC) of Mountain Top University, Ogun State, Nigeria. This study adopts Sherif and Hovland (1961)’s Social Judgmental Theory and Hyland’s (2005) Interpersonal Model of Metadiscourse for data analysis. One of the major findings is that misuse of metadiscourse (especially attitude markers) rubs students the opportunity of being granted leniency where they would have been given such. The study, therefore, recommends that letters of appeal should not be written in a hurry; rather, writers should understand the components of the said letters before they present them for SDC’s consideration. Again, organizational policies of individual institutions should be understood by the writers of these letters. Writers are equally expected to understand how these letters should be written before they meticulously write and send them to SDC.