Metadiscourse is self-reflective linguistic material referring to the evolving text and to This paper sets out to offer a reassessment of metadiscourse in academic contexts, by analyzing 240 second language postgraduate dissertations. It is argued that metadiscourse provides a means of understanding the interpersonal resources used by writers to propose propositional material and thus a way of uncovering aspects of the rhetorical and social distinctiveness of disciplinary communities.