خلاصة:
This article aims at contrasting the use of metadiscoursal markers in English and Persian Newspaper Editorials as persuasive text types. The mentioned markers are linguistic constituents in the text which do not enhance the propositional content of it, but they fulfill Halliday‟s (1985) textual and interpersonal functions of language. The main research question was related to the existence of any difference between English and Persian newspaper editorials in their use of metadiscoursal markers. Initially, some of the most frequent markers from five subcategories of Text Connectives, Illocution Markers, Hedges, Emphatics, and Attitude Markers were found in both English and Persian newspapers. Subsequently, the frequency of occurrence of these markers in both English and Persian corpus consisting of 44 randomly selected editorials (18,000 words in each) from several English and Persian newspapers was recorded. Then, using a two-way chi square analysis, the overall x2 obs was proved to be highly significant. So, the null hypothesis of no difference was confidently rejected. Finally, in order to reveal the contribution of each subcategory to the overall x 2 value, one-way chi square analyses were applied to the subcategories. Our findings revealed that only two of the markers‟ subcategories were statistically significant. This difference is mainly due to the differing spirits existing in the communities considered. Concerning the minor research question (Is Persian a reader or writer- responsible language as compared and contrasted with English) it was revealed that, as opposed to English writers, Persian writers are more likely to be writer-oriented in their works.