Code Glosses in Moroccan Masters’ Thesis Introductions: Elaboration, Exemplification, and Definition

Abstract

Code glosses are interactive metadiscourse devices that help readers process academic texts by rephrasing, exemplifying, or defining propositional content. Despite their pervasive presence in academic writing, they remain among the least studied categories in metadiscourse research (Pearson and Abdollahzadeh, 2023). This study investigates code gloss deployment in 30 Moroccan master's thesis introductions (34,050 words) drawn from two institutions: the Faculty of Languages, Letters and Arts (FLLA) at Ibn Tofail University, Kenitra (16,898 words; 2011-2014) and the Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE) at Mohammed V University, Rabat (17,152 words; 2017-2019). Analysis was conducted using Hyland's (2005) framework, Prommas' (2020) marker taxonomy, and MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2020.