Persuasive multimodal metadiscourse in Malaysian university digital promotional materials: a comparative corpus

Research on textual metadiscourse in academic contexts is extensive, yet multimodal metadiscourse in Malaysian universities’ digital promotional materials remains underexplored. Given the reliance of such materials on both language and imagery to persuade prospective students, this study examines how textual and visual resources jointly construct persuasion. Focusing on digital promotional booklets from Malaysian Public Universities (n = 10) and Malaysian Private Universities (n = 8), the project adopts a Corpus-Assisted Multimodal Discourse Analysis (CAMDA) design that integrates quantitative profiling with qualitative interpretation. Sampling was purposive: English-medium, recruitment-oriented booklets collected from official university websites. Drawing on Hyland’s (2005) Interpersonal Model of Metadiscourse, the analysis aligns interactive elements (Transition Markers, Code Glosses, Frame Markers, Evidentials, Endophoric Markers) and interactional elements (Attitude Markers, Engagement Markers, Self-mentions, Boosters, Hedges) with image-specific realisations based on De Groot et al.’s (2016) Model of Visual Metadiscourse and Photographic Realizations. Coding produced frequency profiles (per 100 words for textual occurrences and per panel/image unit for visual elements) and subcategory distributions. Inter-coder agreement was established prior to full coding, and the Mann–Whitney U test compared distributional properties between corpora, complemented by a close rhetorical analysis of representative text–image constellations. Findings show that all major interactive and interactional categories generally across modes, with interactional resources generally outweighing interactive ones. This suggests a stronger institutional preference for engaging readers than for organising propositional content. Overall, this multimodal lens offers a balanced account of how textual and visual choices co-construct persuasion in university marketing and underscores the need for content designers, marketing teams, and admissions units to systematically integrate multimodal metadiscourse strategies in promotional communication.