A taxonomy of metadiscourse--defined as discourse that people use not to expand referential material but to help their readers connect, organize, interpret, evaluate, and develop attitudes toward that material--was proposed in "College Composition and Communication" (Vande Kopple, 1985). More surveying and classifying has been done since then, and the taxonomy has been revised. It should not be forgotten that while it is fairly easy to list linguistic forms, the primary concern must remain with the metadiscoursal functions and not with the specific forms that can fulfill those functions. Sometimes one form can fulfill more than one metadiscoursal function in one place; at other times one form can fulfill a metadiscoursal function in one place and a referential function in another. The revised taxonomy classifies kinds of metadiscourse, with the following subclasses: text connectives, code glosses, illocution markers, epistemology markers, modality markers, evidentials, attitude markers, and commentary. That many researchers have come to recognize the importance of metadiscourse is attested to by an impressive array of studies completed in the last several years. There are six basic areas of research: shields in scientific writing, effects of shields on readers, metadiscourse and problematization strategies, metadiscourse and ethics, metadiscourse in similar kinds of texts in different languages, and metadiscourse and instruction in ESL classrooms. Future research might examine how the various academic disciplines relate to one another in their uses of different kinds of metadiscourse, and what the implications of studies of metadiscourse are for translation theories and practice. (Contains 46 references.) (NKA)