Promotional booklets are central to how universities persuade prospective students. This study examines how textual metadiscourse realises persuasion in Malaysian universities’ digital promotional materials. We compiled two sub-corpora from official university websites: 10 booklets from Malaysian public universities and eight from Malaysian private universities. Textual content bearing persuasive intent (e.g., welcomes, institutional overview, “why choose us,” facilities, testimonials) was extracted and analysed in AntConc software. A functional, manual coding determined whether candidate items performed metadiscoursal work, and categories followed Hyland’s (2005) interpersonal model (interactive vs. interactional). Frequencies were normalised per 1,000 words. Across the combined corpus, interactive resources slightly outnumbered interactional resources. For the interactive resources, transitions were the most frequent interactive device, followed by code glosses and frame markers, reflecting the need to connect dense promotional information coherently. Within interactional resources, attitude markers and self-mentions were most common, signalling institutional stance and persona, with engagement markers also prominent. Private-university materials displayed a higher overall density of metadiscourse and a smaller gap between interactive and interactional resources than public-university materials, suggesting a more balanced “guide + engage” approach. These patterns indicate a persuasive blend of logos (via text-organising resources) with pathos/ethos (via stance and reader alignment). The study contributes corpus-assisted evidence on promotional discourse and offers practical implications for crafting persuasive, reader-friendly university marketing texts.

Keywords: Corpus-assisted analysis; Malaysian universities; metadiscourse; persuasion; promotional materials

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