Abstract
This article builds on a comparative analysis based on a corpus of literature and linguistics BA papers submitted by students majoring in English and Romanian, at the University of Timișoara. The authors highlight the metatextual function of introductions, focusing on identifying, classifying, and commenting upon deictic and non-deictic linguistic elements through which this function is fulfilled, in an attempt to see how consistently they are used by the student writers and to raise awareness of their use and usefulness.