Discourse and Interaction

Arguments in the methods section of journal articles in English language education published in high-impact journals

2023-11-19T18:17:20+01:00

Discourse studies on the methods section of research articles have been mainly conducted on the macrostructure (i.e. moves and steps) of the section, while none have researched further how authors justify the research methods/design. This is crucial because if the method is not convincing, readers may not accept the research findings and will not use them in their own studies. The purpose of this research is to know what research method is often used by the expert authors in English language education articles published in high-impact journals, what elements of research methods are often presented in the methods part of these journal articles and how authors justify the choice of their research method in the methods section of their journal articles. Sixty articles published in six different reputable international journals were chosen to be included in this study. The results show that qualitative design is the most frequently used by the authors, while quantitative and mixed methods are used equally frequently. The most frequent elements presented in the methods section of the articles are participants, data analysis procedures, data collection procedures, and research instruments. Finally, the majority of the authors do not explicitly justify the choice of their research method although some of them do by citing a research methodology book. It can be concluded that the features of the methods section in the journal articles vary widely between journals and from one method/design to the other.

A genre-based approach in ESP classes to teaching clinical communication focusing on breaking bad news to patients

2024-03-08T14:47:42+01:00

Healthcare professionals have the responsibility to regularly convey difficult information such as unfavourable diagnoses, as well as adverse treatment outcomes. While this task can be uncomfortable, successfully carrying it out plays a crucial role in determining patient outcomes (Sweeney et al. 2011: 230). This necessity has led to the creation of evidence-based protocols such as SPIKES developed by Baile et al. (2000). The goal of the paper is to explore the suitability of the genre-based approach for the study and teaching of medical English, focusing on the integration of the selected clinical communication tool into the ESP classroom. As this study stems from the ESP practitioner’s experience and its outcomes will directly influence her future ESP classroom teaching, action research has been conducted. The feasibility of using an authentic clinical tool in an ESP lesson was assessed through a two-step methodology: i) devising an ESP task based on the SPIKES protocol, emphasizing linguistic elements, and ii) obtaining student feedback focusing on the perceived usefulness of the tool. Overall, the collected data indicate that students acknowledged the significance of effective clinical communication for successful therapeutic practice. However, given the fact that medical English is inconveniently scheduled in a pre-clinical phase of their curriculum, they also exhibited a certain level of hesitancy, unsurprisingly, when it came to readiness in handling serious communication scenarios.

Hypes in undergraduate thesis abstracts by Indonesian students across years

2023-09-14T18:15:05+02:00

Previous studies showed that as a result of intense competition to succeed in academic pursuits such as publishing research papers and securing grants, promotional language known as hypes are pervasive in academic texts. This paper investigates hypes in a corpus of undergraduate thesis abstracts written by Indonesian English learners in a span of ten years, from 2011 to 2020. Taking a corpus-based approach, it examines the extent to which hypes are used in the thesis abstracts, including their linguistic manifestations, frequencies over the years, and the values they promote. We found hypes in all five moves of thesis abstracts, but they were most frequent in the introduction, in which they emphasized the importance and novelty of the research and stress the urgency of the research problems. In the span of the ten years, the frequencies of hypes generally increase, indicating the students’ awareness of the need to convince thesis supervisors, board of examiners, and their colleagues and the efforts to stand out in a competitive academic landscape. Important, investigate, and reveal were the most frequent hype words over the years and their instances suggest a growing emphasis on significance, a stronger commitment to evidence-based research, and desire to contribute new and concrete findings.

Rhetorical structural patterns of postgraduate theses abstracts of related disciplines: A genre study

2023-11-19T16:04:16+01:00

The study of research abstracts has gained significant scholarly attention as part of genre studies due to the communicative importance of abstracts in constructing academic knowledge. This study contributes to the discussion by examining the structural organization and lexico-grammatical features of ninety (90) postgraduate theses abstracts in the disciplines of English Language studies, Literature studies, and Linguistics studies (Ghanaian Languages). The abstracts were purposively sampled from the graduate theses of departments of the School of Languages, the University of Ghana. The data was analyzed using Hyland’s (2000) genre model of research abstracts. The findings reveal that abstracts of English Language studies and Linguistics studies (Ghanaian Languages) are often informative while Literature studies abstracts are more indicative and possess distinct structuring of the moves. The Purpose move (M2) remains obligatory and the Conclusion move (M5) is optional across the disciplines. Also, some lexico-grammatical features in the linguistic choices of scholars in the three disciplines point to evidential differences that mark informative abstracts as varying from indicative abstracts. The study concludes that identifying the discipline-specific function of the abstracts may be the best means to account for variations in abstracts of varying disciplines and calls for the deliberate enculturation of academics into discipline-oriented research writing skills to improve the presentation of research ideas in abstracts.

Digital dissemination practices: An analysis of explanatory strategies in the process of recontextualising specialised knowledge

2024-02-14T14:08:12+01:00

Researchers and scientists are increasingly encouraged by their institutions, by external organizations and by societal demands to foster the global dissemination of their knowledge production. Such dissemination is nowadays very frequently carried out online through different digital practices and texts. The current Web 2.0 and Science 2.0 context requires complex discursive practices to recontextualise and communicate specialised knowledge in a way that is accessed, understood and accepted by multiple audiences. The use of explanatory strategies has been highlighted by previous research as playing a key role in the recontextualisation of scientific findings. Such strategies can be realised verbally and non-verbally through diverse semiotic modes and affordances of the digital medium. A taxonomy of verbal explanatory strategies (elaboration, explicitation, exemplification, enumeration and comparison) and non-verbal (visual representations and spatial organisation) is presented stemming from the data-driven analysis of a sub-corpus of web-hosted practices, which is part of the SciDis Database compiled by the InterGEDI research group at Universidad de Zaragoza. In particular, the sub-corpus consists of 30 texts: 10 author-generated digital texts – from the knowledge dissemination community The Conversation –, and writer-mediated digital texts – 10 feature articles and 10 research digests – on circular economy and sustainability. Results show that verbal explanatory strategies are more frequent than non-verbal ones and that within the latter exemplification and explicitation are most common across all three types of digital dissemination practices. Author-generated scientific digital texts present more non-verbal explanatory strategies than writer-mediated ones – feature articles, and especially than research digests. The findings on the strategies resorted to and their realisation can be used to design tools for researchers, scientists and scriptwriters, mediators of disciplinary knowledge, who need to communicate such knowledge through digital platforms to diversified audiences.

Stance markers in forestry research articles: Indicators of authoritative voice

2023-09-26T14:24:49+02:00

Stance markers, serving as the primary discursive category of interactional metadiscourse, function as a reliable measure for evaluating how authors of research articles authoritatively foreground their research within disciplinary communities. Stance research primarily focuses on how authors or speakers adjust the certainty level of their assertions, both epistemically and emotionally. This study examined the occurrences of stance markers in each rhetorical move within the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion sections of forestry research articles. The corpus comprised 40 research articles randomly selected from five ISI journals in the forestry discipline. This study utilized Hyland’s (2005) model of academic interactions and Kanoksilapatham’s (2005) framework as analytical tools for identifying stance markers and the rhetorical structure of forestry research articles. The findings revealed differences in the distribution of these markers across the different sections and constituent rhetorical moves within the research articles. Overall, hedges and self-mentions emerged as the most prevalent stance markers in this study. Across sections, attitude markers and hedges predominated in the Introductions, while self-mentions and hedges were pervasively applied in the Methods sections. Boosters and attitude markers were common in the Results, and boosters along with self- mentions were notable in the Discussions. Finally, stance markers appear to play a fundamental role in shaping distinct argumentations across discourse communities, while effectively reflecting disciplinary voices.

Introduction

2024-06-28T12:21:06+02:00

Plo-Alastrué, R. and Corona, I. (eds) (2023) Digital Scientific Communication: Identity and Visibility in Research Dissemination. Palgrave Macmillan. 330 pp.

2024-06-28T16:04:42+02:00