Academic Posters: A Textual and Visual Metadiscourse Analysis 3034320833, 9783034320832

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of Abbreviations
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 The poster session: the ‘open market’ of research
1.2 Rationale for the study
1.3 Overview of the volume
Chapter 2: Review of the literature
2.1 Overview of the chapter
2.2 The academic community, its disciplines and subdisciplines
2.3 What is academic discourse?
2.4 What are academic genres?
2.5 What is an academic poster presentation?
2.6 What is metadiscourse?
2.7 What is multimodality?
2.8 Principles underlying corpus design
2.9 Summary of the chapter and Research Questions
Chapter 3: Data collected
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Why a corpus of academic posters?
3.3 Selection of subdisciplines
3.4 Principles underlying my corpus design
3.5 The survey
3.6 Retrieval of posters
3.7 Interviews with poster presenters
3.8 Naming and formatting of files
3.9 Summary of the chapter
Chapter 4: Framework of analysis
4.1 Overview of the chapter
4.2 A new framework of analysis
4.3 Metadiscourse resources in texts
4.4 Metadiscourse resources in visuals
4.5 Searching the corpus
4.6 The limits of description
4.7 Summary and conclusions
Chapter 5: Results and analysis by subcorpora
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Textual and visual analysis of the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus
5.3 Textual and visual analysis of the Law subcorpus
5.4 Textual and visual analysis of the Clinical Psychology subcorpus
5.5 A cross-disciplinary comparison of academic posters
Chapter 6: General discussion and conclusions
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Research question 1
6.3 Research question 2
6.4 Research question 3
6.5 Research limitations and recommendations
for further research
6.6 Conclusions
Appendices
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4
Appendix 5
Appendix 6
Appendix 7
References
Index

Citation preview

li214

Linguistic Insights

Studies in Language and Communication

Larissa D’Angelo

Academic posters

Peter Lang

A textual and visual metadiscourse analysis

li214

This volume presents a cross-disciplinary analysis of academic poster presentations, taking into consideration the text and visuals that posters display depending on the discipline within which they are created. As the academic poster is a multimodal genre, different modal aspects have been taken into consideration when analysing it, a fact that has somehow complicated the genre analysis conducted, but has also stimulated the research work involved and, in the end, provided interesting results. The analysis carried out here has highlighted significant cross-disciplinary differences in terms of word count, portrait/landscape orientation and layout of posters, as well as discipline and subdiscipline-specific patterns for what concerns the use of textual interactive and interactional metadiscourse resources and visual interactive resources. The investigation has revealed what textual and visual metadiscourse resources are employed, where and why, and as a consequence, what textual and visual metadiscourse strategies should be adopted by poster authors depending on the practices and expectations of their academic community.

Larissa D’Angelo, PhD in Applied Linguistics (University of Reading), is a Lecturer of English at the University of Bergamo. Her main research interests deal with EAP and multimodal genres employed in academic discourse. She is an active member of the Research Centre on Languages for Specific Purposes (CERLIS) and has been involved in several national and international research projects.

ISBN 978-3-0343-2083-2

www.peterlang.com

Academic posters

Linguistic Insights Studies in Language and Communication Edited by Maurizio Gotti, University of Bergamo Volume 214

ADVISORY BOARD Vijay Bhatia (Hong Kong) David Crystal (Bangor) Konrad Ehlich (Berlin / München) Jan Engberg (Aarhus) Norman Fairclough (Lancaster) John Flowerdew (Hong Kong) Ken Hyland (Hong Kong) Roger Lass (Cape Town) Matti Rissanen (Helsinki) Françoise Salager-Meyer (Mérida, Venezuela) Srikant Sarangi (Cardiff) Susan Šarcˇevi´c (Rijeka) Lawrence Solan (New York)

PETER LANG Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford • Wien

Larissa D’Angelo

Academic posters

A textual and visual metadiscourse analysis

PETER LANG Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford • Wien

Bibliographic information published by die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at ‹http://dnb.d-nb.de›. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain. Library of Congress Control Number: 2015960080

ISSN 1424-8689 pb. ISBN 978-3-0343-2083-2 pb.

ISSN 2235-6371 eBook ISBN 978-3-0351-0934-4 eBook

This publication has been peer reviewed. © Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2016 Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Switzerland

Contents

List of Abbreviations.............................................................................9 Chapter 1: Introduction.......................................................................11 1.1 The poster session: the ‘open market’ of research .............11 1.2 Rationale for the study .......................................................15 1.3 Overview of the volume.....................................................17 Chapter 2: Review of the literature .....................................................19 2.1 Overview of the chapter .....................................................19 2.2 The academic community, its disciplines and subdisciplines ..............................................................19 2.3 What is academic discourse? .............................................24 2.4 What are academic genres?................................................37 2.5 What is an academic poster presentation? ........................44 2.6 What is metadiscourse? .....................................................59 2.7 What is multimodality? ......................................................67 2.8 Principles underlying corpus design ..................................73 2.9 Summary of the chapter and Research Questions .............77 Chapter 3: Data collected ...................................................................81 3.1 Introduction ........................................................................81 3.2 Why a corpus of academic posters? ...................................81 3.3 Selection of subdisciplines ................................................82 3.4 Principles underlying my corpus design ............................83 3.5 The survey..........................................................................86 3.6 Retrieval of posters ..........................................................102 3.7 Interviews with poster presenters ...................................106 3.8 Naming and formatting of files ........................................110 3.9 Summary of the chapter ...................................................111

Chapter 4: Framework of analysis ....................................................113 4.1 Overview of the chapter ...................................................113 4.2 A new framework of analysis...........................................113 4.3 Metadiscourse resources in texts .....................................116 4.4 Metadiscourse resources in visuals ..................................123 4.5 Searching the corpus ........................................................141 4.6 The limits of description ..................................................144 4.7 Summary and conclusions ...............................................145 Chapter 5: Results and analysis by subcorpora ................................149 5.1 Introduction ......................................................................149 5.2 Textual and visual analysis of the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus ............................................................150 5.3 Textual and visual analysis of the Law subcorpus ...........175 5.4 Textual and visual analysis of the Clinical Psychology subcorpus......................................................196 5.5 A cross-disciplinary comparison of academic posters.....214 Chapter 6: General discussion and conclusions ...............................231 6.1 Introduction ......................................................................231 6.2 Research question 1 .........................................................232 6.3 Research question 2 .........................................................245 6.4 Research question 3 .........................................................249 6.5 Research limitations and recommendations for further research ..........................................................253 6.6 Conclusions ......................................................................257 Appendices Appendix 1 ................................................................................261 Appendix 2 ................................................................................264 Appendix 3 ................................................................................265 Appendix 4 ................................................................................266 Appendix 5 ................................................................................269

6

Appendix 6 ................................................................................282 Appendix 7 ................................................................................286 References .........................................................................................325 Index .................................................................................................361

7

List of Abbreviations

AALS ACE ACM APA ARCHER BASE BNC BPS CANCODE CDA CERN CIP COCA CP CPsy DDC DIPP DPS EAP ESL FLOB IMRD INFN

Association of American Law Schools Australian Corpus of English Association for Computing Machinery American Psychological Association A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers British Academic Spoken English British National Corpus British Psychological Society Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English Critical Discourse Analysis European Organization for Nuclear Research Classification of Instructional Programs Corpus of Contemporary American English Conference Presentations Interviewee from the Clinical Psychology subdiscipline Dewey Decimal Classification system Digital Interactive Poster Presentations Design & Print Studio English for Academic Purposes English as a Second Language Freiburg–LOB Corpus of British English corpus Introduction Methods Results Discussion Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare

ISI L1 L2 LCD LCSH LHCb LOB corpus MDA MeSH MICASE NNS NS PACS PPHY Pphy PSY SCI SD SFL SSK TESOL UMLS

10

Institute for scientific Information First Language (native language) Second Language (non-native language) Liquid-Crystal Display Library of Congress Subject Headings Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus Multimodal Discourse Analysis Medical Subject Headings Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English Non Native Speaker Native Speaker Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme High Energy Particle Physics Interviewee from the High Energy Particle Physics subdiscipline Clinical Psychology Science Citation Index standard deviation Systemic Functional Linguistics Sociology of Scientific Knowledge Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages Unified Medical Language System

Chapter 1: Introduction

This volume presents an intra-disciplinary analysis of academic poster presentations, considering the text and visuals that posters display, depending on the discipline within which they are created. Because the academic poster is a multimodal genre, different modal aspects must be taken into consideration when analysing it, a fact that has somehow complicated the genre analysis conducted, but has also stimulated the research work involved and, in the end, provided interesting results. The present chapter begins by introducing the poster session event, what it consists of and how it fits in the broader conference experience. The rationale for the present study is then presented, followed by an overview of the book’s chapters.

1.1 The poster session: the ‘open market’ of research In almost every discipline, a student or young researcher is bound eventually to engage in the daunting task of presenting one’s research work through an academic poster. As discussed by Swales and Feak (2000) and Swales (2004), the poster session itself is often met with mixed reviews from both participants and viewers because of several physical limitations, (e.g., the often limited time and space to showcase posters, as well as the limited space that a poster makes available to writers, restricting the amount of text displayed), and the fact that still today certain research genres, such as poster presentations, are valued differently depending on the discipline. Poster sessions, on the other hand, do play an important part in academic conferences because they allow academics to present and discuss not only completed research work but also ongoing research and preliminary findings, which would often not be presented in a paper session. This fact alone distinguishes the academic poster from other genres, making the poster session an

interesting and engaging event to participate in and a valid alternative to other, more sophisticated genres, such as the conference plenary and the paper presentation. The poster presentation, unlike the more sophisticated genres mentioned above, is a type of conference presentation that makes the use of visuals pivotal. Posters display text and visuals so that viewers can ‘glimpse’ into the research work of a colleague, having, in this case, the freedom of ‘reading’ the poster at one’s own speed, of lingering on a specific aspect of the work, a table, a graph or a picture displayed, and finally, of having the unique opportunity to engage with the author in a one-on-one discussion. The poster session originates in and is unfortunately mostly limited to the conference that organises it. Often a daunting place to be, the academic conference and the poster session, in particular, are a remarkably rich arena where one can display one’s progress or findings in research, practice one’s oratory skills while presenting the poster, or simply participate as listeners/observers in the ever-flowing academic discourse. As Swales (2004) and Shalom (2002) have vividly described, poster presentations, paper presentations, and plenary lectures are not really extractable or detachable from the broader conference experience because they [...] involve the travel to and from the venue, the meeting of old friends and the making of new acquaintances, the plenaries, receptions, and book exhibits, and the intangibles of the conference ‘buzz’ – its taut intellectual atmosphere, its rush from one talk to another, its gossip, its job interviews, its hot topics, and its ‘in’ people (Swales, 2004: 197).

In 1985, Dubois started researching conference presentations (CPs) (meaning here any oral presentation given during a conference, such as a plenary, a paper presentation and a poster presentation) from a discourse perspective, but it was not until the late 1990s that more work was published, studying the CP genre from a wide range of fields, including Applied Linguistics (Luukka, 1996; Shalom, 2002; Thompson, 2002), Engineering (Räisänen, 1999, 2002), Geology and Medicine (Webber, 2002), Physics (Rowley-Jolivet, 1999; Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas, 2005; Thompson, 2002), History (Ventola, 2002).

12

One feature of this research has been the considerable attention paid to the complex multimodal semiotics of modern CPs, especially in technical, medical and scientific arenas of enquiry. Dubois (1980) was the first to point out the central role played by visuals, and since her pioneering work, the attention to the non-verbal dimension of CPs has been substantial. Rowley-Jolivet (2000, 2002), who investigated CPs in petrology, oncology and physics at European conferences, for example, observes: Between the lab or field, and the written genres of science, however, lies the relatively unexplored genre of the conference presentation […]. In the scientific presentation, whatever the discipline, the visual channel of communication is a major resource for meaning making: visuals are omnipresent throughout the talks given, with slides or transparencies being continuously projected onto the screen during the speaker’s monologue. Any investigation of how the conference presentation genre makes and communicates meaning must therefore address its visual dimension. (2000:134)

In certain humanities’ areas, such as Applied Linguistics, History or Philosophy, the role of visuals may be minimal (Swales, 2004), but across much of the disciplinary spectrum, a conference presenter is expected to provide some visual support, whether in the form of a PowerPoint, a poster or, simply, a handout. Given the limited time allotted to CPs, the idea that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is becoming more and more widespread (Swales, 2004: 199). Although Swales (2004) recognises that there are marked differences in the kind of visuals expected in and by different disciplinary fields, it is still not very clear if the spoken verbal commentary that the visuals evoke is markedly different depending on the discipline. A second major strand of research has focused on the intermediate status of the CP, being somewhat a stage lying between the research work itself and the final product of the research article (Swales, 2004: 199). As early as 1980, Dubois observed of her Biology CPs: “One glimpses research as it is actually conducted, before it is sanitised to present a picture of straight-line progress toward public knowledge” (p. 143). Almost two decades later, Rowley-Jolivet reinforced the idea by stating that

13

[CPs] open a window, so to speak, onto the nature of scientific activity before its formulation in the discourse conventions of the research article, enabling one to draw a more precise topography of the ‘work’ accomplished by the latter (1999:188).

During this process, listeners may be Drawn into the presenters’ worlds as they narrate unexpected problems, reveal various kinds of ad-hocery with materials and methods, and admit to the contingent nature of the research process itself (Swales, 2004: 200).

CPs in general have been said to have an ‘intermediate status’ (Swales, 2004: 199), meaning that unpublished research work is presented, discussed and then revised. The poster session itself can be viewed as an arena within the arena. Also in this smaller arena a number of research projects, whether ongoing or concluded, are displayed, presented, discussed and often challenged. Although academics generally view the poster session as less intimidating than the paper session (Crooks & Kilpatrick, 1998), it is undeniably in the poster session that presenters have to showcase their knowledge and defend their work. Paper presentations, for example, generally last between 20 and 30 minutes, whereas a poster session can last for several hours, and there is no limit to how long a single poster presentation can last because the interaction that takes place between a presenter and an interested viewer is spontaneous. It might end after a couple of minutes, or it might last for an hour, if not more (Dubois, 1985). All these aspects will be considered and discussed in section 2.5, but it is worthwhile to mention here that each poster, for example, if well designed, with clear content, can potentially have wide audience, much wider than a paper or PowerPoint presentation. Having a wide audience, however, means that inevitably, a very high number of questions and comments will be asked by interested viewers, and the poster presenter is expected to answer all the questions to the best of his/her knowledge and acknowledge all the comments, and they may either be positive or negative. Fortunately, this smaller arena is also traditionally more informal than other sessions. It is here that the presenter can engage, if necessary, in longer discussions, describing the work done (or yet to be done), admitting to mistakes and doubts, asking questions and receiving 14

answers from the viewer, and, finally, where researchers socialise and the networking is done. Also, compared to genres with more rigid structures, such as the research article, these multimodal academic works (i.e. works that comprise text, visual elements and a spoken component) differ from most other academic genres because, although like the research article they aim to both inform and persuade readers, they also allow the author a certain amount of creativity, all the while lacking precise and universally accepted poster presentation guidelines. As Miracle (2003) noticed, thanks to the Internet, there is now a great variety of material searchable online addressing issues in poster design and presentation. These guidelines provide easy-to-use information, which aids authors, even inexperienced ones, in presenting discourse clearly and coherently. Unfortunately it is unclear whether certain poster presentation rules and conventions are discipline-specific. Are posters in the hard sciences similar to the posters in the so-called soft sciences? Are there any unspoken rules and conventions that recur within single disciplines and should, therefore, be openly known to novice academics? These are the questions students and academics in general pose themselves when they start using the genre.

1.2 Rationale for the study After an extensive literature search on sources available in English, I realised that a systematic linguistic and visual analysis had never been carried out on the genre of academic poster presentations, and the vision–language interaction has so far been overlooked in multimodal genre analysis, though the need for multimodal corpora is increasing more and more. Currently, a corpus comprising conference poster presentations created in different disciplinary fields and systematically collected and annotated does not exist. As a consequence, a consistent and reliable textual and semiotic analysis, that is also interdisciplinary, has been carried out yet on this ‘marginalised’ genre. The lack of conference poster presentation corpora made the need for such a study more

15

urgent and the creation of a poster corpus became vital to carry out a consistent analysis of the genre. Online forums and websites such as Better Posters (Faulkes, 2015), Pimp my Poster (Purrington, 2014), the AALS Poster Project (Miller, 2013) and the Online Journal of Scientific Posters all gather and display posters presented in different disciplines, mostly within the hard sciences. These online resources are certainly a valuable resource because they represent a varied pool of data and a point of reference for the novice poster presenter who asks him/herself for the first time what a poster is and what it should look like. However, because a corpus gathering posters from different disciplines has never been devised and methodically implemented, there is a lack of reliable and representative data to carry out research on the genre. As a consequence, a thorough linguistic and visual analysis has never been carried out on the genre of academic posters. Because of the lack of a systematic linguistic and visual analysis on the genre of academic posters, there is a need for a study of poster presentations that records and classifies the most common strategies employed by poster presenters across disciplines and subdisciplines. To carry out such analysis, an ad hoc framework of analysis must first be established, capable of classifying the linguistic and visual resources utilised by poster presenters. Given the motivations above, the main aim of this volume is to investigate which textual and visual reader-oriented strategies are commonly employed in poster presentations in different academic disciplines, i.e. which elements are found in the text and in the visuals of posters that help the reader understand concepts better, help him/ her follow the unfolding text and involve him/her in the evolving discourse. To explore this aspect of academic presentations, and answer these research questions, a corpus of 120 posters gathered from three subdisciplines has been produced, devised and analysed linguistically as well as visually, considering the most common guidelines and rules currently available online and offline to students and junior researchers. The analyses have been carried out only on the visual and textual elements displayed in posters and not on the verbal presentation of the research, which is also part of a poster presentation. This provided

16

enough potential for research because of the lack of a well-established framework of analysis for visual elements and the lack of automatic tagging software capable of processing visual material.

1.3 Overview of the volume In Chapter 2, where I carry out my Literature Review, I introduce and discuss the current theories evolving around academic discourse and academic genres. The chapter then focuses on the academic poster genre in particular and its visual and textual organisation. Metadiscourse is then introduced, followed by an overview of multimodality and an explanation of the main principles underlying my corpus design. In Chapter 3, I introduce the corpus of academic posters that was collected for the study and I explain in detail the various reasons and principles behind the design of the corpus. Fundamental corpus design principles such as purpose, representativeness, balance and size are discussed, and the chapter explains/illustrates how these principles have been applied to the present corpus. It is here that I explain how I conducted my survey, how I selected the respondents for the survey as well as how I selected and retrieved the academic poster presentations that make up my corpus. Finally, I explain how I carried out the interviews that accompany the corpus of poster presentations and how I named and formatted the files collected. In Chapter 4, I propose a framework for the analysis of academic posters. I identify the textual resources in posters which can be classified as interactive or interactional metadiscourse elements (Hyland, 2004a, 2004b) and the visual resources that can be classified as interactive metadiscourse elements (Kress 2010; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001, 2006). I continue by explaining how I searched for textual and visual metadiscourse resources in the corpus. The chapter concludes by expressing the limitations of the framework of analysis used. Chapter 5 focuses on the analyses carried out and the results obtained. Here I analyse the textual interactive and interactional resources

17

and the visual interactive resources found in three subdisciplines: High Energy Particle Physics, Law, and Clinical Psychology. After a brief introduction, I discuss the textual interactive and interactional resources found in each subcorpus, followed by a discussion of the visual interactive and interactional resources utilised by poster authors. Finally, a cross-disciplinary comparison of academic posters is carried out, focusing on wordiness, orientation, layout and the use and recurrence of textual and visual metadiscourse. In Chapter 6, I carry out a Discussion drawing on the results obtained and the interviews conducted with High Energy Particle Physicists, Lawyers, and Clinical Psychologists. I discuss here the use and recurrence of textual and visual metadiscourse across subdisciplines, based on the results obtained in Chapter 5. Finally, I conclude the book with a review of the research limitations and a few suggestions for further research.

18

Chapter 2: Review of the literature

2.1 Overview of the chapter In this chapter, I review the past and current research literature on aspects pertaining to academic writing with a particular focus on issues relevant to conference posters. I start by introducing the idea of an academic community and its disciplines, followed by five main questions I pose myself and that I answer: – – – – –

What is academic discourse? What are academic genres? What is an academic poster presentation? What is metadiscourse? What is multimodality?

I attempt to explain the concepts relating to academic discourse, academic genres, academic posters, metadiscourse and multimodality, and for each single topic mentioned, the current literature available is discussed. I conclude the chapter by presenting and discussing the main principles underlying corpus design.

2.2 The academic community, its disciplines and subdisciplines Universities and Colleges are important organizations of higher learning, dedicated to research and the dissemination of knowledge. A definition of the academic world is provided by Caplow and McGee (2001), who have described the university as a unique type of organization that goes back to the Middle Ages and is organized hierarchically in such a

way that it can count on more know-how than any other type of organization. This highly structured academic community comprises scholars, researchers and teachers involved in research and teaching, affiliated to a public or private institution (i.e. university, research institute/centre, college, etc.). It is within this academic community that disciplines are born, defined and researchers are formed. However, as Becher and Trowler (2001) have recognised, it is very difficult to find a definition valid for all disciplines, as each discipline is very different from the rest. Also, as Krishnan (2009) noted, teaching a subject within a higher learning organization does not alone confer the status of ‘discipline’ on it. He goes on to suggest a list of characteristics to recognise whether a field of research is indeed a discipline. He suggests checking if researchers work within this research field, which they may or may not share with other disciplines, if they have a specific body of literature, if they base their research work on theories and methodologies developed specifically for that discipline, if they use specialist language and finally, if the discipline can count on a number of subjects taught at university level, as well as on a Department and a number of associations that promote its research (Krishnan, 2009). As Krishnan (2009) specifies, an area of study might not comply with the above characteristics, but the more it does, the more it can be recognised as a discipline. Biglan (1973) also tried to explain the existing differences between disciplines by interviewing its members and noting what their beliefs were, regarding their own discipline. He consequently developed a classification scheme that divides ‘hard’ disciplines from ‘soft’ disciplines, denoting a difference between natural sciences and the humanities. He also distinguished between ‘applied’ disciplines (e.g., Engineering), ‘pure’ disciplines (e.g., Mathematics), disciplines that comprise ‘living systems’ (e.g. Biology) and those that comprise ‘non-living systems’ (e.g. Art). What is particularly interesting about Biglan’s (1973) analysis is that he combines the epistemological and the cultural dimension of disciplines, noting that, for example, ‘hard’ sciences are respected more, researchers in the hard sciences publish articles in academic journals, and there is a higher connection between specialists in these fields than

20

in others. On the other hand, he believes ‘soft’ sciences are valued less, researchers within these fields are more focussed on publishing monographs as well as teaching and are not as connected as researchers in the ‘hard’ sciences. Hyland (2000) and Fløttum et al. (2006) have also provided a relatively simple classification of disciplines. Hyland (2000), for example, selected material from eight disciplines to compile his corpus and he divided these disciplines into pure sciences, applied sciences, humanities/social sciences and applied social sciences. The researchers at the University of Bergen (Fløttum et al., 2006), working on the KIAP corpus, instead divide disciplines in only three categories: the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities. They argue that the natural sciences are objective and highly standardised, whereas the humanities are subjective and favour the interpretation of texts. The social sciences instead stand midway between the social and the natural sciences, because they are sometimes based on an objective body of literature, and sometimes they rely on a more subjective and interpretative methodology. As Giannoni (2010) states, the way disciplines are classified and recognised shows us just how difficult it is to force disciplinary fields into rigid inventories and how problematic it is when we consider fields that lie in an intermediate position. Giannoni (2010) depicts this situation skilfully when he states that if white and black represent the humanities and the natural sciences, the social sciences can instead be represented by a new, in-between colour, which is grey. Although it is still unclear how to define a discipline (Hyland, 2009a, 2009b; Mauranen, 2006) and the concept itself is still often questioned (e.g. Gergen & Thatchenkery, 1996), linguists have focused on distinguishing between disciplines by carrying out studies of rhetorical practices. As Hyland and Bondi (2006) recognise, this is because writing within the academic world means adapting one’s own way of thinking, researching and communicating research to the rules and conventions established by a wider scientific community. Furthermore, disciplines can be perceived as communities that use language to produce, discuss, support, express collegiality, and spread knowledge. By taking part in the discussion of our research community, we as academic writers and readers, gradually

21

acquire the competencies necessary to participate in a specialised discourse (Hyland & Bondi, 2006). Each scientific discipline has learned to, over the years, see and understand the world differently, putting in practice different procedures and conventions. The idea that each discipline develops its own type of discourse and sets its rules and conventions, rendering texts meaningful, becomes then pivotal, and fuels research into discourse analysis (Wells 1992, cited in Hyland, 2009a: 8). If defining what a discipline is can be difficult, classifying disciplines and subdisciplines proves to be an even more complicated ordeal. If a discipline is defined as ‘a branch of knowledge or teaching’1, a subdiscipline can instead be referred to as ‘a specialist field of study or work within a broader discipline’2. As simple as these definitions may seem, the act of classifying science into a disciplinary (and subdisciplinary) structure is as old as science itself and centuries of constructive research on this topic have unfortunately led to inconclusive results (Glanzel & Schubert, 2003). Klein (1993) in fact writes that no matter the numerous studies carried out on the subject over the years, delimiting disciplines and subdisciplines based on the methodologies used, the type of organization set and the background literature is still extremely difficult if not impossible. It is also important to understand that disciplines and subdisciplines are far from static: although they may be focussed on a particular school of thought, they are far from isolated and constantly evolve with time thanks to sporadic contacts between disciplines, or constant interdisciplinary work. Thanks to these continuous (or sporadic) disciplinary contacts, disciplinary and subdisciplinary fields may influence one another with different points of view and methodologies (Easton & Shelling, 1991) and gaps and overlaps can occur (Becher & Trowler, 2001). Boundary lines among disciplines and subdisciplines therefore become ‘[…] ambiguous, flexible, historically changing, contextually variable, internally inconsistent, and sometimes disputed’ (Klein, 1993: 186).

1 2

22

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Collins English Dictionary Online, Retrieved August 14, 2015, from .

Nonetheless, it seems we cannot manage without conceptually organizing academic subjects into disciplinary and subdisciplinary fields, because these help determine what exactly we can or cannot study, the methodology we should or should not use and the amount of interpretation allowed (Messer-Davidow et al., 1993). At one point therefore, it was necessary to somehow provide academic institutions, communities, publishers, encyclopaedias and libraries with a classification system that classified disciplines and their related subfields in a more detailed way than the Biglan’s (1973) classification system did (Glanzel & Shubert, 2003). The classification by Biglan in fact, although it offers a good point of reference to analyse academic diversity and has been revisited since its initial appearance (Stoecker, 1993), it is not sufficient to categorize all the existing disciplinary subfields. Since the 1970’s, a number of systems have been developed, such as the Science Citation Index (SCI), the database of the Institute for scientific Information (ISI) (today also known as ‘ISI Web of Knowledge’) (Thomson Scientific, PA, USA), the UCSD map of science and classification system (Börner et al., 2012), the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) and the more famous US Library of Congress (LCSH) system and Dewey Decimal Classification system (DDC). Focusing on the UCSD map of science and classification system (Börner et al., 2012), which draws from the Web of Science database and the Scopus database, with subdisciplines assigned by SciTech Strategies (Börner et al., 2012), we see that researchers have identified 554 journal clusters and the relative subdisciplines were aggregated into 13 high level disciplines. Furthermore, many disciplines have their own official classification system. For example, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) system is used in computing; in medicine we find that the MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) or UMLS (Unified Medical Language) systems are widely used and in physics, the PACS (The Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme) has now become popular (Fox et al., 2014). Having attempted to provide a definition of an academic discipline, let us now turn to another challenging term relevant in this context: academic discourse.

23

2.3 What is academic discourse? Academic discourse can be regarded as one of the many ways specialised discourse is realized textually (Bhatia, 2002; Flowerdew, 2002). It is used within the academic world to communicate and disseminate ideas to a specialised audience, which is capable of interpreting this discourse unambiguously. As Hyland (2004a) and Jolliffe and Brier (1988) underline, academic discourse allows not only universities to carry out teaching and research duties, but it allows researchers and students to create roles and relationships that are vital to the survival of disciplines and related knowledge. Academic discourse becomes indispensable, in particular, to disseminate ideas, educate students and construct knowledge through articles and essays, lectures and conference presentations. It can also be considered the most important aspect of the academic world, because it enables individuals to cooperate but also compete with one another, to create new know-how, all the while outlining academic allegiances (Hyland, 2009e). It is impossible to separate the academy from its discourses, because it is only through its discourses, i.e. published material that is made public and available to the wider scientific community, that a discovery becomes significant. Before considering academic discourse and the most recent literature on the subject, it is worthwhile to first approach the concept of ‘discourse communities’, which is an abstract, complex, and still contested term.

2.3.1 Discourse communities To understand what the term ‘discourse community’ means, and most of all, what it entails, one can picture a group of people sharing a language and its grammatical and lexical rules, as a result of their continuous contact. The construct of discourse community has many definitions indeed, but what all of these have in common is the idea that a language is what holds a group together, acting as a sort of glue. A shared language contributes to the creation of shared beliefs held by a community,

24

as well as the creation of shared expectations and common and accepted ways of expressing oneself (Rafoth, 1990). The term ‘discourse community’ therefore is often used in the literature to emphasize the fact that we write differently depending on characteristics such as our gender, our level of education, our discipline as well as the genre and the register we use (see Bazerman, 1990; Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Porter, 1992; Swales, 1990a, 1998). A discourse community can also be regarded as a group of individuals with specific aims and commitments, that has commonly agreed to use distinctive genres in order to fulfil these commitments (Swales, 1990a). In particular, the following characteristics have been identified (Swales, 1990a), to define a community of discourse: 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

a community of discourse has a number of goals that are commonly shared and are known to the outside world; a community of discourse has members that are able to communicate with each other (e.g. through a newsletter, emails and journals); a community of discourse has members that use genres to disseminate research; a community of discourse has members that are able to offer feedback as well as information to peers; a community of discourse has its own specialized lexis and its own genres; a community of discourse can count on a minimum number of specialized members having an adequate and suitable qualification in the area.

As Borg (2003) notes, the notion of ‘discourse community’ is closely tied to the concepts of ‘speech community’ (Gumperz, 2001; Labov, 1989) and ‘interpretive community’ (Fish, 1980). On the one hand, the term ‘speech community’ relates to communities that share the same language variety, as is the case of different varieties of English. ‘Interpretive community’ instead refers to a network of people, scattered around the world, who share a common way of interpreting texts produced within the same community. What also distinguishes a ‘speech community’ from an ‘interpretive community’ is also the fact that the 25

latter makes willingly the choice of sharing a common discourse and common goals (Borg, 2003). To describe a typical discourse community, Swales (1990a) uses a very simple yet effective image: he compares a discourse community to a group of stamp collectors spread around the world, who are interested in collecting one particular type of stamp. They may never meet physically, but they share the same interest and probably a specific means of in-group communication, such as a newsletter. This genre is what they use to communicate, to reach their goals and ultimately is what keeps them united. The notion of discourse community has also triggered a vast research effort within the Writing for Specific Purposes (WSP) field (see Killingsworth & Gilbertson (1992), Olsen (1993), Orlikowski & Yates (1994) among others) as well as the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) field (see, for example, Offord-Gray & Aldred, 1998). However, the notion of discourse community is still igniting numerous questions and discussions regarding, for example, its optimal size and stability; whether oral discourse is necessary to a discourse community and finally, whether or not the goals and genres shared by the members define the discourse community itself (Borg, 2003). Some of these questions find an answer in the study carried out by Swales (1998), who recognised that ‘place discourse communities,’ unlike simple ‘discourse communities,’ are characterized (and united) by both oral and written language. This suggests the idea that a community is maintained through written and oral discourse and that new members need to learn these written and spoken languages to comply with the shared norms and expectations of the community. Lave and Wenger (1991) vividly describe the process that students experience once they arrive on campus as a metamorphosis that allows them to gradually distinguish between different discourse communities, different tools, meanings and ways of interpreting texts. Ultimately, students are able to enter a specific discourse community by learning its language. Different levels of discourse communities also exist, depending at what levels professionals decide to affiliate. When they do affiliate at a higher, more heterogeneous level, they also have to share language as well as background knowledge, never forgetting the smaller, more specialized group they belong to (Johns, 1997). A linguist, for example, 26

may be interested in genre analysis and belong to a particular research group, but he or she may also be a member of a wider association, such as the British Association of Applied Linguistics, which gathers experts in different aspects of linguistics and language studies. Also, although a linguist works within a specific discipline, s/he also shares a number of linguistic and rhetorical rules (e.g. the use of the IMRD format, the use of hedges and boosters, citation rules, etc.) with the rest of the scientific community, regardless of the disciplinary field (Hyland, 2009a). After providing a working definition of ‘discourse community’, the closely related concept of academic community and its importance will be introduced and discussed.

2.3.2 Working definition of ‘discourse community’ For the present study, I will use the definition of ‘discourse community’ coined by Rafoth (1990): If there is one thing that most of [the discourse community definitions] have in common, it is an idea of language [and genres] as a basis for sharing and holding in common: shared expectations, shared participation, commonly (or communicably) held ways of expressing. Like audience, discourse community entails assumptions about conformity and convention. (p. 144)

The term ‘discourse community’ in the present work thus identifies a group of people who share common rules of language, because of their continuous contact and communication activities.

2.3.3 The academic community and the importance of academic discourse Over time, academic discourse has not only dominated the university world but has also colonized very different non-academic domains (Hyland, 2011), so much so that the way academics communicate in the world has changed. Examples of academic discourse can be found everywhere, from advertisements to documentaries, to periodicals and leaflets. Those who are able to use this type of discourse are regarded 27

as experienced and knowledgeable academic writers and hold a prestigious position within the community (Hyland, 2011). Hyland (2011) also identifies three main reasons that caused, within a period of 20 years, a greater interest in academic discourse, especially academic writing in English. The first reason is that writing skills have become more important due to a number of changes in higher education; the second reason is that English has become the language of research, so much so that in order to publish and succeed academically, one has to publish in English. Finally, linguistic theories have recognised the importance of academic discourse in the development of knowledge (Hyland, 2011). Each of these three main reasons for the development of academic discourse will be discussed more thoroughly hereafter. First of all, the changes in higher education mentioned above are actually the result of a great expansion of higher education in countries within Europe, Asia and Australasia. An increasing number of students are now travelling abroad, often covering very long distances and paying full fees, to receive a university education. If the number of international students is rising fast, so is international migration. These elements together can help account for the creation of a linguistically and culturally heterogeneous student body in many countries (Hyland, 2011). This international student body needs to be aware of the linguistic competencies required by students, whether native speakers of English (NS) or speakers of English as a second language (ESL). Their skills in written English must be adequate so that they are able to demonstrate they fully understand the subjects taught at a University level (Hyland, 2011). In other words, because students come from different cultures and have different competencies and also different ways of interpreting reality, teachers need to verify if students have the abilities and competencies to successfully follow a university course. EAP (English for Academic Purposes) programmes have thus been reinforced, expanded and researched in order to better help students reach the required language level (Hyland, 2009a, 2009c, 2011). The second reason mentioned above for this increased attention in EAP and TESOL pedagogies is the fact that English language has an enormous influence in the ‘publish or perish’ dilemma experienced by researchers around the world. As many recognise, the only way to

28

climb the academic ladder and gain recognisance in one’s disciplinary field is to publish in English, because these publications get cited more frequently than if they were written in the L1 of the author (Bakewell, 1992; Curry & Lillis, 2004; Burrough-Boenisch, 2006; Lillis & Curry, 2010; Hyland, 2011). The fact that online journals are now widespread also fuels publications in English, since it is thanks to these online publications that researchers become highly visible. For example, a study by Björk et al. (2009) has shown that in 2007 alone, a total of 1,350,000 peer-reviewed research articles were published globally in English, and the growth rate is estimated to augment by 4% annually. Also, the number of papers published in English by NNS of English is far higher than the number of papers published by ESL authors (Lillis & Curry, 2010; Swales, 2004). As a consequence, researchers wishing to publish in English often seek highly specialized courses that train writers in academic English (Burrough-Boenisch, 2006; Cooke, 1993). The third major reason for studying academic discourse lies in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). As Hyland (2011) explains, in the last few years, SSK has challenged the traditional view of academic discourse: it is now no longer considered an objective demonstration of absolute truth. The world is always filtered through the eyes of the researcher, and there are multiple ways of seeing and interpreting things, and it is up to the writer to argue his/her claim, anticipating possible challenges from readers. In this sense, studies on academic discourse have analysed how academic writers use persuasion to induce readers to accept an idea, all the while shaping and changing the entire disciplinary community (Stubbs, 1996).

2.3.4 Research into academic discourse Discourse analysis studies the way texts function and are written depending on the social context. In academic contexts, in particular, discourse analysis has focused on academic genres such as the research article (Hartley, 2008, 2012; Hyland, 1998a, 2001; Swales & Feak, 2000; Thompson, 2001; Thompson, 2005), conference presentation (Swales, 2004), book review (Hartley, 2006), Ph.D. thesis (Hyland, 2004; Thompson, 2005, 2009a, 2009b, 2012a, 2012b), student essay 29

(Thompson, 2009b), and final reports (Hyland, 2012). Academic genres will be discussed more in detail in Section 2.4, but it is important to note here that within the wider field of discourse analysis, genre analysis examines recurrent lexical and grammatical patterns found in language. These patterns are of interest to linguists because they reveal the rhetorical practices in use in different academic communities. Hyland (2011) uses a perfect metaphor when he writes that genres are like contracts between writers and readers: writers adhere to a standardized form and a set of rhetorical forms, so that readers know exactly what to expect. Genre analysis, therefore, highlights what emerges as typical in collections of texts gathered from different disciplinary communities and academic genres. As Hyland (2011) explains, genre analysis is mainly influenced by Halliday (1994) and Swales (1990), who believe that deliberate lexico-grammatical and rhetorical choices made by authors connect texts to particular social contexts and discourse communities, whose members share the same purposes. The exploration of the lexico-grammatical regularities found in particular genres has been one of the most fruitful applications of discourse analysis to academic texts (Hyland, 2011). By analysing these recurrent rhetorical forms and linguistic features, researchers have acquired a more thorough knowledge of academic genres, i.e. how they are formed and used. In this sense, Swales’ (1990a, 1990b) move analysis has been a pioneering work, followed by many others, such as Hyland (2004c), who analysed dissertation acknowledgments and Bruce (2009, 2010), who analysed the methods sections in research articles. Other researchers have instead concentrated on particular linguistic features, either functional, grammatical or rhetorical, found in different genres, such as hedges in research articles (Hyland, 1998a), circumstance adverbials in student presentations (Zareva, 2009) and evaluation in book reviews (Hyland & Diani, 2009). To easily identify these recurrent linguistic patterns in different types of texts, researchers have been using corpora, which, as Hyland (2009c) notes, enable the researcher to carry out more informed analyses, based on a much greater number of texts. The use of specific corpus linguistics software and tools also contribute to more precise and accurate results. Because of the data collection and the possibility to quickly scan through the corpus in search of frequent linguistic patterns, corpus 30

linguistics provides important insights in discourse analysis, highlighting disparities across disciplines, genres and languages (Biber, 2006; Hyland, 2004a, 2005; Swales, 2004). If the quantitative analysis, Hyland (2011) adds, is accompanied by a qualitative analysis, the linguistic and rhetorical patterns found will be better interpreted because of the personal insights researchers provide. Aside from corpus linguistic analyses, since the 1980s, several ethnographic-oriented studies have explored the cultures of academics and have provided a more accurate and authentic description of the language they use (Dressen-Hammouda, 2013). Swales’ (1998) study on the different discourses coexisting within one single building at the University of Michigan is perhaps the best known of these. Thanks to ethnographic/linguistic tolls such as field observations, recordings, surveys and interviews, Swales was able to paint a detailed picture of academics working in different fields, all coexisting within the same building. The analysis of these different types of data allows us to understand how diverse academic practices are as well as the fact that the roles played by mentors, supervisors and peers have an influence on the writing process of academics. These written and oral texts are far from detached and impartial and, as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has demonstrated, they work to create academic knowledge, identity and power (Paltridge, 1995, 1996, 2002, 2008). These approaches and strands of research have been producing interesting results that inform us of how academic communities function and how we should educate university students to enable them to participate in the on-going disciplinary discourses. The volume of this research makes it inevitably difficult to summarise, but Hyland (2011: 177) was able to identify four main findings: 1. 2. 3. 4.

That academic genres are persuasive and systematically structured to secure reader’s agreement; That these ways of producing agreement represent disciplinary specific rhetorical preferences; That language groups have different ways of expressing ideas and structuring arguments; That academic persuasion involves interpersonal negotiations as much as convincing ideas. 31

2.3.5 Academic discourse across disciplines As the Biglan (1973) classification presented in section 2.2 demonstrates, the epistemological and cultural dimension of disciplines is not only varied but is also unstable, as discipline and subdiscipline classifications change and evolve over time and are subject to continuous debate. It is under this influence that research in academic discourse has evolved, giving light to a number of schools of thought or approaches to the study of disciplines (Lillis & Scott, 2007). For example, in the USA, the teaching of writing can count on a long tradition and different disciplinary and epistemological frameworks that guide the study of discipline-specific rhetoric (Ede, 1999; Flower, 1994; Horner and Lu, 1999; Russel, 2002). In Australia instead, interest in the way students and academics write is a recent phenomenon and has been influenced mainly by two approaches: the systemic functional linguistics approach (Skillen, 2006) and the New Literacy Studies approach (Candlin and Plum, 1998). In the UK, in the last few years, there has been on the other hand a marked interest in EAP (e.g. Hyland, 2004a, 2004b; Hyland & Bondi, 2006), an area of research, which has been fuelled by a growing influx of international students to Anglophone universities who now have an easier access to higher education institutions (Crowley, 1998; Horner & Lu, 1999). These international students, who join the already growing local student body, are the force behind a widely recognized ‘globalization’ of higher institutions (Lillis & Scott, 2007). This ‘globalization’ of higher education forces universities to face evident literacy and language problems (McKinney and van Pletzen, 2004; Thesen and van Pletzen, 2006). At the centre of attention of literacy activities we find student writing, because on the one hand, the written text produced by a student is still the most valuable form of assessment in the hands of teachers and, on the other hand, because learning to write within one’s academic discipline means being able to participate in a specific scientific community (Lillis & Scott, 2007; Swales & Feak, 2004). The EAP approach has been influenced by research in applied linguistics, genre analysis (Dudley-Evans, 2000; Swales, 1990, 2004) and discourse analysis (e.g., Hyland, 2000, 2004; Thompson, 2005) focusing on specific textual features of academic texts. Research on 32

academic discourse was able, in particular, to reveal the distinctive ways disciplines have of asking questions, addressing a literature, criticising ideas and presenting arguments. The literature on cross-disciplinary analyses is vast and varied and much could be said on the research that has been carried out in this field. Hereafter I will provide examples of research studies that have enriched cross-disciplinary comparisons of academic discourse in the last three decades. In experimental sciences, for example, Hyland (2009e) has revealed that the IMRD format is used to present findings, starting from an Introduction section, followed by a Methodology, Results and Discussion section. In the humanities, in contrast, writers rely on strength of argument and the rhetoric of persuasion to make claims, whereas in the social sciences writers can rely on scientific methods but still need to pay attention to the interpretation of less-predictable human data. Looking at genres such as scientific letters (Hyland, 2004a), writing assignments (Gimenez, 2009) and Ph.D. dissertations (Hyland, 2004c), research has discovered considerable rhetorical variation across disciplines. For example, Hyland (2011) notes that an example of how language is used differently across fields is the use of hedges such as possible, might, probably and so on. Because in the humanities writers cannot count on experimental data and controlled variables, they seem to avoid making strong claims regarding their assumptions and tend to recognize possible alternative views (Hyland, 2009e). In the hard sciences, instead, Hyland (2008, 2011) has found that writers tend to be linguistically objective, in the sense that they let their data speak for themselves, and they limit the author’s presence in the text. A milestone in cross-disciplinary comparisons of academic genres is Hyland’s (2004) work, which considers five different genres produced in eight different disciplines, totalling 1,426 texts. This work has revealed numerous disciplinary variations when it comes to, for example, citation practices (researchers in the hard sciences taking a more neutral position than writers in the soft sciences); evaluation (soft discipline writers being more critical than writers in the hard sciences) and the structure of abstracts (soft scientists including the Introduction move and hard scientists focussing instead on the Methodology move).

33

Nesi and Gardner’s (2012) work is also an important contribution as it compares student writings that have been distinguished in 13 different genre families, all represented in the BAWE corpus. These assignments have been produced in different disciplines, belonging to four main disciplinary groupings: Arts and Humanities, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Social Sciences. Nesi and Gardner (2012) were able to develop a detailed classification of university writing and group genres together depending on the similarities they displayed across disciplines, thus constructing genre networks. Their impressive work demonstrated that although Essays have traditionally been considered the main genre utilized by students across disciplines, actually all 13 genre families are used across the curriculum. Students therefore have to be able to modify the way they write depending on the discipline they belong to, the genre they are experimenting with and the task at hand (argumentation, evaluation, personal reflection, etc.). Further interesting work has been carried out by Samraj (2002, 2005), who researched the differences in the organization and lexico-grammatical features of research abstracts and research article introductions drawn from two related fields: Wildlife Behaviour and Conservation Biology. In his first work, as far as rhetorical moves are concerned, some differences do appear between the abstracts collected from the two disciplines. For example, although all four moves considered by Samraj (2002) are utilized in the two sets of abstracts, the ‘Results’ move occupies more space and is present in all abstracts. The ‘Conclusion’ and ‘Methods’ moves are utilized less in both disciplines, whereas the ‘Situating the Research’ and ‘Purpose’ moves are utilized more in Conservation Biology abstracts than in Wildife Behaviour ones. In a later work, Samraj (2005) revealed that the structure and function of research article introductions and abstracts in Conservation Biology are very similar, something that does not happen in Wildlife Behavior. Bunton (2002) concentrated on the moves present in 45 Ph.D. thesis introductions (written by native and non-native speakers of English), drawn from the Faculties of Science, Engineering, Arts, Education and Social Sciences. In this work, the author confirmed that all 14 steps of Swales (1990) and Dudley-Evans (1986) moves model are present in his corpus and he identified 10 additional steps. Another interesting

34

finding was the disparity found between the introductions written by NS and NNS of English. More specifically, in the Arts and Education faculties the Introductions written by NS of English displayed a wider range of steps than NNS of English, whereas in the faculties of Science and Social Sciences the situation is reversed: NNS of English have been found to use more steps than NS of English. Bunton (2005) continued his research on PhD theses and dissertations by analysing the concluding chapters of 45 PhD theses drawn from various disciplines. The majority of the chapters have been found to follow the same functional moves such as restating the purpose of the research, consolidating a research space, recommending future research and stating implications and recommendations. A small number of these however displayed a problem-solution move structure instead. Another author interested in cross-disciplinary analyses is Bruce (2008), who investigated the organization of Methods sections found in research-reporting articles published within the Social Sciences and the Physical Sciences. His study revealed that Methods sections employing a means-focused discourse structure are common in the Physical sciences, whereas Methods sections following a chronological and non-sequential descriptive structure are found mostly in the Social sciences. A year later, utilizing the cognitive genre model, Bruce (2009) focused on the Results sections of research-reporting articles from two disciplines, Sociology and Organic Chemistry, and found that Sociology papers mainly employ the Report cognitive genre, whereas Chemistry papers mainly employ the Explanation cognitive genre. Holmes (1997) focused instead on the Discussion session found in research articles belonging to the disciplines of History, Political Sciences and Sociology and established that these three disciplines displayed different moves. In particular, History texts displayed a markedly different move structure to Sociology and Political Sciences texts. Groom (2005) compared research articles and book reviews collected from two different disciplines (History and Literary Criticism) and analysed them from a phraseological point of view. His main finding is that the two grammar patterns it v-link ADJ that and it v-link ADJ to-inf consistently vary across the two disciplines and the two genres considered.

35

Research on writing within the medical field is abundant and sees numerous publications focusing on genres such as the research article, the abstract and even personal statements. For example, inspired by Swale’s (1981, 1990) genre analysis model, Nwogu (1997) developed an eleven-move schema to analyse medical research papers. Another interesting and more recent analysis of medical research articles has been carried out by Li and Ge (2009) who have considered how the 11 moves identified by Nwogu (1997), as well as the use of verb tenses and first person pronouns has changed from 1985 to 2009. Also analysing medical abstracts is the work by Salager-Meyer (1990) who carried out a move analysis of 77 ME abstracts and found that half of the abstracts considered were missing a fundamental move, two or more necessary moves were incomplete, or displayed an illogical order of moves or an operlapping pharagraph structure. In a later study, Salager-Meyer (1992) concentrated on the use of finite verb tense and modality and revealed that the past was the predominant tense in her corpus, whereas the present tense was utilized mostly in the conclusions and in reviews. The present perfect was the third most frequent tense found in the corpus and was utilized to mark the author’s disagreement with previous findings. Finally, modality was more frequently noticed in review articles. Anderson and Maclean (1997) also carried out a study of medical research abstracts, comparing them with the abstracts described in textsbooks. The abstracts were drawn from four different medical fields (Clinical Medicine, Surgery, Epidemiology, Basic Sciences) and the author focused on the structure of the abstracts and the different linguistic elements present. The study indicated that research article abstracts and abstracts in textbooks are similar but the latter tends to be simplistic, rigid and lacks several linguistic elements. Ding (2007) carried out instead a hand-tagged move analysis and a computerized analysis of lexical features in personal statements written to apply to medical and dental schools. Five moves were identified by Ding (2007: 368): “explaining the reason to pursue the proposed study”, “establishing credentials related to the fields of medicine/ dentistry”, “discussing relevant life experience”, “stating future career goals”, and “describing personality”. Genre lexical-grammatical analyses have also considered single disciplines, all the while contributing

36

to the mapping of academic discourse. Just as an example of the wide literature available, I mention here Badger (2003), who carried out a study focusing on the lexicon, grammar and text structure of newspaper Law reports, a genre that is particularly important for Law students and teachers. The author here first identified important social and cultural factors influencing newspaper reports, and then tried to understand whether these social and cultural factors could be linked to textual factors. The lexico-grammar and text structure of newspaper Law reports were analysed in particular to determine if and how they guided the identification of the ratio decidendi (2003: 251). Gerofski’s (1999) work instead is a discourse and genre analysis of mathematical education texts. The author first establishes that there is a relationship between this type of texts and word problems, parables and riddles and then reveals that there are substantial similarities between the language of initial calculus luctures and the language of the conjurer, the salesperson and even the nurse. Finally, Flowerdew (2000) concentrated on the organizational structure of engineering undergraduate project reports, using Swales’ (1990) genre-based framework. The Problem–Solution pattern was recurrently found in these texts and examples of exercises to expose students to the genre structure and the Problem–Solution pattern were proposed.

2.4 What are academic genres? The term ‘genre’ is utilized to group texts together depending on how these texts are constructed and where and how they are utilized by writers, depending on the situation (Hyland, 2005, 2006; Martin & Veel, 2005; Swales, 2004;). Each genre has a number of characteristics that are shared by all users of the genre and that make it unique from the point of view of its purpose, its structure and the linguistic elements present (Hyland, 2009a). Persuasion is at the heart of every academic text, may it be a research article, a book review or a poster. Whatever the genre employed, writers tend to draw on the same repertoire of linguistic resources for each genre again and again, because readers also draw 37

from this known repertoire to understand the text and make assumptions on what the writer’s aim is (Hyland, 2011). Hoey’s (2001) metaphor compares this aspect of writing (i.e. connecting one text to a previous one) to dancers following each other’s steps, knowing beforehand which moves will be made. Readers and writers, each following and expecting each other’s move, perform exactly the same choreographed dance, i.e. they follow established forms and patterns. Academic writers belonging to a disciplinary community are usually able to recognise the structure of genres they often use and the moves present in them, so that they can read, understand and use them effectively (Hyland, 2006). The special relationship that develops between readers and writers establishes, over time, specific discourse communities (Duszak, 1994; Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas, 2005). Learning to work with academic genres while building a discipline-specific know-how, is not a simple process and can only be done through formal learning and/or a repeated contact with discipline-related texts. In time, and with much practice, writers gradually acquire the ability to produce texts that are clear to their audience. In this sense, language has been compared to a very refined ‘form of technology’ that makes the text work correctly and enables participants to interact successfully (Hyland, 2011: 177). It is important to understand that these communicative conventions, as well as the ‘technical’ language mentioned by Hyland, on the one hand, are meant to allow and facilitate communication between members, and, on the other hand, have a gatekeeping function (Swales, 1990) that requires and presupposes a minimum level of discoursal expertise held by each member in order to be able to interpret and understand the texts produced by the community.

2.4.1 Research into academic genres The field of genre analysis has developed progressively since the 1980s thanks, among others, to the work of Swales (1990a, 1990b, 1998, 2000, 2004), Miller (1994,), Bhatia (1993, 1997, 2001, 2004, 2008), Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995), Hyland (2004), Thompson P. (2009a, 2009b, 2012a, 2012b), Thompson S. (1994); Thompson and 38

Nesi (2001), Thompson and Tribble (2001), Gillaerts and Van de Velde (2010). These numerous studies are just part of the flourishing domain of genre analysis and they have given an important impetus to the analysis of specialised discourse. Central to genre analysis is the existing relationship between different kinds of genres. Swales (2004) views this relationship as a hierarchical one and explains that academic genres are viewed and judged differently depending on the academic community within which they are generated. Because of the many differences and divisions found among disciplines, it is impossible to impose common standards across the academic world (Belcher, 1989), which explains the rise of different conventions and values concerning genre use. However, a hierarchy of genre can be delineated across a broad section of the life science, science, and social science fields. This hierarchy of genre sees the research article placed ‘at the privileged centre of a spider’s web of interlocking genres’ (Swales, 2004: 13). In contrast, other genres such as the academic poster or the book review still hold a marginal position within this hierarchy of academic genres. To comprehend the different hierarchies and values assigned to academic genres, it is useful to consider the notions of genre chains, genre sets and genre networks (Swales, 2004: 18–25). From Swales’ (2004) point of view, research genres can be ordered chronologically forming short or long chains. If a researcher is invited to make a plenary, the chain begins with an invitation letter or email, followed by a presentation (including perhaps a PowerPoint, handout, overheads, etc.), a thank you letter by the Department and payment arrangements. These genres, preceding and following the ‘official’ plenary presentation, have been defined as occluded genres (Swales, 1996), that is, they remain hidden from outsiders and novices. Below is a partial list (Swales, 2004: 18) of these occluded genres in academic contexts, arranged depending on their importance and visibility within the academic community. If senior researchers are involved in all eight types of genre, junior researchers are expected to work their way up the list:

39

A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H.

External evaluations (for academic institutions) Evaluation letters for tenure and promotion (for committees) Book or grant proposal reviews Reviews of articles submitted to refereed journals Discussions between examiners Research grant proposals Application, invitation, request, submission, and editorial-response letters Initiating or responsive calls and emails

Knowing how a genre chain works and the rules that govern it, can be very useful for a researcher. For example, knowing that a poster is devised and presented before a research is concluded and a paper written and published enables the author of the poster to focus on the on-going research, rather than on the results. Swales (2004) also re-elaborates the concept of genre set, originally developed by Devitt (1991). This concept sees different genres utilized by different categories of academic writers, depending on their academic position and experience. Academics that are at the beginning of their career will probably engage in seminars, conference presentations, academic posters, research articles etc., whereas more senior academics will probably be asked to present plenaries and publish monographs, as well as engage in less visible genres such as research or grant proposals and reviews of articles for academic journals. This path can be seen as a sort of apprenticeship that forces graduate and PhD students as well as junior researchers to fully understand how genres work within their academic field and they are forced to practice in these genres until they develop an individual voice and enough authority to proceed with other, more prestigious genres (Swales, 2004). The concept of genre network has also been considered by Swales (2004) but is actually a notion that originates with Bakhtin (1986) and has been explored by Fairclough (1991, 1995) and Devitt (1991). The main idea here is that a network exists between genres, because one genre often re-elaborates elements from another genre. For example, a poster can be seen as incorporating elements from the research article, such as an abstract, an introduction, a methodology and results section. At the same time it incorporates visual elements typical of PowerPoint presentations, so that the poster genre can be seen as a re-elaboration of two different genres. Traces of other genres can also be found in a 40

new text through quotations, paraphrases and citations. For example, in a poster, one can find traces of previous research articles, through citations, quotations, paraphrases and the reference list. In the last two decades, increased attention has been dedicated to genre analysis and how genres have been applied in language teaching and learning. Genre approaches, in particular, have impacted considerably on the ways language use is considered and on how language teaching is carried out worldwide (Hyland, 2009b). Hyland (2002: 114) also thinks that language should be seen as grounded in social realities because by repeating over and over again forms (that therefore become conventions), communities of practice are formed and individuals establish relationships. Genre theorists (Bhatia, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2004, 2008; Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Gillaerts & Van de Velde, 2010; Hyland, 2004a, 2004b; Miller, 1994; Swales 1990, 1998, 2000, 2004; Thompson, 2009a, 2009b, 2012a, 2012b; Thompson & Nesi, 2001; Thompson & Tribble, 2001) consider the context in which the text is created as extremely important and, most of all, they believe every individual is well aware of the context and the potential readers.

2.4.2 Different approaches to genre theory Although theorists generally agree on the nature of a genre, they either focus more on the role of texts in discourse communities or on how these texts are organised. Three schools of genre theory, encouraging different types of analyses, can be identified (Hyon, 1996; Johns, 2003). First is the New Rhetoric group, which regards genre as ‘a socially standard strategy, embodied as a typical form of discourse that has evolved and responded to a recurring type of rhetorical situation’ (Coe & Freedman, 1998: 137). This orientation was initially inspired by Miller (1984) and its main representatives are Bazerman (1988), Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995) who have tried in the past three decades to uncover the attitudes and values of the academic communities that employ these genre types. Their approach does not address the classroom because it is considered an inauthentic environment that lacks complex negotiations and multiple audiences. Other contributions, however, have suggested pedagogic

41

applications for academic writing (Adam & Artemeva, 2002; Coe, 2002). Another school of thought, developed in Australia, known as the ‘Sydney School’ and grounded on Halliday’s (1994) theoretical work of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), sees genres as ‘system of staged goal oriented social processes through which social subjects in a given culture live their lives’ (Martin, 1997: 13). Researchers in this field have identified and analysed the different stages of genres, as well as the recurrent grammatical and lexical choices made by authors. Cope and Kalantzis (1993), Martin (1992, 1997) and Rothery (1996) have contributed significantly to this approach, which is motivated by a commitment to language and literacy education, particularly in the context of schools and adult migrant programmes (Feez, 2001). The ESP approach, which is the third school of thought, stands between the previous two. It is a teaching approach that is based solely on learners’ needs and motivations (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). In this sense, it is a student-centred approach that aims at giving students the skills necessary to function in a specific working environment. Like the New Rhetoricians, it is mainly based on Bakthtin’s theories of intertextuality and dialogism and on Systemic Functional Linguistics (Bloor, 1998). Much of the research in this field is strongly motivated by the pedagogical applications of findings (Swales 1990a, 1993; Bhatia, 1993, 1999; Johns, 1997) and has therefore focussed on the creation of teaching material for LI and L2 tertiary students and professionals (Swales & Feak, 2000, 2004). What these three approaches have in common is the desire to describe and explain how genres function and how and why they are used. The Australian and ESP schools also wish to use the research results obtained to provide teachers with new, informed material and methodologies to use in class. It is important now to mention a considerable amount of literature on the move-analysis theory, initially established by Hopkins and Dudley-Evans (1988), Swales (1990a) and Bhatia (1993). In particular, Connor and Mauranen (1999) and Connor and Upton (2004) have focused on grant proposals; Dubois (1997) and Holmes (1997) have analysed sections of the research article and Hyland (2000) has focused

42

on abstracts. Other studies have explored instead genres that are less academic and more related to business such as application letters (Henry & Roseberry, 2001), and business faxes (Akar & Louhiala-Salminen, 1999). Move analyses have also interested those working within an SFL framework, describing the rhetorical stages of various macro-genres such as narratives, dissertations and reports. Research on move analysis has therefore identified different types of register, and recurring rhetorical features, which characterize particular genres, pertaining for example to the academic and technical world, or to other more generic genres. Researchers have focused for example on how authors construct their persona and how and to what extent they use persuasion (Dafouz-Milne, 2008; Fuertes-Olivera et al., 2001; Hyland, 2008). Swales et al. (1998) have instead focused on the use of imperatives in research articles, whereas Kuo (1999), in the same genre, has analysed the use of personal pronouns. The use of hedges has instead been the topic of one of Hyland’s (1998) works. Others have addressed theme choices in engineering reports (McKenna, 1997), grammatical sentence types in email memos (Price, 1997), mitigation in teacher-written feedback (Hyland & Hyland, 2001, 2006) and reader-oriented features of functional healthcare texts such as medicine-bottle labels (Wright, 1999). As a reaction to Stubbs’ (1996) criticism that genre analysts had until then conveniently analysed short texts, linguists turned their attention to longer and more complex genres, such as popular science books (Fuller, 1998), school textbooks (Coffin, 1997; Veel, 1998) and PhD dissertations (Bunton, 1999; Thompson, 2009a, 2009b, 2012a, 2012b). Eggins and Slade’s (1997) analysis of casual conversation, as well as Thompson’s (2001) analysis of spoken academic interaction, is also important because of the uncertain status of conversation as a genre (Swales, 1990a). Further insights into spoken genres have emerged thanks to the analyses of data held in the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus, at the Universities of Warwick and Reading, and the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE). Finally, research has also begun to explore the intricate interactions existing between visual and textual elements of a text (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). Much of this work has explored text–visual

43

interrelations in academic genres, particularly as visual elements in science textbooks and papers have become more important and more widely used with the passing of time (e.g. Bazerman, 1988; Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Lemke, 1998; Miller, 1998; Myers, 2000).

2.4.3 A working definition of ‘academic genre’ For the present research I will consider an ‘academic genre’ as a genre displaying a number of characteristics shared by all users of the genre, which make it unique from the point of view of its purpose, its structure and the linguistic elements present (Hyland, 2009a). The users of an academic genre typically use the genre within an academic setting, for academic purposes.

2.5 What is an academic poster presentation? Numerous definitions of what a poster presentation is and what it entails are available nowadays online, such as the following: “a poster presentation consists of a visual display of research highlights on a fibre board background combined with an interpersonal question and answer period” (IKDS2015, American Heart Association). It is the ‘interpersonal question and answer period’ that renders the poster presentation a genre of its own, differentiating it from paper and PowerPoint presentations, as well as plenaries. Therefore the poster presentation can be considered a multimodal communicative event, where not only text and images play a role, but also graphics, colour, speech and even gesture all collaborate in conveying meaning. Because each single element present in the poster can also be found in other academic genres, we can borrow Bhatia’s (2004: ix) view of ‘hybrid (mixed or embedded) forms of genres’ and define the academic poster genre as a typical example of ‘hybrid’ academic product. The academic poster genre will be discussed in detail in Section 2.5.1, but what can be anticipated here is that when we work with posters, we work with a genre that does not have a rigid 44

structure as, for example, the research article. It is also a genre that comprises a written, visual and spoken component. Still today, there is a lack of precise prescriptive guidelines and, in most cases, students and researchers alike rely on a kaleidoscope of tips and techniques as well as first-hand experiences written by poster presenters which are easily available online, e.g. Pimp My Poster (Purrington, 2014). These tips and first-hand experiences of poster presenters, in most cases, indicate that poster presentations should not only be creative, but also informative and persuasive. Already in the early 1990s, researchers realised that the poster genre required numerous artistic and stylistic skills from authors and that it is not a genre to be taken lightly. Matthews (1990) for example describes the process of poster design as a detailed process that requires the researcher to act not only as a writer but also as an editor and a graphic designer who must be able to condense the message and render it appealing, all the while displaying functional visual elements that aid communication. This process is meant to render complex information easily accessible by readers, a task that is very difficult to carry out (Tufte & Graves, 1983). Notwithstanding the difficulties they pose, posters do play an important part in scientific conferences, or at least they have the potential to do so, for various reasons. For example, preliminary findings have a chance to be showcased before the research is complete, therefore allowing the researcher to receive feedback from peers. In this sense, as already mentioned in Section 1.1, a poster can be said to have an ‘intermediate status’ (Swales, 2004: 199), a characteristic that distinguishes it from other genres and makes the poster presentation an engaging and often highly productive event to participate in. Most of all, the poster presentation is a relatively safe place to test the presentation skills of the speaker and the soundness of his/her research. It is during poster presentations that students and young researchers can in fact learn by trial and mistake, because they are protected by an informal setting that allows minor mistakes and omissions and that, most of all, allows researchers to build and strengthen their academic persona. As these characteristics demonstrate, the academic poster can be an interesting and engaging disseminating tool at conferences, but its importance is not always recognised as will be further explained in Section 2.5.1.

45

Because the use of text and visuals is so important in the poster genre, these aspects will be taken into consideration in the following sections and will help define what the poster genre is and how it can effectively be used to disseminate and negotiate scientific knowledge.

2.5.1 The academic poster presentation genre As mentioned in the previous section, the academic poster genre sets itself apart from other academic genres for various reasons. First of all it is a multimodal way of presenting research findings (Archer, 2010; Curwood, 2012; Doering et al., 2007; Kawahara et al., 2008), whether partial or complete. It combines different modes and the written, spoken and visual dimensions need to effectively work together to create meaning (Alley, 2003). Because of all these elements intersecting, the poster genre is difficult and several elements must be taken into consideration when working with this genre. Bhatia’s (2004:23) genre-based view of discourse provides a good start, especially if we take into consideration two of the points he makes, when defining what a genre is: Genres are recognizable communicative events, characterized by a set of communicative purposes identified and mutually understood by members of the professional or academic community in which they regularly occur.

This first generalization made by Bhatia can be applied to the poster genre, because it is a tool utilized by the academic community at large and is no longer a genre limited to the hard sciences. Another point made by Bhatia is that also the academic poster genre is capable of responding to the various disciplinary needs and practices. Although academics tend to consider genres as something that never changes over time and is highly standardized (Bhatia, 2004), it is crucial to specify here that genres in general, and the poster one in particular, continually develop and change over time. If it is clear that the poster genre develops and changes with technology, it is yet to be ascertained whether it is immune or not from disciplinary variations. As explained in Section 2.4, where academic genres were introduced, although academic genres are transversal to

46

disciplines, we do often find differences in the same genre depending on the discipline (Bhatia, 2004). Also Dudley-Evans (1994) found that the organization of lectures and plenaries may vary significantly depending on the discipline and the same can be said for the research article (Bhatia, 2002; Hyland & Bondi, 2006). A number of linguists agree therefore that disciplinary fields can be more or less different depending on the conventions utilized to interpret data, construct arguments, the type of evidentiality used and how knowledge is disseminated (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Bhatia, 2004). The present investigation will hopefully clarify if also the poster genre can be said to reflect disciplinary conventions and interpretations. What can be stated with certainty is that it is a genre that is subject to change and developments, triggered mostly by technological innovations, which have an influence not only on the way posters are written and organized, but also on how they are presented (Bach et al., 1993; De Simone et al., 2001; MacIntosh-Murray, 2007; Powell-Tuck et al., 2002). In this sense, the poster genre can be said to experience the changes that other academic genres also experience. It would be a mistake, in fact, to picture all genres as static and highly integral. They are actually very dynamic and they change depending on the context in which they are used (Berkenkotter & Huckin 1995; Bhatia 1997). In Section 2.5.2 the technological development of the academic poster genre will be taken into consideration and the most recent literature, documenting the many transitions that the poster genre is experiencing, will be reported. Having said this, a description of the poster genre necessarily has to take into consideration three different components: the written component, the visual component and finally, the spoken component. The combination of these three elements is what renders the poster such an eclectic and interesting genre and for this reason, each element will be hereafter described. 2.5.1.1 The textual component in academic poster presentations In the academic poster genre, information is presented on a single large panel, a fact that semiotically distinguishes this type of genre from other academic genres, such as the research article. What in a research article 47

can be described, explained and debated in several pages, in a poster, it must be condensed in few words and a very limited amount of space. Brevity and conciseness become fundamental when writing the text of posters (Matthews, 1990). In fact, the most recurring advice is that the number of words in a poster should be limited (APHA, 2014; Brown, 1996; Erren & Bourne, 2007; Hay & Thomas, 1999; Masek, 2003; Van Der Meer, 1982; Wood & Morrison, 2011); also, a balance between text and images should be obtained in order to reach a sufficient amount of blank space which renders the poster more legible and less ‘crowded’ (Woolsey, 1989; Zerwic et al., 2010). However, like research articles and other academic genres, posters should follow a clear structure and content organisation in order to achieve both coverage and intelligibility (Holmes, 1997; Pho, 2008; Samraj, 2005; Swales & Najjar, 1987). This is the reason why, in most posters a title, an abstract as well as an introduction, a methodology, results and conclusions section are found (Alley, 2003; Nicol & Pexman, 2003), providing readers and authors with a clear ‘map’ of the content displayed. Cianflone (2011), Driskill et al. (1998), Matthews (1990), Maci (2010) and Tardy (2005) have noted that the structure of posters displaying results of experimental studies usually follows the scientific ‘IMRD’ format (i.e. a standardized structure displaying an Introduction, a Methodology section, a Research section, and a Discussion section). Also among the posters collected in my previous study (D’Angelo, 2012), 65% used the IMRD format, 23% divided the text in similar sections, whereas only 12% of posters did not follow a clear format in the organisation of the text, meaning that the text was not divided into numbered or not-numbered sections, nor it was presented in any logical order. Guidelines available online and through departments and writing centres (e.g. Alley, 2015; ATM University Writing Centre, 2015; UW-Madison Writing Centre, 2015; MCB, University of California, 2015; Stanford University – Department of Physics, 2015) usually advise to pay much attention to the written part of the poster, as it often ends up being the most difficult part to master. Students are advised, for example, to consider sentence length in posters, as shortor medium-length sentences are visually more effective than long 48

sentences (Maimon et al. 2007). The analysis I carried out in 2012 on academic posters confirms that the average sentence length is, indeed, quite short, averaging 17 words per sentence. The tendency to produce shorter, less articulated sentences has also been found in other genres and disciplines such as medical and economic texts (Fløttum et al, 2006), research articles in Applied Linguistics and Law (D’Angelo, 2010; Sala & D’Angelo, 2009) and book acknowledgements in the soft and hard sciences (Giannoni, 2006). Also MacIntosh-Murray (2007: 358), drawing on a number of observations by Swales and Feak (2000) and Woolsey (1989) suggests that poster authors should use a ‘compressed’ type of language. Woolsey (1989) in particular advises authors to consider attentively the amount of white space on the poster panel. To achieve this, MacIntosh-Murray (2007) writes, guidelines seem to frequently advise presenters to use bullet points instead of full sentences. The fact that posters are often not adequately abbreviated is stressed unequivocally by Stoss (2003, cited in MacIntosh-Murray, 2007: 352): The poster is NOT the pasting of a scholarly article on poster board or foamcore and standing by to defend results reproduced in miniature on the ‘poster’. (His emphasis)

The poster may instead be considered as a sort of ‘illustrated abstract’ (Brown, 1987, cited in Matthews, 1990: 227), where we find not only a short text summarizing a research project but also images. When we create a text that will be inserted in a poster, we are often advised to divide information in units, something that we do, for example, when we organize information into paragraphs. Matthews (1990) also describes this technique as dividing bits of text so that it can be easily assimilated. These bits of information, however, should be carefully organized and edited so that the final textual product is coherent and of immediate effect, thanks also to a correct use of white space. In this way, we avoid long and dense columns of text that are extremely tiresome for readers to read. Chunking therefore provides readability and a clearer organization of information. The ‘chunking’ technique (Matthews, 1990: 226) however, does not come easily for the novice writer, because discourse must be carefully organized conceptually. Each unit of information 49

must be coherent so that discourse flows correctly. Units of texts should be linked one to another through cued headings, which also help readers locate immediately the part of the text that interests them most (Matthews, 1990). Besides using chunked text, a poster presenter can also decide to display information in lists, as it is considered another effective way to improve readability. From a lexical point of view, it seems that the use of gerunds and nominalisation is highly recurrent in posters (D’Angelo, 2012a). 2.5.1.2 The visual component in academic poster presentations The visual component in academic poster presentations inevitably plays an extremely important role, because like PowerPoints, poster presentations display text and visuals and are organized in such a way that viewers are able to ‘glimpse’ into the research work of a colleague, having in this case, the freedom of ‘reading’ the poster at one’s own speed, of lingering on a specific aspect of the work, a table, graph or picture displayed, and finally, having the rare opportunity to engage with the author in a one-to-one discussion (Matthews, 1990). This colloquial, almost intimate aspect of the poster presentation is what makes the genre so unique and challenging at the same time. If visuals play a primary role in poster presentations, also the way textual and visual elements are displayed is important to render content easily accessible and comprehensible. The flow of information, for example, might either be aligned vertically or horizontally as well as divided in sections by columns helping the viewer read and understand the information displayed (Design & Print Studio, University of Reading, 2013; Purrington, 2014). Within each column, the text can also be divided in blocks of text, which are often numbered, inviting the reader to follow the stream of information going from top to bottom as suggested by the vertical columns and the sequential numbering (University of Reading, Study Advice: Poster presentations, 2015). In the study I conducted in 2012, the majority of the posters considered followed either a horizontal or vertical alignment, making the vertical and horizontal structure the most recurrent and popular solution for presenting data. The rest of the posters, instead, divided content into sections or did not display any logical organization of information (D’Angelo, 2012a).

50

Like in research articles and abstracts, information is often presented following a standardised structure (e.g. the IMRD format). However, a poster author also needs to design a presentation that stands out from the rest of the poster presentations, which are also competing for attention (MacIntosh Murray, 2007). This is why posters are almost always a mix of text and colourful images – all meant to gather and keep alive the interest of the public for as long as possible (Wittich & Schuller, 1973), trying at the same time, to adhere to the norms and conventions of the discipline (Russell et al., 1996). However, it is difficult to stand out when the genre imposes strict physical limitations and authors are advised to follow a standard structure when organizing content. Creating a poster therefore can be challenging not only because the text must be condensed like in an abstract but also because the poster is accompanied by visual elements that become very important in rendering the presentation clear, effective and interesting. Reaching a balance between the visual and textual component (i.e. incorporating the right amount of visuals and text so that the poster presentation is clear and at the same time, harmonious) becomes essential. 2.5.1.3 The spoken component in academic poster presentations What renders the poster presentation experience unique is the fact that a poster presenter might or might not have an audience and that, when an interaction between the poster author and an interested viewer does take place, it is usually informal and does not have any time constraints apart from the beginning and the end of the poster session. Also, it is an experience that is shared, in the sense that all presenters occupy the same room and share the same experience. As Matthews (1990) and Gosling (1999) explain, the major advantage of presenting one’s research results through a scientific poster is that this academic genre sets the viewer free in the sense that he is free to linger on details or quickly skim through the text. Also, he is free to leave the poster presentation after just one or two minutes, or engage in a fervent discussion with the author. This reader-centred interaction is less formal and does not force viewers to continue reading the poster or speak with the presenter, if they are not interested in the information displayed (Serkey, 1982).

51

In theory, a poster should contain the essence of a research investigation and should be organized and displayed in such a way that it is self-explanatory (Matthews, 1990). This (in theory) should free the presenter from answering basic, obvious questions regarding the research topic, so that he can focus on the details of the research, supplementing perhaps additional information to viewers (Tham, 1997). In this sense, spoken language, written text and images all work together to create meaning. What makes it a difficult task to master is the fact that it is the casual viewer that controls the beginning and the end of the presentation, deciding the exact entry-point and exit-point (Martin, 1994). Because of this aspect, inexperienced researchers might find it hard to master a poster presentation, whereas they might feel ‘safer’ presenting a paper or a PowerPoint. Here the presenter, although bound to face a five-ten minute question time, can always count on the fact that a limited amount of time is allotted to a presentation (usually 20–30 minutes) and that he controls not only the entry and exit points of the presentation, but the entire performance (MacIntosh-Murray, 2007). The poster presenter instead has to know his subject well enough to quickly move from general, abstract matters, to details about the research, thus displaying a great amount of flexibility and expertise. This high-paced, informal, yet dynamic type of oral interaction is what mostly differentiates the poster presentation from other genres such as the paper presentation, PowerPoint presentation and plenary. Aside from the difficulties mentioned here, it is indisputable that the poster presentation session offers its participants a valuable opportunity for networking (Martin, 1994) and the chance to interact personally with interested peers (Gosling, 1999).

2.5.2 Research into the academic poster presentation genre Although research on new types of digital posters is still in its infancy and should be developed in the near future, thanks to the Internet there is now a considerable amount of material searchable online on academic poster presentations. This informative material ranges from simple tutorials (Alley, 2003; Block, 1996; Briscoe, 1996; Day, 2006; Miller, 2007; 52

Purrington, 2014) to a vast kaleidoscope of downloadable templates. Besides the numerous tips on poster construction, there are a number of publications focusing on the use of poster presentations in the workplace, by professionals in various fields. Miracle (2003, 2008) for example explains how posters can be used to communicate and discuss effectively (yet still informally) important decisions between hospital units. Other authors, mostly belonging to the medical field, have also commented on the use of poster presentations in professional settings (see for example Boullata & Mancuso, 2007; Briggs, 2009; Campbell, 2004; Cleary & Walter, 2004; Halligan, 2008; Hardicre et al., 2007; Keely, 2004; Price, 2010; Roberts, 2013; Singh, 2014) and Nemcek et al. (2009) even considered extending its use to improve communication between patients and doctors. The use of poster presentations however is no longer limited to the hard sciences or the medical field, but is spreading to other fields as diverse as Marketing (Brownlie, 2007), Law (Heller, 1999), Psychology (Beins & Beins, 2011; Marek et al., 2002; Welch & Waehler, 1996), Statistics (Moreno & Schollenberger, 1998) and Geography (Vujakovic, P., 1995). An extensive literature also exists describing how, in the past two decades, poster presentations have been utilized as in-class activities at university (Baird, 1991; Bracher et al., 1998; Denzine, 1999; Duchin & Sherwood, 1990; Hay & Miller, 1992; Hay & Thomas, 1999; Howenstine et al., 1988; MacAndrew & Edwards, 2003; Remi & Bolalne, 2013; Summers, 2005; van Naerssen, 1984) and how they have been usefully employed to evaluate undergraduate and graduate students (Akister et al., 2000; Berry & Houston, 1995; Billington, 1997; Handron, 1994; Lowe, 2012; Marino et al., 2000; Menke, 2014; Moneyham et al., 1996; Moule et al., 1998; Orsmond et al., 1996; Orsmond et al., 2002). Just to provide an example of the kind of varied research carried out on this subject, Billington (1997) compared students’ achievements in different assessment exercises demonstrating that by using poster presentations as an assessment tool, next to written and oral exams, it is possible to provide a diversity of assessment strategies so as to assess students fairly and avoid discrimination. Akister et al. (2000) described how the genre became a valuable tool to develop the skill of social work students to verbally support assessments undertaken in the workplace. Finally, Menke (2014) explained how online poster sessions used in 53

class eliminate, on the one hand, the need for large rooms (inevitable, in the case of traditional paper poster presentations) and, on the other hand, allows one instructor to quickly evaluate a large number of poster presentations in a short period of time. Other aspects related to academic poster presentations have been considered over time, such as the selection process of posters at conferences (Bushy, 1991; Ector et al., 1995; Kemp & Goddard, 1998; Rubin et al., 1993; Timmer et al., 2001), the publication rate of posters after they have been presented at conferences (Boldt & Maleck, 1999; Eloubeidi et al., 2001; Scherer et al., 2007) and the habit, in the hard sciences, of presenting the same poster at different conferences (Bhandari et al., 2005; Salzi et al., 2008; Wang et al., 1999). Other interesting and valuable studies have considered the motivation that leads authors to produce poster presentations (Tulsky & Kouides, 1998), or how much time conference participants dedicate to poster presentations (Wright & Moll, 1987). Although not numerous, a number of linguistic/semiotic analyses of the poster presentation genre have also started to appear after the pioneering exploration of the genre carried out by Matthews (1990). For example, Morin (1996a, 1996b) evaluated the choices made by authors on the use of color, design and typography. Maci (2011) investigated the macrostructure of medical posters and what relevance images have in relation to text, whereas in Maci (2012) the diachronic evolution of abstracts in medical posters was analysed and it was revealed that poster abstracts have changed from narrative to non-narrative style, which represents a significant shift towards the IMRD format. Archer (2006) focused instead on the multimodal academic writing practices of Engineering students and how they develop written discourse through poster presentations, in comparison to other genres. An interesting work that also considers visual communication in poster presentations is the one by Rowley-Jolivet (2002) who seeks to identify and classify different visuals and communicative strategies present in poster presentations. These strategies, she explains, facilitate communication and understanding between NS and NNS of English and are based on the visual knowledge that they share.

54

Shifting the attention to the way poster presentations are perceived and valued by the scientific community, MacIntosh and Murray (2007) take into consideration for the first time, the forms, norms and values associated with poster presentations – an analysis also undertaken by Salzi et al. (2008). Also, Rowe and Ilic (2009) have analysed how the poster session is perceived, addressing in particular, attitude and opinion items. Their study revealed that the academic poster genre is widely regarded as a good genre to communicate research and is considered an effective type of academic publication. Given the shortage of empirical studies evaluating the effectiveness of posters (Ilic & Rowe, 2013), this survey provided interesting initial results and future research on this subject will hopefully provide further insights into the academic poster medium. Because the poster presentation genre is closely linked with technology, it is subjected to rapid changes and technological innovations (Bach et al., 1993). With the aim of transforming poster sessions into wider, more appealing events, a number of disciplines have been investigating, for example, different ways of conducting academic poster sessions (MacIntosh-Murray, 2007). Among these non-traditional poster presentations, we find posters projected on a screen, accompanied by two-three minute oral presentations, as well as online poster sessions, Digital Interactive Poster Presentations (DIPP) and virtual science fairs that use online conferencing or weblogs (De Simone et al., 2001; Powell-Tuck et al., 2002). As De Simone et al. (2001) explain, the DIPP is a PDF version of a traditional paper poster, which is usually projected on a screen during specific DIPP sessions that precede (or replace) traditional poster sessions featuring paper versions of posters. During these DIPP sessions, presenters are asked to project their PDF posters on a screen for 3–5 minutes, and summarize their research work. The audience can then look for the poster(s) that interested them most, during the regular poster session. The chance to take the floor, even for a few minutes, is undeniably precious as it gives presenters the possibility to showcase their work even before the poster session starts and probably attract a greater number of interested viewers. During the brief presentation, the presenter can enlarge parts of the posters, such

55

as tables, graphs and images so that s/he can concentrate on certain aspects of the presentation. A DIPP can also be made available online by conference organizers, not only after but also before a conference takes place, so that participants can browse through a database of posters presented (or to be presented) and retain the information they are mostly interested in. As De Simone et al. (2001) have noted, by creating an interactive poster presentation, DIPPs allow a greater number of participants and facilitate discussions among them. Because of these innovative features, the audience generally views these digital poster presentations positively. Powell-Tuck et al. (2002: 261) coined the term ‘e-poster’, which resembles a DIPP and is handled and displayed in the same way. Their work is however interesting because it provides an initial appraisal of this ‘technological’ version of poster presentations provided by conference participants attending the e-poster session. As Powell-Tuck et al. (2002) write, with e-posters presenters are invited to send their PDF versions of posters to the organizers. Like the DIPP, authors can zoom in and out of different sections of the poster, thereby focusing on specific data, tables or information displayed. To evaluate whether e-poster are favourably accepted by the public or not, and if the medium is clear, attractive and informative, Powell-Tuck et al.asked conference participants attending the e-poster sessions to answer a questionnaire. The survey revealed that viewers are favourable to the use of e-posters because of the increased amount of information they displayed and the grater chances for discussions during the conference as well as after the conference has ended because of an improved e-mail exchange programme. This is possible especially when the digitalized poster is no longer just projected on a wall and is instead shown through a computer or LCD screen. In this case, numerous features, such as QR Codes, hyperlinks and email addresses that allow instant messaging can be added, enhancing the passage of communication between the presenter and the audience (D’Angelo, 2012a). Also the amount of information provided by the presenter is in this case greatly increased. For example, e-posters can be quickly scrolled through and viewers can email comments and feedback to presenters immediately, a feature that allows communication and feedback to instantly reach the poster presenter,

56

even if s/he is not physically present or the e-poster session has already closed. Smart phones can scan the image of the QR Code displayed on the e-poster to receive further visual, audio or textual data, note the author’s contact information or be re-directed to a specific web page. The possibility to hyperlink a poster’s content is particularly useful, because it eliminates the space limitation problem typical of posters. A few years after e-posters started to be used, Rowe and Ilic (2009, p.5) reported on the development of another interesting and innovative type of interactive poster called ‘MediaPoster’, which was meant to mix the static characteristics of a traditional poster presentation with multimodal elements. Just like the e-poster, the ‘MediaPoster’ is presented on an interactive LCD or whiteboard screen, and displays embedded links to additional information. Like the e-poster, viewers can select a particular area on the poster and instantly access additional data, images, video and audio material, as well as texts. The novelty in this case is that this additional material opens at the side of the screen, so that the original poster presentation always remains in sight (Rowe & Ilic, 2009). Viewers are not redirected to a webpage, which would force them to virtually leave the poster presentation, but instead remain within the same media, with the original poster always open and accessible. In this case, as Rowe and Ilic (2009, p.6) have noted, authors are given the chance to ‘assign their own academic ‘depth’ to the medium’. Likewise, readers are free to browse through as much information as they wish, concentrating on a single aspect of the research displayed or retaining all the additional information provided through the hyperlinks. This digital system is currently being utilized by electronic poster software companies such as ePosterLive and is rapidly gaining a wide acceptance by academics (PR Newswire, 2012). What is important to note here is that with systems such as the one mentioned, the poster session experience changes enormously. Large monitors replace traditional paper posters and boards are no longer needed. By presenting posters in sequence and on-demand, more posters can be viewed at different times. Also, the strategic use of dedicated workstations allows attendees to find, review and download posters during the entire conference. Despite the numerous studies mentioned so far, it seems that a cross-disciplinary linguistic and visual analysis has never been carried

57

out on the genre of academic poster presentations. This lack of data makes it unclear whether certain poster presentation rules and conventions are discipline-specific. Are poster presentations in the hard sciences similar to poster presentations in the so-called soft sciences? Are there any unspoken rules and conventions that recur within single disciplines and should, therefore, be openly known to novice academics? These are just some of the unanswered questions that still revolve around the eclectic and fascinating poster presentation genre. Because a fast and efficient dissemination of scientific knowledge is the ultimate goal of poster sessions ‒ may they be traditional, digital or virtual‒ one can only hope that further investigations will be carried out on this new genre type.

2.5.3 Working definition of ‘academic poster’ As the present research will demonstrate, academic posters can come in different forms, colours, and dimensions. They can display and present information as well as discourse differently, depending on the disciplinary community the author belongs to. Nonetheless, a definition that I believe is valid for all posters is the following: A poster is a visual presentation that showcases your scholarly research. The purpose of a poster is to present a piece of work that colleagues can easily view and which can stimulate an exchange of ideas between the presenter and the audience reading the poster. A poster is different from a paper or a talk, and so distinct techniques need to be employed in its preparation. (Writing Centre – University of Adelaide, 2009: 1)

The techniques used by writers in different disciplines will be the object of the present investigation. In the following section I concentrate on the concept of metadiscourse, as it plays a fundamental role in my framework of analysis.

58

2.6 What is metadiscourse? As Hyland (2005) notes, the term ‘metadiscourse’, was coined by Zeilig Harris in 1959 and was further developed by Williams (1981), Vande Kopple (1985), and Crismore (1989). It is a field of study that analyses how writers are able to intrude into their own texts, guiding and influencing the reception and understanding of the text by readers, thanks to the careful use of several discourse features such as hedges, boosters and connectives. Central to this theory is the idea that communication within a text can be far from aseptic and impersonal; rather, the personality, attitude and personal assumptions of the author play an important role in constructing and articulating discourse. These linguistic and rhetorical elements, that can be found in every text, reveal how authors align themselves with regard to the issues considered and what their attitudes are. It also conveys the personality, credibility and authority of the writer, making it possible for the author to render a difficult and dense text much more reader-friendly (Hyland, 2000). We should never forget that a text is never neutral and can impact the audience differently depending not only on the content but also on how it is written. Knowing our audience well, anticipating its needs and using forms of engagement and persuasion, enables us, as Hyland (1998a, 1999b, 2005) writes, to build a credible and effective academic persona. Being able to relate to an audience is thus crucial, because it renders the text easier to understand, more interesting and it evokes a positive response from readers. Metadiscourse permeates every aspect of our lives and comes into play every time we need to communicate with the outside world, through a variety of genres and settings (Hyland, 2005). It is a language aspect that can be traced back to the Middle Ages (Taavitsainen, 1999) and can be found in different domains, such as poetry, science and biographies as well as different languages and cultures (Crismore et al., 1993; Mauranen, 1993b; Valero-Garcés, 1996). Over the years, the importance of metadiscourse has been revealed through studies that analysed popular and professional science discourse (Crismore & Farnsworth, 1990), L1 and L2 graduate and postgraduate writing (Crismore et al., 1993; Hyland, 2004c; Swales, 1990a), 59

academic lectures (Thompson, 2003), newspaper discourse (DafouzMilne, 2008), textbooks (Crismore, 1984; Hyland, 1999b), CEO’s letters (Hyland, 1998b), research articles (Dahl, 2004) and advertising (Fuertes-Olivera et al., 2001). Researchers have also recognised the important role metadiscourse plays in ESL, ESP and EAP programmes, as it helps L2 students to effectively address and engage with their audience (Camiciottoli, 2003; Cheng & Steffensen, 1996; Crismore & Farnsworth, 1990; Hyland, 1999a, 2004b, 2004c; Intaraprawat & Steffensen, 1995).

2.6.1 Initial definitions and categorizations of metadiscourse Despite the research work mentioned above, Hyland (2005:16) recognises that the term ‘metadiscourse’ has always had a ‘fuzzy’ connotation and has frequently been defined simply as ‘discourse about discourse’. This fuzziness is also underlined by Nash (1992: 100), who notes its unclear boundaries, much like those of rhetoric and style. Often what is considered metadiscourse by a reader is simply categorized as automated language by another. Hyland (2005), however, argues that although the writing process may seem automatic, authors do make important stylistic and rhetorical choices while writing. They may decide to use an active instead of a passive verb, or use more hedges than boosters, and so on, changing the impact and the readability of the message. It is thanks to the study of metadiscourse that we are able to identify the relationship between the language choices we make (consciously or not) and the situation in which these utterances are made (Hyland, 2005). The concept of metadiscourse however has been viewed and defined differently by linguists, revealing a certain degree of uncertainty. For example, Bunton (1999), Mauranen (1993a, 1993b) and Valero-Garcés (1996), consider only elements appearing in a metatext (i.e. a text providing an explanation of or a reflection on another text) as metadiscourse. Others also simplify the notion of metadiscourse by, as Beauvais (1989, cited in Hyland, 2005:17) notes, taking into consideration only illocutionary predicates, such as ‘I believe that’ and ‘we demonstrate that’. Linguists and rhetoricians 60

however, mostly use metadiscourse in a wider sense, to denote “the various linguistic tokens employed to guide or direct a reader through a text so both the text and the writer’s stance is understood” (Hyland, 2005: 18). In this sense, metadiscourse refers to non-propositional material, i.e. “whatever does not refer to the subject matter being addressed” (Williams, 1981: 226). This distinction, as Hyland (2005) notes, was established since the term ‘metadiscourse’ began to be used by, for example, Lautamatti (1978) and Vande Kopple (1985). Metadiscoursal elements found in text have been clearly identified in the past with the actual presence of the writer in the text, who may decide to intrude more or less explicitly in the developing discourse (Crismore, 1983). As the various definitions mentioned so far suggest, metadiscourse has been categorized in different ways. Vande Kopple’s (1985) categorization, consisting of seven different metadiscourse markers divided into textual and interpersonal types, is most often taken as a model. This metadiscourse model is summarised in Hyland (2005: 32) and hereby proposed (Table 2.1). Table 2.1. Vande Kopple’s (1985) metadiscourse taxonomy summarised by Hyland (2005: 32). Textual metadiscourse Text connectives

Used to help show how parts of a text are connected to one another. Includes sequencers (first, next, in the second place), reminders (as I mentioned in chapter 2) and topicalizers, which focus attention on the topic of a text segment (with regard to, in connection with).

Code glosses

Used to help readers to grasp the writer’s intended meaning. Based on the writer’s assessment of the reader’s knowledge, these devices reword, explain, define or clarify the sense of a usage, sometimes putting the reformulation in parentheses or marking it as an example, etc.

Validity markers

Used to express the writer’s commitment to the probability or truth of a statement. These include hedges (perhaps, might, may], emphatics (clearly, undoubtedly], and attributors, which enhance a position by claiming the support of a credible other (according to Einstein).

61

Textual metadiscourse Narrators

Used to inform readers of the source of the information presented – who said or wrote something (according to Smith, the Prime Minister announced that).

Illocution markers

Used to make explicit the discourse act the writer is performing at certain points (to conclude, I hypothesize, to sum up, we predict).

Attitude markers

Used to express the writer’s attitudes to the prepositional material he or she presents (unfortunately, interestingly, I wish that, how awful that).

Commentaries

Used to address readers directly, drawing them into an implicit dialogue by commenting on the reader’s probable mood or possible reaction to the text (you will certainly agree that, you might want to read the third chapter first).

Interpersonal metadiscourse

The categories proposed by Vande Kopple however, are somewhat vague and have been judged difficult to apply in practice (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Hyland, 2005). As a consequence, Vande Kopple (2002) later revised his taxonomy and the same was done by Crismore et al. (1993) as well as by Hyland (1998a, 1998b, 1998c, 1999b). In Crismore et al.’s (1993) taxonomy the two main metadiscoursal categories (textual/interpersonal) were maintained but the textual category was divided into two new subcategories (textual markers and interpretive markers) and Vande Kopple’s original categories were reorganized and relabelled, with the exception of ‘narrators’, which was eliminated. Table 2.2. Crismore et al.’s categorisation of metadiscourse (1993: 47–54). Category

Function

Examples

Textual metadiscourse 1. Textual markers Logical connectives

Show connections between ideas therefore; so; in addition; and

Sequences

Indicate sequence/ordering of material

first; next; finally; 1, 2, 3

Reminders

Refer to earlier text material

as we saw in Chapter one

62

Category

Function

Examples

Textual metadiscourse Topicalizers

Indicate a shift in topic

well; now I will discuss

2. Interpretive markers Code glosses

Explain text material

for example; that is

Illocution markers

Name the act performed

to conclude; in sum; I predict

Announcements

Announce upcoming material

in the next section

Interpersonal metadiscourse Hedges

Show uncertainty to truth of assertion

might; possible; likely

Certainty markers

Express full commitment to assertion

certainly; know; shows

Attributors

Give source/support of information

Smith claims that…

Attitude markers

Display writer’s affective values I hope/agree; surprisingly…

Commentary

Build relationship with reader

You may not agree that…

Although Crismore et al.’s (1993) taxonomy is an attempt to improve Vande Kopple’s (1985) original taxonomy, problems remained. For example, the division of textual metadiscourse between textual and interpretive markers is not completely clear as well as the collocation of reminders among textual markers or the collocation of announcements among interpretive markers. Finally, it is not clear why logical connectives have been placed in the ‘textual markers’ category (Hyland, 2005).

2.6.2 A new metadiscourse model As the previous section has shown, the concept and categorization of metadiscourse needed further work and a number of ambiguous points had to be clarified. In this respect, Hyland’s (2005) work proved crucial, as it provided a more robust and reliable taxonomy and offered a much clearer explanation for how elements were categorized. First of all, Hyland (2005: 37) provides readers with his own definition of metadiscourse: 63

Metadiscourse is the cover term for the self-reflective expressions, used to negotiate interactional meanings in a text, assisting the writer (or speaker) to express a viewpoint and engage with readers as members of a particular community.

He then clarifies that three key principles are at the basis of his metadiscourse taxonomy (Hyland, 2005: 38): 1. 2. 3.

that ‘metadiscourse is distinct from propositional aspects of discourse’; that ‘metadiscourse refers to aspects of the text that embody writer-reader interactions’; that ‘metadiscourse refers only to relations which are internal to the discourse’.

Each principle will be hereby further explained, followed by a working definition of metadiscourse. 2.6.2.1 Metadiscourse must be distinguished from propositional aspects of discourse The first distinction Hyland (2005) makes is that from his point of view, metadiscourse does not concern things in the world (propositions) but is instead used to refer to things in the discourse (metadiscourse). As he later clarified in 2013, it is important to understand that both propositional matters and metadiscourse matters serve a very important role in meaning making and one is not secondary to the other. Propositional and metadiscoursal elements are so complementary to each other that they are both frequently found in texts, sometimes even in the same sentence. We are however capable of distinguishing one from the other, because they play different roles: one describes what happens in the world, whereas the other is concerned with how a text is constructed and how it is received by the public. We can see the metadiscoursal elements in the text as a sort of ‘glue’ (Hyland 2005: 41) that holds together different parts of the discourse, but not only. It can also contextualize a text, taking into consideration readers’ background knowledge and expectations. Metadiscourse then becomes an invaluable tool to discern how writers communicate with their readers on their subject matter and most of all, the strategies they employ depending on the social and academic community they belong to.

64

2.6.2.2 Metadiscourse is used to express writer–reader interactions Metadiscourse is capable of successfully managing writer-reader interactions in the sense that writers can signal their attitude towards content as well as readers thanks to an array of rhetorical markers; at the same time, readers are made aware or the writer’s intention and attitude and are guided along the text (Hyland & Tse, 2004). Metadiscourse can in fact also be realised by conjunctions, adverbials, or similar metaphorical expressions and they can either deal with the logic of discourse (i.e. they function as a glue, helping cement the text together) or they are concerned with the outside world (i.e. they elaborate and extend propositional meanings) (Hyland, 2005). Thompson (2001) and Thompson and Thetela (1995) further elaborate this concept by distinguishing between two main types of interaction and labelling these interactions either as ‘interactive’ or ‘interactional’. Interactive resources, they write, are those textual elements that help arrange, organize the information contained in the text, and thus anticipate readers’ needs and reactions. Interactional resources are instead used to involve the reader, inviting him to collaborate in the understanding and the acceptance of the text. It is with interactional resources that writers opt, at one point, to make themselves visible to readers and engage them in a conversation (Thompson, 2001). By using interactional metadiscourse, writers also demonstrate solidarity towards readers and in a way, they manipulate the way they understand and accept the writer’s point of view (Hyland, 2005). 2.6.2.3 Metadiscourse differentiates external and internal relations As stated in Section 2.6.2.1, many textual elements can either have an interpersonal or propositional purpose depending on the context. It is important therefore to distinguish between the internal and external relations of metadiscourse. An example that clarifies the distinction between internal and external relations is the one proposed by Bunton (1999), who distinguishes between researcher acts and writer acts. The author of an academic text plays the role of the researcher when s/he simply describes the process of the experiment undertaken. It is an objective and mere description of facts and processes, and can be defined as a description of events in the world. If the author instead does 65

not simply describe the experimental process but also constructs an argument, taking into account his/her audience, then the author transforms him/herself into a writer and metadiscourse is used to present and defend arguments.

2.6.3 A working definition of ‘metadiscourse’ In the present study, I will consider metadiscourse as the way writers construct the text, address and involve readers and make the writer’s persona visible or not. This approach employs Thompson and Thetela’s (1995) distinction between interactive and interactional resources, which highlights those elements capable of organizing discourse or expressing a stance. Although the model is based on Thompson and Thetela’s concept, it has been further developed so as to include both stance and engagement features (Hyland, 2001a) as well as elements from other models of metadiscourse (Hyland, 1998a, 2000; Hyland & Tse, 2004). Hyland’s (2004a) model of metadiscourse will be discussed in detail in Chapter 4 (Section 4.2 and 4.3). It is sufficient here to mention the two dimensions of interaction recognised by the model: 1.

2.

66

The interactive dimension, in which the writer is aware of his potential readers and tries to accommodate their needs, taking into account their background knowledge, their expectations and their ability to process information. The interactional dimension, in which the writer intrudes more or less explicitly into the text, aligning himself/herself (or not) with readers. It also concerns the way writers allow readers to participate in the unfolding text by engaging with them and responding to an imagined dialogue.

2.7 What is multimodality? In the last decade, the role of images as well as the use of space, gaze and gesture have attracted the attention of numerous academics (Jewitt, 2009). Disciplines as diverse as linguistics, musicology, sociology and anthropology are all increasingly considering multimodality when commenting on texts and media-related products. Multimodality, which can be seen as a complex interaction among texts and media, has been increasingly considered across different disciplines. But what is really a multimodal text and how has multimodal communication been studied in the past years? What should be clear from the start is that multimodal communication is not a new concept. Jewitt (2009) explains in his Handbook of Multimodal Analysis that people have always used images to communicate (especially at a time when most people were illiterate) and the fact that today we have technology as an ally simply means that images and non-verbal forms of communication can be more widely and easily employed and circulated. Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) define multimodality as a semiotic product that is created by using different semiotic modes and Jewitt (2009) likewise writes that, when it comes to multimodality, it is necessary to engage with the different modes that are employed to create meaning, such as speech, writing, image and even gestures and posture. In fact, communication is often multimodal (i.e. it uses more than one semiotic mode). For example, when we read a newspaper we see that the text is accompanied by images or when we speak, we ‘complete’ our verbal message with facial expressions and hand gestures. We send emails every day, containing text, pictures as well as video and audio clips. The modes and semiotic resources we choose to use (or not to use) every day, inevitably help shape communication and meaning (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). Unfortunately, as O’Halloran (2004) notes, linguistics has concentrated mainly on language and has not realized the importance of the role played by other communicative modes. In the following section, I will summarize the major shift language studies underwent, thanks to the stimulating research mentioned above.

67

2.7.1 Research into multimodality Because of the intrinsic nature of multimodality, this is a field that can be explored and analysed by employing different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, coming from the field of Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology (Bezemer & Jewitt, 2010). Indeed, multimodal communication intersects with the study of language (Erickson, 2004; Goffman, 1974; Mirzoeff, 1999; Mitchell, 1995), visual studies (Barton et al., 2000; Street, 1998), literacy studies (Lea & Street, 2006), and conversation analysis (Goodwin et al., 2002; Heath & Luff, 2012). At the same time, multimodality has been influenced, among others, by research in fields such as Linguistics, Sociology, Semiotics, Art History, Cultural Studies, and New Media Studies. As Jewitt (2009) suggests, the term ‘multimodality’ is strongly linked with three main approaches: a social semiotic approach (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; van Leeuwen, 2005), a multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) approach (O’Halloran, 2004, 2011) and a multimodal interactional analysis approach (Scollon & Scollon, 2003; Norris, 2004). These three perspectives should not be considered three distinct methodological approaches, because they share many theoretical assumptions. What is interesting is that they shed light on different aspects of multimodality and they emphasise different methodologies and different ways of handling data, giving rise to a rich variety of results and analyses. Social semiotics, as van Leeuwen (2005) writes, is mostly concerned with understanding how different semiotic modes are used, depending on the context and the user. MDA instead extends the field of discourse analysis and focuses on the study of language in combination with different modes, such as music, images, colour, gesture, etc. (O’Halloran, 2011). A central area of MDA is in fact the so-called intersemiosis (Jewitt, 2009: 25), i.e. a type of relationship arising from the interaction of different semiotic modes. For example, Norris (2004) carried out a study revealing that verbal actions should always be analysed side by side with non-verbal interactions, as they give important clues on the interaction and can lead to different interpretations. Along the same line, O’Halloran (2011) writes that a range of multimodal discourses and genres that have been examined go beyond the written 68

and spoken mode. These multimodal genres include genres as varied as student drawings, websites and mathematical documents and they have been drawn from various contexts, including workplaces, the home, museum exhibitions and online environments. MDA however, is currently facing a number of challenges (O’Halloran, 2011). In particular, Scollon and Scollon (2003) warn against the influence traditional language studies have had on the analysis of multimodal discourse. In this respect, Jewitt (2008: 357) comments, “Using a multimodal approach means looking at language as it is nestled and embedded within a wider semiotic frame, rather than a decision to ‘side-line’ language”. We should also consider how communication is changing rapidly and radically thanks to technological innovations in visual representations (Jewitt, 2006). Kress (2004) shares the same opinion when he notes that image is now dominating instead of writing, just like screens have taken over the role played so far by books. These two facts alone have revolutionized literacy at all levels. Technology advances so rapidly that in different fields spoken and written texts no longer suffice to communicate effectively. The spoken and written mode therefore need to be implemented by ‘non verbal’ modes and this new interaction needs to be fully understood (O’Halloran, 2011).

2.7.2 Multimodal genres The idea of a multimodal genre springs from a number of works by Kress and van Leeuwen (1995, 1998, 2001, 2006) that have demonstrated that linguistic modes of analysis can also be applied to other modes, such as images, pictures, pages containing text as well as images displayed following a particular layout. Every element featured in a multimodal text should be analysed individually so that its function and contribution to meaning making becomes clear (Bateman et al., 2007). From this initial idea, we can define a ‘multimodal genre’ a genre comprising more than one mode and these modes can range across a variety of semiotic modes. Multimodal genres however, do display the same regularities that other genres display, so that certain genres are only used in certain contexts. It is also undeniable that modern technology enables users to experiment with images, layout and typographical elements, giving 69

them the ability to invent new multimodal genres at a very fast pace (Bateman et al, 2007; Tardy, 2011). It is therefore crucial that we understand the possibilities that multimodal genres entail so that we can make sense of this rapid development and map the creation of new genres.

2.7.3 Multimodal genre analysis As described in the previous section, today’s texts are increasingly characterised by an integration of verbal and visual modes. Because of the rhetorical power of images, texts like presentation slides, posters, or so-called new media texts cannot be analysed without paying the just amount of attention to the visual elements displayed. As Tardy (2011) notes, a number of authors, such as Delin, Bateman & Allen (2002); Bateman (2008); Rowley-Jolivet (2002, 2005), Kress and van Leeuwen, (2001, 2006), Fahnestock (2003), Caple (2009), Caple and Knox (2012) and Knox (2009) have offered interesting new methods to analyse multimodal genres. Delin, Bateman & Allen (2002) and Bateman (2008) in particular have provided an innovative framework (GeM), developed from an initial framework by Waller (1987, cited in Bateman, 2008: 17) capable of analysing all the different visual and verbal modes at play in a multimodal genre, may it be language, layout, typography and image. Four types of multimodal genres in electronic and paper form have been considered (newspapers, websites, instruction manuals and illustrated books) and all the possible (and future) realizations of multimodal genres have been explored using a computerized analytical framework. The primary layers of analysis of the GeM framework were content structure, genre structure, rhetorical structure (based on the Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) by Mann and Thompson (1988)), linguistic structure, layout structure and navigation structure. Besides being able to analyse different multimodal genres at different structure levels, the GeM also allowed researchers to identify any systematic relationship between these levels of description. By identifying these systematic relationships, and recurring layout decisions, Delin, Bateman & Allen (2002) and Bateman (2008) have been able to distinguish and codify in great detail the multimodal structure of certain genres and micro-genres 70

(e.g. newspapers, websites, instruction manuals, and illustrated books) and, even more importantly, they have demonstrated that “genres can change and grow, as well as colonise and subvert each other” (Delin, Bateman & Allen, 2002: 65). Other authors have also tried to analyse multimodal genres applying different frameworks. Rowley-Jolivet (2002, 2005) for example has analysed conference presentations in the sciences and has categorised the visual elements found as scriptural (i.e. text-based), graphical (e.g. graphs, diagrams or maps), figurative (e.g. photographs) or numerical (e.g. equations). Thanks to Kress and van Leeuwen (2001, 2006) instead, visuals have been categorized depending on their meaning-making functions: ideational (conveying meaning about states of affairs), interpersonal (conveying meaning about attitudes and relations of users) or textual (guiding the reader through text itself). These two frameworks are of primary importance to the field of MDA because visuals and textual elements can finally be analysed separately as well as contextually. Texts containing written texts as well as images and other visual elements are now considered texts and are analysed linguistically (Tardy, 2011). Other interesting studies are the ones by Fahnestock (2003), who draws a parallelism between verbal and visual elements found in scientific texts, and the study by Caple (2009), who analysed the relationship between headlines found in online newspapers and their corresponding images. Finally, also Royce and Bowcher (2007) provide an interesting social semiotic view of multimodal communication, using mainly a Systemic Functional Linguistic approach (see section 2.4.2) and offer precious directions for future research in multimodal discourse analysis.

2.7.4 A new model of visual semiotics As Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) recognise, researchers in visual semiotics have mostly concentrated on the significance of visual elements of depicted images and have tried to compare these visual elements to single words or what could be defined as ‘visual lexis’ (p.1). Kress (2010) and Kress and van Leeuwen’s work (2006), by contrast, focuses on a ‘visual grammar’, i.e. on the way in which these visual 71

elements are able to create meaning, much like grammar and syntax work to create meaning in language. Until their work was published, visual elements were analysed and considered from a different perspective, taking into account composition, layout and aesthetics and concentrating on the visual and aesthetic elements that attract the public’s attention, especially when it comes to advertising and marketing (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). What went unnoticed were a number of recurring visual elements and the consistency in the way those elements were utilized, much recalling the concept of a ‘visual grammar’. Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) explain that these recurring visual elements are in reality elements that, put together, create something very similar to grammatical sentences: choosing between different colours for example, is like choosing between word classes. How colour and layout is used therefore changes the meaning of the text, just like the difference between oral, written and visual productions. Knowing, understanding and correctly applying this new visual grammar is becoming essential, because as Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) note, visual communication is no longer the exclusive domain of visual specialists, but is becoming an important element in several public domains as well and whoever is not knowledgeable in this new visual grammar will not be able to function in society, especially in the workplace. This concept, however, has attracted some criticism (Forceville, 1999; Prior, 2005) on the part of semioticians, who believe that by imposing a visual grammar, the freedom of visual communication is limited at the expense of creativity. Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) argue instead that learning a number of visual rules allows writers to improve their communicative skills, and at the same time it does not limit their creativity. Just like we need to learn grammar rules before being able to create poems and novels, we also have to learn a visual grammar before we are able to produce either very artistic products, such as paintings and sculptures, or simply to create handouts and posters for work. After having briefly discussed current research on multimodality and multimodal genre analysis, I will now reflect on the most important principles underlying corpus design, so as to explain the literature on which I based the construction of the corpus utilized for the present research. 72

2.8 Principles underlying corpus design Before designing a corpus of academic posters, it was necessary to pinpoint the most important principles underlying corpus design. Much has been written on the subject (Biber, 1993; McEnery, 2001; McEnery et al., 2006; Sinclair, 2004a; Thompson, 2005; Wynne, 2005), especially with the advent of specialised corpora, and numerous are the best-practice rules concerning design, construction and applicability. However, the main concept that stands out is that however large a corpus is, it becomes a useful tool in the hands of linguists only if it was designed and implemented carefully (Sinclair, 2004b). Corpus linguistics has in fact become a very useful instrument to analyse large quantities of texts, and because of its applicability in many fields of study it is not only changing the way many disciplines are practicing scientific research but it is also offering new and valuable teaching materials to University language teachers (Aston et al., 2004; Bennet, 2010; Biber et al., 1998; Conrad, 2012; O’Keeffe et al., 2007; Tognini-Bonelli, 2001). A corpus has, therefore, the potential of becoming a most valuable tool for language research and language teaching, if it is carefully designed and constructed. A reasonably extensive literature exists concerning principles of corpus construction, design and applicability (Biber, 1993; McEnery, 2001; Sinclair, 2004b; Thompson, 2005; Wynne, 2005); the origins of corpus design can be traced back to the 1980s. A linguistic corpus, for example, has been initially described as a collection of written or oral material stored on a computer and analysed linguistically with the aid of specific software (Renouf, 1987). Over the years the concept of corpus linguistics became clearer and numerous theories of what a corpus should or should not be were drawn (e.g. Atkins et al., 1992; Biber et al., 1998; Johansson, 1985, 2008; McEnery, 2001) and more important details were added to its definition, such as the one by Sinclair (2004b) and Rizzo (2010) who regard an electronic corpus as a small representation of reality in which elements are carefully selected and representative of a linguistic variety. As Rizzo (2010) clearly explains, different corpora can serve different functions depending on whether they are specialised or general. A general corpus is generally used to 73

reflect general language and therefore is most often made up of texts coming from different genres and subject areas. Specialised corpora are instead used to study a particular register or variety of language and are therefore made up of samples of texts drawn within the same genre or text-type. The present study has followed the principles mentioned above as much as possible and, in particular, has followed the four criteria listed below, set by McEnery (2001) and further developed by Kennedy et al. (1998) and Sinclair (2005): 1. 2. 3. 4.

Purpose Representativeness Size Balance

Before introducing the Corpus of Academic Posters and its contents, I will now describe why and how these four corpus design principles have been followed.

2.8.1 Purpose Because of the use I decided to make of my corpus, I have chosen to gather a certain type of material (academic posters); I decided the amount of material necessary to make reliable generalisations after the corpus was analysed; and finally, the criteria to select the material for the corpus were selected. A number of well-known corpora gather only sections of texts and not entire documents, as for example, the LOB Corpus (Johansson, 1985), Brown Corpus (Kjellmer, 1994), FLOB Corpus (Leech & Smith, 2005), Frown Corpus (Hundt et al., 1999). Others are specialised and represent a specific type of text or language (e.g. the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English – MICASE) (Simpson-Vlach & Leicher, 2006). Certain corpora are diachronic because the analysis points at differences within texts over time, such as the Helsinki Corpus (Kyto et al., 2000) and the ARCHER Corpus (Biber et al., 1994). Others are synchronic, that is, gather texts within a limited time frame, such as the Australian Corpus of English (ACE) (Green &

74

Peters, 1991). Right from the start, the purpose with which a corpus is created forces the researcher to make specific choices regarding the selection of texts, the size of the corpus and tagging, always keeping in mind that its complexity depends only on its purpose (Thompson, 2001).

2.8.2 Representativeness If a corpus is representative, it means that it gathers enough authentic data to represent, on a smaller scale, “the full range of variability in a population” (Biber, 1993: 243). Representativeness is always considered a key concept in corpus design, because on the one hand, how much a corpus needs to be representative depends on its purpose, i.e. what the corpus is created for. On the other hand, depending on the degree of representativeness, a certain type of research question can be set and the results can or cannot be generalizable (Biber et al. 1998). Although some researchers doubt whether a corpus can really be fully representative of a linguistic variety (Atkins et al., 1992), others make representativeness a priority when designing and implementing a corpus, so that the data they gather can be said to be truly authentic and representative of reality (McEnery, 2001; Tognini-Bonelli, 2001). To represent reality means that the material gathered is a sample of the real world data, that all the varieties are represented and that the correct proportions of these varieties are represented in the corpus. To do this, the researcher needs to gather a wide range of data, so that he takes a ‘snapshot’ of the real world or just the language variety under examination. Although the size of the corpus will be dealt with separately in Section 2.8.3, it is important to mention here that the size of a corpus is closely connected to its purposes as well as its representativeness. Put in simple terms, the larger the corpus is, the more representative it is. If the corpus is too small, there are higher risks of obtaining unreliable data (Atkins et al., 1992; Friedman et al., 1997). By setting precise parameters regarding text collection, size, and balance, it is possible to reproduce and generalise on the research work. It is with this in mind that specific parameters have been set for the construction of the present corpus (these parameters will be explained 75

in detail in Chapter 4). Also related to the notion of representativeness is the notion of corpus size, which will now be explained.

2.8.3 Size As explained in the previous section, the size of the corpus depends on its purposes as well as its representativeness. As Rizzo (2010) recognises, even if we still do not know how many words a corpus should contain to be considered representative, several corpus linguists have stated their opinion on the subject. According to Pearson (1998), for example, a specialised corpus should contain a million words. On the contrary, Sinclair (1991) believes that although a 10 or 20-million-word corpus can be considered a useful small corpus, it will not provide a reliable and representative description of language. Along the same line, Rizzo (2010) stated that even a large corpus is still a very small sample of a language variety. Sinclair (2005) proposes a ‘monitor corpus’, where material keeps on being added so that the corpus never really becomes outdated. Hunston (2002) echoes him by stating that if a corpus is not updated and if new material is not added regularly, it quickly becomes unrepresentative of the language under study and is no longer reliable. Nonetheless, the majority of today’s corpora are ‘reference corpora’, as for example the Brown Corpus (Kjellmer, 1994), with the exception of two well-known monitor corpora: The Bank of English (Moon, 2010) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English – COCA (Davies, 2009). Also Kennedy et al. (1998, cited in Rizzo, 2010: 6) believe that just because a corpus is considerable in size, it does not necessarily mean that it is capable of representing a register better than a smaller corpus and admits that: “At this stage we simply do not know how big a corpus needs to be for general or particular purposes”. Pearson (1998) agrees by stating that the only factors limiting the size of a corpus should be the number of texts available that respect the selection criteria established.

76

2.8.4 Balance As noted in Section 2.8.2, representativeness and balance are two closely connected concepts, so that if a corpus is well balanced, it is also representative. As with representativeness, the balance of a corpus depends on what the corpus is created for and if it proportionately covers different text categories (Sinclair, 2005) so that “it offers a manageably small scale model of the linguistic material which the corpus builders wish to study” (Atkins et al., 1992: 6). An example is the BNC (a written and spoken corpus), the Brown and LOB corpora (which contain different genres and text types) and the CANCODE (a spoken corpus). Although balance is considered an essential feature of corpus design, Sinclair (2005) also states that the corpus designer might decide to deliberately create an imbalance (therefore a bias) in the corpus by favouring one variety of texts over another. However, in this case, users should be well informed of the bias present in the corpus.

2.9 Summary of the chapter and Research Questions In this chapter, I reviewed the most important literature on academic discourse, academic genres, academic posters, metadiscourse, and multimodality. I provided working definitions of ‘discipline’, ‘subdiscipline’ and ‘discourse community’, as well as a working definition of ‘academic poster’ and ‘metadiscourse’. This literature review mainly confirms that the concepts of discipline, genre and discourse community are multifaceted and not always easy to define. Thanks to research in discourse analysis it is now clear that different disciplines produce different texts because authors are expected to comply with discipline-specific rules and conventions when they write. The chapter has also highlighted the differences between traditional and multimodal genres and how these texts present information visually as well as textually, requiring authors to learn a ‘new type of literacy’ and linguists to use a new type of visual and textual analysis.

77

The chapter has then discussed the main principles underlying corpus design. Arising from my consideration of the literature, I can now present the four research questions that have guided my exploration of academic posters: 1.

What cross-disciplinary differences are there between three disciplinary subcorpora, in terms of word count, portrait/landscape orientation and layout of posters?

This research question arises from the lack of standardized analyses of posters, taking into consideration the number of words in posters as well their orientation and layout (see Section 2.5.2). By carrying out this analysis on a corpus with comparable subcorpora and on posters that not only represent the hard sciences but also the soft and applied sciences, I hope to fill a gap in current literature. 2.

What cross-disciplinary differences are there between three disciplinary subcorpora, in terms of textual interactive and interactional metadiscoursal resources found in posters?

This research question arises from the lack of metadiscourse analyses applied to the academic poster genre. Although Hyland’s (2005) framework of analysis has been applied to other academic genres (see Sections 2.4.1 and 2.6.2), there is a gap in the literature when it comes to metadiscourse analysis applied to the academic poster genre. 3.

What cross-disciplinary differences are there between three disciplinary subcorpora, in terms of visual interactive metadiscoursal resources found in posters?

Like the previous research question, question 3 arises from the lack of standardized visual analyses of academic posters. By assembling a framework of analysis that considers and categorizes visual interactive elements in academic posters, which represent the hard, soft and applied sciences, this research aims to satisfy a need in current literature (see Sections 2.5.2, 2.7.3 and 2.7.4).

78

4.

Drawing from the interviews conducted across three subdisciplines, what are the possible motivations for these cross-disciplinary differences in the poster presentation genre?

This research question arises from the awareness that if disciplinary differences in the way researchers write and design academic posters do exist, it is crucial to also understand why this happens. Past literature (Hyland, 2000; 2004a; 2009a, 2009c; Hyland & Bondi, 2006; Hyland & Tse, 2004) has proved that by seeking informed feedback from the participants involved, who represent the users of the genre, one is able to successfully re-elaborate and comprehend the statistical data at hand (see Sections 2.3.4, 2.4.1 and 2.6.2). How a corpus of academic posters was devised and organised will be explained in Chapter 3, and in Chapter 4 I will present and describe the framework of analysis used to analyse the corpus and answer the four research questions identified.

79

Chapter 3: Data collected

3.1 Introduction The present chapter first introduces the corpus of academic posters and then explains in detail the various reasons and principles behind the corpus design. Fundamental corpus design principles such as purpose, representativeness, balance, and size have driven the implementation of the corpus and these were applied to the present work. The reasons behind the choice of discipline and subdisciplines are explained and the background information study, a central element in the construction of the present corpus, is explained in Section 3.5. The results from the background information study set important parameters and justify the selection of posters; these parameters are described in Section 3.5.3. The retrieval of posters is explained in Section 3.6, where I describe the various databases, websites, and online journals consulted for the selection of the posters. The final section of the chapter describes the various decisions taken regarding the naming, formatting, and storage of files.

3.2 Why a corpus of academic posters? As explained in Chapter 1, the present study analyses academic poster presentations belonging to two different subdisciplines (Clinical Psychology, High Energy Particle Physics) and one discipline (Law). The reason for constructing a specialised corpus of academic posters is that, as explained in Chapter 2 (Section 2.5.4) there are currently no corpora that collect and annotate academic posters drawn from different disciplines so as to permit a cross-disciplinary linguistic and semiotic

analysis. This gap in the literature has prevented, so far, the realization of consistent textual and semiotic analyses of this ‘marginalised’ genre. Because of the now widespread use of posters and multimodal representations of knowledge, a corpus that collects visual and written elements present in poster presentations and maps the use of academic posters in different disciplines and subdisciplines is essential to carry out relevant linguistic and semiotic analyses in this previously under-researched academic genre. In response to this need, following the criteria explained in Section 3.3 below, posters belonging to two different academic subdisciplines and one disciplne were selected, each representing a separate subcorpus. Poster presenters from each discipline and subdiscipline were also contacted first to organise the poster selection and then to gather relevant data on poster creation (the selection of the respondents is explained in Section 3.5.1). The corpus was, therefore, preceded by a survey on the use of posters (discussed in Section 3.5). Hereafter the discipline and subdiscipline selection process is explained and described.

3.3 Selection of subdisciplines There are two main reasons for choosing specifically the subdisciplines of High Energy Particle Physics and Clinical Psychology, and the discipline of Law for the present study. First, I wished the corpus to represent a wide spectrum of knowledge domains, which sees a divide between hard, soft, and social sciences (Becher & Trowler, 2001; Hedges, 1987; Smart & Elton, 1982; Stoecker, 1993; Storer, 1967). I wanted at least one discipline represented belonging to the soft (or social) sciences, one subdiscipline from the hard sciences, and at least one subdiscipline standing midway between this soft/hard dichotomy. The distinction between hard, social, and soft sciences has been a debated topic for centuries and is still a problematic aspect to consider when selecting fields of study for linguistic analysis.

82

Taking into account these views (Becher & Trowler, 2001; Hyland, 1999; Kertesz, 2001; Stotesbury, 2003), I will consider the hard/soft distinction as a continuum rather than as a one-dimensional scale, in which High Energy Particle Physics is the ‘hardest’ of the subdisciplines chosen, Clinical Psychology stands midway, within blurred demarcations, and Law represents a soft discipline. The second reason for choosing these discipline and subdisciplines in particular is quite practical and somewhat opportunistic. Since 2007, I have been collaborating with the Departments of Clinical Psychology and of Law at the University of Bergamo as an English lecturer, and since 2008, I have been collaborating with the INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare [National Institute of Nuclear Physics]) in Milan, Italy, as an English translator. Knowing staff within these departments and research centres has made it easier to contact personally researchers, PhD students, and postdocs in Italy and abroad. More specifically, as I already worked with the same people who use the genre selected for this research, it gave me the chance to enrich my statistical data, when needed, with first-hand ethnographical information on the use of posters and the value given to the genre, depending on the discipline and subdiscipline. Most importantly, colleagues in these discipline and subdisciplines have put me in touch with international specialists in the field, who, in turn, have agreed to participate in the study and have been contacted whenever necessary. Furthermore, colleagues from the INFN have given me access to posters and research presentations databases at CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research) not available to the public. Such valuable collaboration would probably not have been achieved, at least to the same degree, if I had chosen different academic fields.

3.4 Principles underlying my corpus design As mentioned in Chapter 2, a reasonably extensive literature exists concerning principles of corpora construction, design, and applicability

83

(Biber, 1993; Wynne, 2005; Sinclair, 2005; McEnery, 2001; Thompson, 2005). Hereafter, I explain the principles I took into consideration when designing and constructing my corpus, drawing on relevant literature in the field (see Chapter 2, Section 2.8). Following Thompson’s (2001), Kennedy’s (1998), and McEnery’s (2001) theories, the present study has followed the four criteria listed below: • • • •

Purpose Representativeness Size Balance

I will hereafter describe how these four corpus design principles have been followed.

3.4.1 Purpose The purpose of the present research (see research questions in Chapter 2, Section 2.9) is to analyse the text itself as well as the text layout and images contained in academic posters, belonging to two different subdisciplines and one discipline. Because of this purpose, I had to include the entire posters and not only the text they displayed. I also had to make sure that the texts collected belonged to the chosen discipline and subdisciplines, and were created by authors who met the standards set and described in Section 3.5. What initially appeared to be a simple and straightforward collection process became instead meticulous and extremely selective work. Although burdensome, the accuracy in the poster selection process was necessary to meet the purposes set as well as to guarantee the representativeness of the corpus.

3.4.2 Representativeness As explained in Chapter 2 (Section 2.8), by setting precise parameters regarding text collection, size, and balance, it is possible to reproduce and generalise on the research work in terms of the three subcorpora.

84

In particular, I have noted that for a specialised corpus to be reliable, it must be maximally representative of the varieties under examination. Because of this, the corpus designer must search for an array of authors and text types that together, provide a reasonably accurate picture of the entire language variety under study. It is with this in mind that specific parameters have been set for the construction of the present corpus. These parameters are explained in detail in Sections 3.4.3 and 3.4.4. In Section 3.5, the results of a survey carried out prior to the poster compilation laid the basis for the selection of posters. The survey conducted for the present corpus is the main instrument used to achieve the best representative corpus possible and will be described in detail in section 4.5. Also related to the notion of representativeness is the notion of corpus size, which will now be explained.

3.4.3 Size Based on the literature in Chapter 2 (Section 2.8.3), a number of academic posters have been gathered to form a corpus. Table 3.1 specifies the number of posters collected after detailed criteria had been specified (as discussed in section 3.5.4) and the number of words gathered in each discipline and subdiscipline, depending on the linguistic data. Table 3.1. Total number of posters and total number of words collected for the present study. Discipline/Subdiscipline Posters

number of words

Soft Sciences

Law

40

22,769

Social Sciences

Clinical Psychology

40

38,898

Hard Sciences

High Energy Particle Physics

40

32,280

Total

120

93,947

As Table 3.1 shows, the corpus gathers a total of 120 posters. The corpus is also accompanied by interviews carried out with twelve authors (four per subdiscipline). A total of 32 surveys (of the use of posters in High

85

Energy Particle Physics, Law and Clinical Psychology) have also been conducted to understand why and how the poster genre is used within the discipline and subdisciplines considered. The survey and interview design and data collection will be explained respectively in Sections 3.5 and 3.7.

3.4.4 Balance Following the theory of balance in corpus construction (see Chapter 2, Section 2.8.4), I have tried to maintain an accurate proportioning of the various sections of the corpus. More specifically, within each discipline/subdiscipline, 40 posters have been collected and classified, totalling 120 posters. The number of interviewees is also balanced, counting four interviews per discipline/subdiscipline. Respectively, 13 and 10 respondents from the subdiscipline of High Energy Particle Physics and Clinical Psychology, and 9 respondents from the discipline of Law have been considered for the survey, for a total of 32 survey participants. Aside from the number of posters and interviews in the corpus which have purposely been set to be balanced, the criteria specified in Section 3.5.4, regarding the selection of the posters (such as author’s experience and academic standing, type of conference where the poster has been presented, the use of a conference-led or institution-led template, or the use of guidelines) differs from discipline to discipline and follows the results of the survey described in the following section.

3.5 The survey Because there were no available corpora of academic posters to employ for this study, a new, ad hoc one had to be designed, keeping well in mind that the posters included in the corpus had to be representative of the wide variety of posters presented at conferences within the discipline and subdisciplines selected. Well before the actual poster collection started, it was necessary to know who exactly uses the academic 86

poster genre in each discipline and subdiscipline (e.g. graduate students, PhD students, young researchers, tenured professors), in which arenas posters are typically presented (e.g. in small, local, specialised conferences or in large, international, multidisciplinary symposiums), and, finally, if any other variables exist (such as nationality, use of conference template, use of templates downloaded from the Internet, use of poster guidelines). Put simply, it was necessary to take a snapshot showing how the poster genre is used and by whom within the discipline of Law and the subdisciplines of High Energy Particle Physics and Clinical Psychology. Asking field experts for advice is almost always necessary if one intends to devise a specialist corpus, but in this case, it was a fundamental requirement to make sure the right poster selection was made. The survey questions were carefully designed, taking into consideration Dörnyei’s (2007) idea that to generalize on an entire population and in particular on its opinions and behaviours, it is enough to analyse and describe the behaviour of a small part of this population. In the present research, the population considered consists of users of the academic poster genre. Following Dörnyei’s (2012: 78) guidelines, in the design of the survey, I – – – – –

Aimed for short and simple items, not exceeding 20 words. Used simple and natural language; Avoided ambiguous or emotionally loaded words and sentences; Avoided negative constructions; Avoided double-barrelled questions

The survey included only six closed (multiple-choice) questions (see Appendix 1 to view the survey’s questions) to augment the probability of a high return rate. A longer survey, as well as a survey with open-ended questions would probably have received a lower return rate. Thanks to the answers given by the respondents, I was given an indication of how the poster genre is utilised within each discipline/subdiscipline. How the survey informed the collection of posters is described in detail in Section 3.5.3.

87

Because the survey saw the involvement of human participants, it was necessary to apply to the School Ethics Committee to receive permission to carry out as explained in the following section.

3.5.1 Selection of respondents for the survey Informants from the three disciplinary fields selected were involved from the outset and they were asked to respond to a survey. Following suggestions by Hyman (1955), Moser and Kalton (1985), and Hayes (1998), the survey was piloted on two researchers working at the Department of Foreign languages and Literatures, University of Bergamo (Italy). Both researchers were familiar with the academic poster genre, because they are both experts in genre analysis and one of them has published articles on the use of posters in Medicine (Maci, 2010, 2011, 2012). After minor amendments, the survey was then ready to be sent to a number of informants (see Appendix 1 to read the questions contained in the survey). For each discipline and subdiscipline, informants have been selected by contacting staff members of Clinical Psychology, Law, and Physics departments in 25 universities in five different continents: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia together with Oceania, and Europe. Five universities were contacted per continent, based on their geographical location and on the fact that they were listed among the top 50 universities around the world (TES Global, 2015). The informants represent two broad categories within academia: 1.

2.

88

Researchers with extensive experience in their field who could be considered as ‘experienced’ academic members. Typically, tenured staff members, with several years of experience and several, well-known published works, would fall into this category. Researchers who have not yet received tenure, assistant lecturers, research assistants, PhD students, and postdocs, who could be considered as ‘novice’ staff members, with a more limited amount of research/publishing experience with respect to the previous group.

Although academic positions vary greatly from one country to another, the academic positions listed in Table 3.2 have been considered during the search for informants. Table 3.2 also shows how academic ranks have been divided into two main groups depending on the academic standing and amount of experience each rank supposedly entails. Table 3.2. Division of academic ranks between ‘experienced’ and ‘novice’. Experienced academics

Novice academics

– – – – –

– – – – –

Professor Associate Professor Assistant Professor Senior lecturer Senior research fellow

PhD student Post Doc Assistant lecturer Research fellow Lecturer

Between the beginning of December 2010 and the end of January 2011, an email with the survey in an attachment was sent to 120 academics from a selection of universities around the world, who in the staff page of their department were defined as having the academic ranks mentioned above. Depending on the discipline and subdiscipline a range of academics replied (with most, 13, from High Energy Particle Physics and least, 9, from Law) (see Table 3.3). Among the 34 surveys received, two surveys were incomplete (missing one or two answers) and were therefore discarded. The remaining surveys were categorised as shown in Table 3.3. Table 3.3. Number of completed surveys received per discipline and subdiscipline. Number of Number of Return No. of sur- Number of Return rate veys sent completed rate surveys sent completed surveys to ‘novice surveys to ‘expeacademics’ received rienced received from from ‘novice academics’ ‘experienced academics’ academics’ High Energy 20 6 30% 20 7 35% Particle Physics Law 20 4 20% 20 5 25% Clinical 20 5 25% 20 5 25% Psychology TOTAL 60 15 25% 60 17 28% Discipline/ Subdiscipline

89

Following is a list of the 13 respondents belonging to the subdiscipline of High Energy Particle Physics, who responded to my background information survey. Table 3.4 specifies their contact details, nationality, affiliation, and academic position at the time of the survey. To avoid having all respondents from one or two countries, participants have also been selected so that Asia, the Middle East, North America, South America, and Europe are represented. Table 3.4. Survey respondents from nine different countries, working in the field of High Energy Particle Physics. Respondent number Affiliation

Academic position

Respondent 1 – PHY Oxford University (UK)

Novice academic

Respondent 2 – PHY Oxford University (UK)

Novice academic

Respondent 3 – PHY University of Arizona (USA)

Expert academic

Respondent 4 – PHY University of California, Department of Physics (USA)

Novice academic

Respondent 5 – PHY University of New South Wales, Depart- Expert academic ment of Physics (Australia) Respondent 6 – PHY Institute of High Energy Physics (China) Novice academic Respondent 7 – PHY Carleton University (Canada)

Novice academic

Respondent 8 – PHY University of Tokyo (Japan)

Expert academic

Respondent 9 – PHY Middle East Technical University (Turkey)

Novice academic

Respondent 10 – PHY

Middle East Technical University (Turkey)

Expert academic

Respondent 11 – PHY

Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina) Novice academic

Respondent 12 – PHY

Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina) Expert academic

Respondent 13 – PHY

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (Russia)

Expert academic

Table 3.5 shows the nine respondents belonging to the discipline of Law, who have responded to the survey.

90

Table 3.5. Survey respondents from seven different countries, working in the field of Law. Respondent number Respondent 1 – LAW Respondent 2 – LAW Respondent 3 – LAW Respondent 4 – LAW Respondent 5 – LAW Respondent 6 – LAW

Affiliation University of London (UK) University of Chicago (USA) Harvard Law School (USA) University of Tokyo (Japan) Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina) The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) Respondent 7 – LAW The University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong) Respondent 8 – LAW Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (Peru) Respondent 9 – LAW Berlin School of Economics and Law (Germany)

Academic position Expert academic Novice academic Novice academic Expert academic Novice academic Novice academic Novice academic Expert academic Expert academic

Finally, Table 3.6 shows the ten respondents belonging to the subdiscipline of Clinical Psychology, who have responded to the survey. Table 3.6. Survey respondents from eight different countries, working in the field of Clinical Psychology. Respondent number Affiliation Respondent 1 – PSY University of Colorado at Boulder (USA) Respondent 2 – PSY University of Colorado at Boulder (USA) Respondent 3 – PSY University of Tokyo (Japan) Respondent 4 – PSY University of Berlin (Germany) Respondent 5 – PSY UNAM Universitat (Mexico) Respondent 6 – PSY ATILIM University (Turkey) Respondent 7 – PSY The University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong) Respondent 8 – PSY ATILIM University (Turkey) Respondent 9 – PSY Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (Peru) Respondent 10 – PSY Universita’ di Milano Bicocca (Italy)

Academic position Novice academic Expert academic Expert academic Novice academic Expert academic Expert academic Novice academic Expert academic Novice academic Novice academic

91

3.5.2 Results from the Survey on Poster Use The following table summarizes the results gathered from the survey on the use of academic posters. The table shows the percentages of answers received for each question in the survey and in the following sections I will report on the results obtained to summarise the main information I gained from the survey and justify the criteria followed for the selection of posters for the corpus. Concluding each section are the final criteria utilised to select posters for the corpus. To these criteria, two other general characteristics that posters should have had in order to be selected, have been added for each discipline/subdiscipline: 1. 2.

Posters must be written in English to allow the metadiscourse analysis of the text. Posters must have been presented at a poster session between the years 2007 and 2012, so as to construct a relatively recent poster database.

Table 3.7. Percentage of respondents that have selected each answer, per subcorpus.

Question

Answer

Q. 1: Where is the genre of academic posters MOSTLY used in your discipline?

a) Large International Conferences (>100 participants) b) Large National Conferences (>100 participants)

92

Number of respondents that have selected the answer and relative % (PARTICLE PHYSICS)

Number of respondents that have selected the answer and relative % (LAW)

13 (100%)

5 (60%)

Number of respondents that have selected the answer and relative % (CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS) 10 (100%)

–

4 (40%)

–

Q. 2: In your discipline, who MOSTLY presents posters?

Q. 3: In your discipline, how often do academics (with your academic standing) present posters?

c) Small International Conferences ( ~ 6.3 channels/GBT after ZS Derandomizer depth = 16 Channel size = 12 (e.g. ADDR = 5bits + ADC_DATA = 7bits) Example 3: = 30% #channels/GBT link = 21 -> ~ 6.3 channels/GBT after ZS Derandomizer depth = 24 Channel size = 12 (e.g. ADDR = 5bits + ADC_DATA = 7bits) [PHY29] (8)

FmDST (femto-Data Summary Tape) [PHY04]4

(9)

DIM (Distributed Information Management system) developed at CERN [PHY37]

(10)

The detector installation phase (2006–2009) was followed by an extensive commissioning and events were acquired with pulse trigger to perform a careful detector timing. [PHY11]

(11)

Nice Presentation OSSIM is a compilation of well-known administrating tools, such as arpwatch, Nessus, Snort ntop, nagios, ossec, Osiris and tcptrack. [PHY03]

(12)

ATLAS, one of the LHC detectors, is made up of a crowd of millions of sensors, looking together at a 3D pitch of over 10,000 cubic meters.

5.2.1.3 Frame markers As Table 5.1 shows, frame markers are the third most recurring interactive device employed in High Energy Particle Physics posters. The frequent use of frame markers indicates that in this subdiscipline authors demonstrate their expertise by constructing arguments clearly, and highlighting the unfolding text (see Chapter 4, Section 4.3.1). However, not all four functions of frame markers, that is, sequencing, labelling stages, announcing goals, and topic shifts, are found in the subcorpus (see Appendix 7, Table 3). More precisely, frame markers signalling topic shifts (e.g. well, right, OK, now, let us return to) are completely absent, and frame markers announcing goals (e.g. My/the aim/purpose, I would like to) and labelling stages (e.g. so far) are scarcely 4

This example can also be found in D’Angelo (2011: 18)

153

present. This might be because other visual devices are used to label stages and announce topic shifts, such as arrows, connectors, frames, and highlighted text. The most recurring frame markers are instead of the sequencing type (102 instances), especially when the text is in the form of listings and numberings. The following are examples drawn from the text of High Energy Particle Physics posters, which show how frame markers function to sequence (14) (15) (16), label stages (17), and announce goals (18) (19), making the development of discourse clear to readers: (14)

Actual data variables: temperatures, calibration parameters, etc. [PHY37]

(15)

Starting from the Kali nTuple and for each cell: 1. 2.

• • •

3.

6 histograms are filled (signal and background for 3 different energy cuts). Each histogram is fitted with a combination of gaussian (for the peak) and 2nd order polynomial (for the background). This is an involved, several-step procedure: Parameters are fitted one by one Reference histograms with big number of entries are used to estimate initial parameters’ values Background histograms are used to estimate the initial background fit parameters for the signal histograms In the end, an average of ~6 fits per cell are performed. Several iterations are needed to achieve convergency (4–5 are usually enough) [PHY04]5

(16)

During our experiments we added almost 5GB/day more. Even with that traffic, log server performed quite. As for the deployment, we used Quattor. To keep the services (rsyslog, FMClogViewer) we used Nagios. And finally, for the monitoring Munin. Transfer Standard Syslog: UDP, Without Authentication, Without failover capabilities. [PHY03]

(17)

Lightweight foam for the thermal insulation + Al foil for electrical shielding: the only ‘beam’ induced particles seen so far. [PHY01]

5

This example can also be found in D’Angelo (2011: 18).

154

(18)

The aim is to measure the X (3872) JPC quantum numbers. [PHY01]

(19)

The authors would like to acknowledge the LHC collimator group for providing the loss rates for the cleaning and Y. Inntjore Levinsen for the distant beam gas estimates and for fruitful discussions. [PHY01]

5.2.1.4 Endophoric markers Endophoric markers are textual resources that refer to material presented earlier in the poster or by anticipating material yet to come. Their role is important because they help the reader comprehend the logic of the argumentation (see Chapter 4, Section 4.3.1). In the present subcorpus, endophoric markers are rarely used, only 29 instances of them being found (see Appendix 7, Table 4). The most recurring endophoric markers are the ones referring to an example, a table, or a figure, which is not surprising considering the experimental nature of the subject. Physicists, like many other authors working within the hard sciences, mainly display tables, figures, and mathematical formulae on their posters, as an interviewee commented during an interview: “We [Physicists] are not really concerned with text […] it’s not really important for us I guess … maybe because we have lots of data to show. Data is what counts for us so ideally you could have a poster with only figures, tables and maybe charts on it.” (PPhy1, ln 20–22). The following are examples drawn from the subcorpus, depicting the few instances of endophoric markers found: (20)

Example 1: = 30% #channels/GBT link = 15 -> ~ 4.5 channels/GBT after ZS Derandomizer depth = 16 Channel size = 12 (e.g. ADDR = 4bits + ADC_DATA = 8bits) Example 2: = 30% #channels/GBT link = 21 -> ~ 6.3 channels/GBT after ZS Derandomizer depth = 16 Channel size = 12 (e.g. ADDR = 5bits + ADC_DATA = 7bits) Example 3: = 30% #channels/GBT link = 21 -> ~ 6.3 channels/GBT after ZS Derandomizer depth = 24 Channel size = 12 (e.g. ADDR = 5bits + ADC_DATA = 7bits) [PHY29]

155

(21)

The efficiencies for triggering, reconstructing and selecting two benchmark radiative decays at LHCb are shown in the following table [3]. [PHY01]

(22)

An example of such a region is shown in Figure 2 for one of the trackers located at about 9.5 m from the IP. [PHY01]

5.2.1.5 Evidentials Evidentials establish an authorial command of the subject and provide important support for arguments by referring to a community-based literature (see Chapter 4, Section 4.3.1). However, only 19 instances of evidentials (23) (24) (25) are found in High Energy Particle Physics posters (see Appendix 7, Table 5), revealing that Physicists tend not to cite literature in posters; instead, they mainly report new and/or preliminary data. This is probably due to the fact that, within this subdiscipline, posters are mainly used to presenting the technical procedure followed and preliminary results, as a postdoc interviewed has explained: “We [Physicists] present posters to show mainly our methodology and initial results. When we have all the data, and the experiment is concluded, then we might try to present a paper instead.” In (26) we see, for example, the methodology described, and in (27) the section in the poster where preliminary results are displayed in the form of a table, a picture of a pyrolitic graphite ‘cold finger’, and two graphs showing the difference in stability after the device were used. (23)

Irradiation shows strong degradation of breakdown voltage for Nee001. [PHY23]

(24)

Detailed studies of the background suggest that the background is mainly combinatoric and its parameters can be extracted from data (2fb-1) with reasonable precision [1] [PHY31]

(25)

Systematic studies suggest the following explanation of the half-moon shape: […] [PHY30]

(26)

Several electrical and mechanical aspects of the system were checked: electrical and optical connections, grounding, absence of leaks in the cooling

156

circuit, mapping of the RTDs in the DCS, unintentional use of magnetic material, etc. As expected, we found several problems in the assembly that had to be fixed. The software, too, had to be improved in many aspects together with the development of new procedures. We measured the detector performance in terms of number of dead channels and noise at two different temperatures, ‘warm’ runs at +22°C and ‘cold’ runs at -10°C. The forward pixel system had the same excellent performance it had during the production phase and, in particular, it presented a negligible number of dead channels, lower than 0.04%, and an average noise of ~100 electrons compared to a signal of 22000 electrons. [PHY32] (27)

[PHY32]

5.2.2 Textual interactional resources Textual interactional resources are used by authors to involve and engage readers. By using these resources, writers acknowledge readers, establishing a contact, which can be more or less personal. These resources are also pivotal in acknowledging the possible points of view of readers and renders (or not) the text open to different perspectives (see Chapter 4, Section 4.3.2). In the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus, boosters, hedges, and engagement markers are found to be the most frequently used interactional devices, followed by self-mentions and attitude markers. The raw and normalised occurrences found in the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus are summarised in Table 5.2, and each type of interactional resource is considered in the following sections.

157

Table 5.2. Interactional occurrences in the text of High Energy Particle Physics posters. INTERACTIONAL RESOURCES

Raw frequency

Normalized frequency (per 100,000 words)

Boosters

136

421

Hedges

129

400

Engagement markers

86

266

Self mentions

74

229

Attitude markers

17

53

TOTAL

442

1,369

5.2.2.1 Boosters When considering the use of boosters, the most interesting result is that within this subdiscipline, boosters are slightly more numerous than hedges. This suggests the idea that, within this subdiscipline, authors of posters have more liberty to make bolder statements, draw conclusions, or argue for controversial positions. Four examples found in a poster by a postgraduate student are an example of this bold, upfront writing style: (28)

An additional magnetic field in the muon system allows a precise measurement of the muon momentum. [PHY25]

(29)

One can clearly see that the signal from beam 1 MIB is on-time with the proton-proton signal, while beam 2 MIB is separated by about 10 ns. [PHY07]

(30)

[…] Such a DAQ system will certainly employ 10 Gigabit or similar technologies and might also need new networking protocols such as customized, lightweight TCP or more specialised protocols. [PHY06]

(31)

As the muons are charged, minimum ionising particles, the detection is always based on the ionisation of material. [PHY25]

158

Other boosters found are summarised in Appendix 7, Table 6, which shows the tendency to use the epistemic modal auxiliary verb will (51 instances), preceded by the first person plural we. The fact that the pronoun we recurs very frequently reveals that in High Energy Particle Physics, researchers rarely work by themselves, but are instead used to working in large, often international research groups. The frequent use of the future tense also confirms the idea that posters are used, at least within this subdiscipline, to present preliminary data instead of complete research works. The text therefore points to future results, future data, and equipment to be used or built in the near future: (32)

[…] Resolution will improve with better alignment. […] Fine-timing will be redone for 2010 run. [PHY10]

(33)

With 500pb-1, a few thousand BK candidates will become available, so the study of the dalitz plot of the 3 kaon system can be started, apart from improving the precision on the other measurements. [PHY31]

(34)

A large number of ȥ will also be collected at LHCb: ± 2–4 % of the J/ ȥ’s number. [PHY36]

Another booster utilised within this subcorpus is the verb show (11 instances), which can be justified by the fact that Physicists work primarily with mathematical data and results obtained by carrying out experiments. A few examples showing how this booster is used in the subcorpus are the following: (35)

Measurements at < -40°C show clear degrading for sensors glued with Staystik and Nee001, Elastosil leads to no differences in breakdown voltage. [PHY23]

(36)

Simulation studies show differences in the expected angular distributions in the hypotheses 1++ or 2-+. [PHY36]

159

5.2.2.2 Hedges As explained in detail in Chapter 4 (Section 4.3.2), hedges are important epistemic elements of academic writing, because they allow the author to present information as personal points of view, which are open to debate. In the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus, hedges have been found to be less numerous than boosters (see Table 5.2). The most frequent hedges found are about (22 instances), around (10 instances), and most (10 instances), which is peculiar given the exact nature of the science involved. Hard sciences usually rely on precise data, and the frequent use of hedges does not correspond to the idea non-specialists have of the subdiscipline, that is, hard scientists need exact measurements and data to work and, most of all, when presenting research results. One of the High Energy Particle Physicists interviewed has in fact commented that […] contrary to what people think, Physics is not an exact science. Mathematicians, chemists and engineers are probably accustomed to working with precise data, but Physicists need to be a bit more creative. The way we work is at times approximate, so to speak. By that I mean that it is not always clear how to proceed and instruments are calibrated as we go along with the project. We make corrections and yes, a great deal of mistakes along the way. That’s the beauty of it all … it’s s trial and error process. [PPhy4)

This imprecision in the data handled is shown in the following examples: (37)

The job distribution within the Nordic countries should only be done with the local software ARC. [PHY26]

(38)

Several iterations are needed to achieve convergency (4–5 are usually enough). [PHY04]

(39)

The Kali framework: It’s the framework used for fine calorimeter calibration, and it is mainly useful for iterative calibration scenarios. [PHY04]

160

(40)

ECAL fine calibration consists in determining a multiplicative energy correction for each cell. This coefficient may be found through measurement of some well-known value, namely the mass of the resolved neutral pion in its decay into two photons. [PHY04]

(41)

In first LHC proton-proton collisions in December 2009 about 6000 muon tracks were reconstructed that allowed a direct evaluation of the System performance. [PHY11]

(42)

First full calibration with Kali: end of May 2010: 80M MinBias events Processing time: ~2 full days Remaining miscalibration estimated from MC: ~2-2.5% [PHY04]

5.2.2.3 Engagement markers The relatively high frequency of engagement markers suggests that within this discipline, the reader is actively involved. Engagement markers, in fact, contribute not only to engage the reader in the text, but also to establish solidarity among scholars (see Chapter 4, Section 4.3.2). Several types of engagement markers have been found (see Appendix 7, Table 8), with a total of 86 instances. Above all, High Energy Particle Physicists frequently pose questions to readers (29 instances), to involve them in the argument, and occasionally include extra information within parentheses (11 instances). The way these Physicists employ question marks, in particular, demanding the attention of the reader and forcing him/her to come up with a possible answer, can be seen in the following examples: (43)

How does this affect the detector properties? Is there a glue radiation hard enough for this purpose? [PHY23]

(44)

What? A synthesizable ‘clock level-fidel’ simulation of S-TFC component and links [1][2][3] clock level emulation of FE+ROB model with variable parameters Why? Implement and test the TFC functionality and to study the optimum design parameters for the different sub-detector FEs [PHY01]

161

(45)

Where did the ball end up? What’s going to happen next? [PHY24]

Another popular way for High Energy Particle Physicists to involve and engage readers is to use the inclusive pronoun we (16 instances) and the second person pronoun you, directly addressing the viewer in this case: (46)

The asymmetry is defined as a function of the decay rate, however, we could alternatively define the decay rate (or lifetime distribution) as a function of the asymmetry. […] In the transfer stage, non Syslog and PVSS (LHC control system) are transformed to syslog Messages, so we can store them in the same way. [PHY01]

(47)

Usually a log is the only clue you have to track a problem. [PHY03]

5.2.2.4 Self-mentions When researchers write, they cannot avoid displaying a writing persona and taking a stance on the issues considered. By doing so, they place themselves within their community of practice and they take a stance regarding the arguments debated (Ivaniþ, 1994; Hyland 2001b). Rendering themselves visible is generally a deliberate decision that writers make, and in doing so they create a clear authorial identity (Hyland, 2001b), for example by using first person pronouns (Ivaniþ, 1994). Possessive adjectives also serve this purpose. High Energy Particle Physicists are no exception to the rule and they project themselves explicitly in the text by using the first person plural pronoun we (29 instances) and the possessive pronoun our (6 instances) (see Appendix 7, Table 9). The first person singular pronoun is almost absent (only 1 hit found) probably because, as mentioned before, in High Energy Particle Physics researchers work collaboratively, involving usually entire research groups. Examples of how self-mentions are used by High Energy Particle Physicists are: (48)

162

Assuming the Standard Model scenario, we expect a measurement of the cross section with a relative uncertainty of ±20% for unintegrated luminosity of 200pb-1 at a center of mass energy of 10 TeV. [PHY19]

(49)

We analyzed the main causes of delay for starting the application and we reduced this time with several optimizations for distributing the program files. [PHY08]

(50)

About 4% of our samples are coming from diffractive pp events, i.e. non-relevant for hadronization processes. [PHY35]

(51)

During our experiments we added almost 5GB/day more. [PHY03]

(52)

When testing CASTORFS with the latest kernels we observe significantly better. [PHY03]

5.2.2.5 Attitude markers Attitude markers are used to express surprise, frustration, importance, or agreement related to the information given (see Chapter 4, Section 4.3.2). The attitude markers within this subcorpus are ! (14 instances), interesting(ly) (10 instances), and must (9 instances), as shown in Appendix 7, Table 10. Exclamation marks, in particular, are frequently used in the High Energy Particle Physics posters analysed, which confirms the idea that authors are allowed to express surprise and happiness on occasion, such as in the following examples: (53)

IT station design installation: > 99% working channels!! [PHY28]

(54)

Small particles might not sound that impressive, but everything else in the world is built of these fundamental pieces. Also, the smallest players tend to do craziest things! [PHY24]

(55)

Particle collisions, like a scrum, are both gruesome and beautiful! [PHY24]

(56)

Although we had to deal with about 30000 sources of various logs, we managed to do it completely FREE (!) by using a combination of Splunk, Ossec Rsyslog, LogRotate. [PHY03]

163

(57)

Size of truncated events follows occupancy PDF, no bias! [PHY29]

Other examples of attitude markers found in the subcorpus are the following: (58)

The CASTOR name server stores some interesting file meta-data, for example: a filechecksum, a status of migration to tapes (migrated or not). [PHY18]

(59)

Regarding the Log Server, the usual log traffic is about 3GB/day. During our experiments we added almost 5GB/day more. Even with that traffic, log server performed quite. [PHY03]

(60)

Starting and initializing a large scale application is a complex task that must be done very quickly and reliably. [PHY08]

(61)

It’s very important to keep them organized in a centralized server for security. [PHY03]

5.2.3 Visual interactive resources As Table 5.3 shows, 268 examples of visual interactive resources were found in the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus. Chapter 4 (Section 4.4.1), in fact, explains that interactive visual elements, such as the division of the poster into sections (information value), frames, connective elements such as arrows and lines, graphs, and different font size, colour, and type, all serve to organise information and guide the viewer in the comprehension of the text. Table 5.3 shows the distribution of different visual interactive resources within the subcorpus. Table 5.3. Visual metadiscourse occurrences in High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus. INTERACTIVE RESOURCES

Occurrences

%

Graphic elements

105

39

Fonts

46

17

164

INTERACTIVE RESOURCES

Occurrences

%

Framing

44

16

Connective Elements

42

16

Information Value

31

12

TOTAL

268

100

A more detailed table, specifying the frequency of each type of interactive visual resource, is Table 5.4. Each interactive element will be explained in detail in the following sections. Table 5.4. Visual interactive resources used in High Energy Particle Physics posters. INTERACTIVE RESOURCES

Achieved through

Schematic analytical Figures Chart Pictures Graphic Elements Table Networks Flowcharts Conversion process Taxonomies Subtotal Font style Fonts Font colour Font size Subtotal Colour contrast Framing Frame lines Subtotal Vectors Repetition of colour Connective Elements Alignment Repetition of shapes Subtotal

Number of postRelative % in the ers displaying subcorpus the resource 26

9.7

23 22 14 8 5 4 3 105 21 15 10 46 27 17 44 20 9 7 6 42

8.6 8.3 5.3 3 1.8 1.3 1.2 39.2 7.8 5.6 3.7 17.2 10.1 6.4 16.5 7.4 3.3 2.6 2.2 15.5

165

INTERACTIVE RESOURCES

Achieved through

Top–Bottom Left–right + top– bottom Information Value Centre–Margin Triptych Left–Right Subtotal Total

Number of postRelative % in the ers displaying subcorpus the resource 9 3.3 8

3

6 5 3 31 268

2.2 1.8 1.1 11.4 100

5.2.3.1 Graphic elements In Table 5.3 we see that, within the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus, the most numerous visual interactive resources are graphic elements, and, in particular, schematic analytical figures, charts and tables. This is probably due to the fact that this is an experimental subdiscipline, where experimental data are predominant; In fact, 39,1% of posters in this subcorpus display one or more graph, picture, table, or chart. As explained in Chapter 4 (Section 4.4.1), graphs and tables are important visual elements because they help explain content visually, making data more easily comprehensible. Of the different types of graphs available, High Energy Particle Physicists prefer using schematic analytical figures (26 recurrences), charts (23 recurrences), pictures (22 recurrences) and tables (14 recurrences). Networks, flow charts, conversion processes, and taxonomies are also present in the subcorpus, but seldom used. Figure 5.1 is an example of poster where numerous schematic analytical figures, charts, tables, and networks are displayed simultaneously, underlining the highly experimental nature of the subdiscipline.

166

Figure 5.1. Example of a poster displaying different graphic elements [PPHY38].

167

5.2.3.2 Interactive use of fonts Other frequently used interactive devices are fonts, whose type, style, colour, and/or size are used to guide the reader through the text, making it more comprehensible, perhaps highlighting which parts are connected or underlining the most important textual elements. The most recurrent font-related technique in the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus is to distinguish different parts of the text by using different font styles (7.8%), as in Figure 5.1, where we see that the author distinguished the titles of the different sections from the rest of the text by writing them in a bigger font size. An example of font colour used interactively (5.6%) is also found in Figure 5.2, depicting a detail of a poster, where the text that should be read with particular attention is in red or blue.

Figure 5.2. Font colour used as an interactive device [PPHY04].

The use of different font sizes is also effective in distinguishing elements in the text, such as titles from the rest of the text (Figure 5.1), but it is the least frequent font technique utilised in the subcorpus (3.7%).

168

5.2.3.3 Framing Framing is the third most popular interactive resource utilised within the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus and is a very useful graphic technique to logically divide the information displayed in the poster. By framing sections of the posters, the author makes it clear that certain parts of the text are separated from others, much like a book can be separated into ‘chapters’. As Table 5.4 shows, the most recurring type of frames found is the one created by colour contrast (10.1%). In Figure 5.1, for example, we see blocks of text standing out from the background, thanks to a difference in colour tonality: that is, the background of the poster is yellow and contrasts with the white rectangles in which text, images, and tables are inserted. High Energy Particle Physicists also frame sections of the poster by tracing lines, but it is a technique that occurs less often in the subcorpus (6.4%). 5.2.3.4 Connective elements Connective elements in the form of vectors, repetition of colour, alignment, and repetition of shapes are the fourth most frequently utilised visual interactive resources in the present subcorpus, representing 15.5% of the interactive resources found (see Table 5.4). Amongst these, vectors are the most common of all (7.4%). Vectors can be used in various ways, either to visually indicate to the reader the flow of information, that is, in which direction to read the text or to invite the reader to focus his/her attention on a specific detail (Figure 5.3). In this case, the arrow and circle invite the reader to ‘look’ more attentively at a certain detail and help explain what is being represented. Another reason vectors are frequently used is to create relationships and logical connections between images present on the poster (Figure 5.4), and between text and images (Figure 5.5).

169

Figure 5.3. Example of connective elements drawing attention to a detail of the poster [PPHY32].

In Figure 5.4, we see an image-image relationship, where one image is connected to the next through arrows and the text simply plays an accompanying role, in the sense that there is no connection between the text, but there is between images.

170

Figure 5.4. Example of connective elements creating an image-image relationship [PPHY39].

In Figure 5.5, we see instead a text-image connection created through arrows. The text displayed on the right is logically and semantically connected to the images on the left, so that the reader is given a visual representation of what is written.

171

Figure 5.5. Example of connective elements creating a text-image relationship [PPHY15].

5.2.3.5 Information value Although frames are widely used in this subcorpus to separate or connect blocks of text, units of data, or images, posters within this disciple do not always display a clear format. A well-thought-out organisation of images and text would help the reader follow and anticipate the flow of information, as happens in other genres such as the research article, where the traditional IMRD format is often utilised. Looking at the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus, 11.4% of the posters analysed use the interactive resource called ‘information value’, a layout that organises information coherently. The preferred ‘information value’ layout in the subcorpus sees the flow of information aligned vertically, with a top/bottom distribution of information. The second most popular choice of ‘information value’ layout by Physicists is a mix between the top–bottom and left–right division of the poster. In Figure 5.6 for example, we see a poster in which the top part of the poster follows a top–bottom organisation of the text, because we read the text from the top, scrolling down; the lower part of the poster instead is organised in a left–right manner, so that we read the text from left to right.

172

Figure 5.6. Example of a poster following a mix between a top–bottom, left–right organisation of content [PPHY27].

5.2.4 Summary The analysis carried out in the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus has revealed that, in the text of posters, textual interactive and interactional resources are utilised in equal quantity. These results show that within the subdiscipline of High Energy Particle Physics, the same importance is given to the development of a clear and coherent discourse, and to the involvement and engagement of the reader. Looking at the normalised recurrences found (per 100,000 words) in Figure 5.7, we can see that the top three textual metadiscource resources found in the subcorpus are transitions (503), followed by boosters (421) and hedges (400). The bottom three textual metadiscourse resources found are instead endophoric markers (90), evidentials (59), and attitude markers (53).

173

Transitions Boosters Hedges Code glosses Frame markers Engagement markers Self mentions Endophoric markers Evidentials Attitude markers 0

100

200

300

400

500

600

Figure 5.7. Distribution (in order of frequency) of textual interactive and interactional normalized occurrences in High Energy Particle Physics posters.

The analysis has also shown that several visual interactive elements can be identified in this subcorpus, suggesting that High Energy Particle Physicists also try to present information clearly with the aid of visuals. Among the visual interactive resources found (Figure 5.8), we can see that the top two visual resources utilised are Graphic elements (39%) and Fonts (17%), followed by Connective elements (16%), Framing (16%) and Information value (12%).

Graphic elements Fonts Connective Elements Framing Information Value 0

10

20

30

40

50

Figure 5.8. Distribution (in order of frequency) of visual interactive occurrences in High Energy Particle Physics posters.

174

5.3 Textual and visual analysis of the Law subcorpus 5.3.1 Textual interactive resources The linguistic analysis conducted on the Law subcorpus found a total of 1,541 instances of interactive and interactional devices, with an average of 38 per poster. As Table 5.5 shows, Lawyers tend to use interactional resources more frequently than interactive resources, revealing that Lawyers are concerned more with engaging the reader and making him/her participate into the developing discourse rather than constructing a fluent and coherent discourse, so that the text unfolds easily and comprehensibly. Table 5.5. Interactive occurrences in the text of Law posters. INTERACTIVE RESOURCES N. of occurrences

Normalized figures (per 100,000 words)

Transitions

320

1405

Code glosses

143

628

Frame markers

104

457

Evidentials

66

290

Endophoric markers

9

40

TOTAL

642

2,820

INTERACTIONAL RESOURCES

N. of occurrences

Normalized figures (per 100,000 words)

Hedges

342

1502

Boosters

208

913

Engagement markers

164

720

Self mentions

109

479

Attitude markers

76

334

TOTAL

899

3,948

175

The most recurring interactive devices are transitions (320 instances), followed by code glosses (143 instances) and frame markers (104 instances). These resources have an important metadiscoursal purpose, because they are used to connect sentences and paragraphs, explain concepts more clearly by adding examples, and refer to parts of texts so that the reader follows the unfolding discourse easily. The results found for each type of interactive resource are hereby reported in order of frequency, and are accompanied by examples drawn from the Law subcorpus. 5.3.1.1 Transitions In the Law subcorpus, a great number of transitions have been found, totalling 320 instances. The most recurrent transitions found in the Law subcorpus are the conjunctions and (203 instances), but (9 instances), and also (16 instances) and the adverb because (12 instances) (see Appendix 7, Table 11). These results show that, like in the previous subcorpus analysed, also in the Law subcorpus, the three different discourse roles played by transitions, that is, Addition, Comparison, and Consequence (see Chapter 4, Section 4.3.1), are all found. The following examples demonstrate how each type of transition marker is used within Law posters and, in particular, how the role of Addition (62) (63), Comparison (64) (65), and Consequence (66) is played out in the text. (62)

Not only were the students able to reinforce their trademark knowledge, but they also got a peek into how difficult working with survey evidence can be. [LAW29]

(63)

The concept of separation of powers within the university is both ancient and novel. It is ancient in the sense that it reflects the way that the university has operated for hundreds of years, and reflects well-established theories and understandings about how the university works and what it is for. [LAW32]

(64)

SPs felt cases were challenging and emotionally draining; however, they perceived the assessments to be valuable to the students and the larger community.

(65)

Although their surveys and results were highly unscientific, the students learned about the types of surveys used, how the composition of the survey universe

176

alters the results, how poorly framed questions can affect the survey, and how most surveys can be interpreted in multiple ways. [LAW29] (66)

Academic freedom is not a privilege, but a necessary feature of a proper separation of powers within the university. […] Therefore a university should be regarded as a community, but not of like-minded individuals. [LAW32]

5.3.1.2 Code glosses Code glosses are the second most frequent interactive metadiscoursal device found in the Law subcorpus, indicating a clear tendency, within this discipline, to provide readers with additional information. By rephrasing or elaborating what has been written the reader is able to clarify complicated or possibly difficult concepts. The most recurring type of code gloss is text within parentheses (65 instances), as in examples (67) and (68). (67)

Nearly half of Americans age fifty or older have executed a durable power-of-attorney (DPOA), and almost three- quarters of those age 80 or older have done so. The popularity of the DPOA reflects the fact that it is a powerful and cost-effective tool for planning for future incapacity. [LAW01]

(68)

The role of the agent, or “attorney-in-fact” (AIF), is characterized by two underlying problems in the DPOA relationship: (1) lack of clarity as to the decision-making rule that an AIF is to use to make decisions on behalf of a principal, and (2) exceedingly broad autonomy afforded to the AIF. [LAW01]

Another very frequent type of code gloss is the conjunctive or (43 instances), used to connect two alternative terms to define something. Giving more than one term increases the chance of the reader understanding a new concept, as can be seen in example (69): (69)

Nebraska—release with approval from the governing body that approved the conservation easement where the conservation easement “no longer substantially achieves the conservation or preservation purpose for which it was created. [LAW23]

177

Finally, adverbs such as (11 instances), for example (6 instances), and e.g. (8 instances) appear in Law posters to better explicate a concept and provide useful examples (70) (71). (70)

Whether these issues are due to external factors (such as budget shortages affecting court reporters or public counsel) or internal factors (such as court culture or the productivity of individual judges), it is clear from the data collected that intermediate courts of appeal are being challenged to identify systems for improved performance in the face of limited resources. [LAW02]

(71)

The students also were reminded about human behavior and how the fact that consumers are indeed human can affect surveys. For example, one group picked a trademarked antacid remedy as their subject and were surprised to learn that most random people do not like being asked about their recent stomach ailments. [LAW45]

5.3.1.3 Frame markers Frame markers rank third within the interactive resources utilised by Lawyers. They are probably numerous, because bullet and numbered lists are frequently used in Law posters to communicate information quickly. As Matthews (1990: 226) states, “the condensed message of a list, in fact, appeals to the reader’s need to gather information efficiently: the information is laid out, unadorned, for quick comprehension”, as in a poster displaying most of the content through bullet points. Amongst the frame markers searched, the ones signalling a sequence are the most numerous, totalling 44 instances (see Appendix 7, Table 13). The frequent use of numbers or letters (1, 2, 3; I, II, III; A, B, C; etc.) to signal a list or a sequence indicates that Lawyers tend to use precise and schematic textual elements to organize content (72). (72)

We identified the following issues:

5.

All courtroom participants should be able to move about the courtroom without highlighting their physical limitations. All courtroom participants should be able to understand the roles played in the courtroom.

6.

178

7.

All courtroom participants should be able to hear and see all proceedings without limiting their ability to move about the courtroom. [LAW07]

The use of lists is so common in this subcorpus that a number of posters simply display a short, schematic text, such as one or more lists. Example (73) illustrates the entire text of a poster, which simply consists of three separate lists:

A. B. C. D. E.

I. Potential sources of miscommunication between clinical professors and their student-attorneys. Supervision style Difference in level of experience Difference in type of experience Cultural differences Assumptions on the part of the student and/or professor

II. A. B. C.

Consequences of miscommunication. Frustration on part of student and/or professor Client’s goals not effectively served Confusion in case development

III. – – –

What can we do, if anything, about mis-communication? Shedding of assumptions Setting boundaries for student performance Identify miscommunication when it occurs

(73)

[LAW12]

Another, more peculiar use of sequencing frame markers can be seen in the poster depicted in Figure 4.7, where the sequencing numbers are embedded in the visual. Here, we see two cycles displaying a number of points in sequence; the reader knows in which order he/she should read the text thanks to the numbering and the arrows following a clockwise direction. Furthermore, on the right of the poster, written in very small characters, we find two numbered lists that accompany and further explain the two cycles: (74)

Studies have proven animal abuse is botha PREDICTOR and CO-INDICATOR of domestic violence by demonstratingthat in homes where there is DV there isa higher incidence of animal abuse. The abuse is FAMILY abuse and all members are affected—physically and emotionally.

179

1.

2.

(75)

Children exposed to family violence are at risk of suffering from emotional and behavioral problems, very often engaging in animal abuse themselves. In turn, childhood animal abuse is linked to aggressive behavior and violent criminal activity as an adult. A child from an abusive family is more likely to become an adult abuser and create a new abusive family. [LAW09]

AVOID all abuse by teaching compassion and respect for all living creatures to young students. 1. AVOID human abuse by enacting effective animal cruelty Laws, prosecuting aggressively, and imposing serious sanctions. 2. DETECT family abuse early by: • • •

• •

• • 3. 4. 9 9 9 9

Separating data on animal cruelty in FBI UCR program. Reporting child and animal abuse by physicians, humane Law enforcement, and veterinarians. Cross-reporting abuses among child protective services, adult protective services, and humane Law enforcement. IMPROVE protection for all family abuse victims by: Identifying needs of all victims—is there a pet who needs protection? Authorizing issuance of intrafamily abuse protective order upon showing of good cause to believe that the alleged abuser has committed, or is threatening to commit, animal cruelty against the pet with the EFFECT of emotionally or physically injuring a human family member. Providing for ‘the care, custody, or control of the pet’ in a protective order. Establishing safe havens for human and non-human victims. ENHANCE prosecution of abuser by prosecuting for all abuses and allowing introduction of evidence of pet abuse in cases of human abuse. AVOID future abuse by: Imposing appropriate sentence for animal abuse reflecting significance of crime. Mandating counseling in animal cruelty prevention programs (AniCare). Forbidding ownership of animals thus removing tool from abuser’s arsenal. Allowing evidence of animal abuse in related child custody and visitation proceedings. [LAW09]

The types of frame markers that are utilised the least are instead topic shifts (only 3 instances), probably due to the shortage of space, which leads authors to rely on the use of bullet points and lists.

180

5.3.1.4 Evidentials Unlike endophoric markers, evidentials are frequently used by Lawyers to refer to community-based literature and offer evidence for their arguments. The fact that evidentials are recurrent in the Law subcorpus is a clear indication that within this discipline authors prefer relying on previous literature to demonstrate the soundness and reliability of their research. A common strategy to refer to a reliable source is to cite dates and periods of time (12 instances) as in the following examples: (76)

A survey of priorities, opinions about impediments and concerns was conducted August 27, 2009, a day of the United Nations Meeting of Experts. [LAW13]

(77)

A nationwide survey of biodefense researchers about their opinions and perceptions concerning the select agent regulations, 42 CFR §73, and other regulations and the effectiveness of these rules in achieving their regulatory goals of national security and protecting public health, was conducted from September 2007 through August 1, 2008. [LAW13]

(78)

These findings of researcher anxiety with compliance was cited by the White House in the support of President Obama’s Executive Order, July 2, 2010. [LAW13]

Other frequent evidentials found in posters are verbs such as indicate, demonstrate, suggest, claim, and show preceded by a person’s name or a noun such as research, literature, and studies (see examples (79), (80), and (81)): (79)

Research on surrogate decision-making in the health care context indicates that agents are significantly more likely to respect elders wishes when agents are explicitly instructed to do so. [LAW01]

(80)

Several empirical studies have found that eyewitness error is a major contributing cause to over half of wrongful convictions. [LAW39]

(81)

Preliminary data analysis also suggests that certain subcategories of charities (Environmental Education and Outdoor Survival Programs and organizations

181

that focus on specific religions), for example do not exist as very well-funded charities and may only exist as smaller charities. [LAW08]

5.3.1.5 Endophoric markers Although endophoric markers facilitate the comprehension of the text by referring to earlier material or material that will follow, they are rarely utilised in the subcorpus and they appear as the least frequent textual interactive resource found (see Table 5.5). This is probably because a number of posters display their text as conversion processes (Figure 4.7), networks (Figure 5.9), or taxonomies (Figure 5.10). The text contained in these charts necessarily has been condensed, chunked, and fragmented. The result of this process is a text that, compared for example to texts produced in High Energy Particle Physics posters, is easily and quickly readable but lacks endophoric markers.

Figure 5.9. Text presented in the form of a network [LAW11].

182

Figure 5.10. Text presented in the form of a taxonomy [LAW16].

In these cases, the text is organised in such a way that without the aid of visuals, it would not be possible to fully comprehend the content of the poster. Below are three examples of endophoric markers found in the Law subcorpus, which are used to refer to an example (82), section (83), or chart (84) given before or later in the text:

183

(82)

Which insurance policy responds to a loss caused by parallel concurrent causes, like the tort in Example B? [LAW03]

(83)

Section 2(a) of the UCEA explains that conservation easements may be released, modified, terminated, or otherwise altered or affected in the same manner as other easements. [LAW15]

(84)

To determine whether there is a substantive difference in focus between the Smaller Charities Group and the Larger Charities Group, I compared NTEE codes of the top five charitable subcategories for the two groups. There is a distinction between the main areas of focus between the two groups (see charts below). [LAW21]

5.3.2 Textual interactional resources In Law posters, textual interactional resources are more frequent than interactive resources. In fact, 899 occurrences of interactional resources were found in the subcorpus, whereas interactive resources, as we have seen in Section 5.3.1, were 642. Among the resources listed in Table 5.6, hedges (342 instances), boosters (208 instances), and engagement markers (164 instances) are the most commonly used. Table 5.6. Interactional occurrences in the text of Law posters. INTERACTIONAL RES.

N. of occurrences

Normalized figures (per 100,000 words)

Hedges

342

1502

Boosters

208

913

Engagement markers

164

720

Self mentions

109

479

Attitude markers

76

334

TOTAL

899

3,948

184

The results found for each type of interactional resource are hereby reported in order of frequency, and are accompanied by examples drawn from the Law subcorpus. 5.3.2.1 Hedges As Table 5.6 shows, hedges are the most recurring interactional metadiscourse resources found in Law posters, indicating that Lawyers tend to avoid strong statements and the act of presenting arguments with absolute conviction. The most recurring hedges are the adjective most (26 instances) and the modal verbs would (35 instances), may (31 instances), and could (22 instances). The following examples are drawn from the subcorpus analysed: (85)

Similarly, the cost of human & intellectual capital used to produce information may be high. [LAW34]

(86)

[…] it means that fundamental disagreement may exist amongst professors in an environment of cooperative independence. [LAW32]

(87)

It thus protects citizens from the tyranny that could result if the power to make Laws was held in the same hands as the power to enforce them. [LAW32]

(88)

About one half of the respondents said that their countries had either or both a biosafety or biosecurity code. [LAW13]

(89)

The separation of the judicial function is perhaps the most crucial because it ensures that government must be conducted in accordance with the rule of Law. [LAW32]

(90)

Your university quite likely has some sort of license for this product which will reduce the cost quite substantially, possibly to zero. [LAW34]

185

5.3.2.2 Boosters Boosters are the second most frequent interactional device used by Lawyers. The boosters found in the subcorpus show that the most recurring boosters are the verb will (53 instances), the auxiliary must, and the adverb clearly (14 instances). The following examples are drawn from the Law posters and demonstrate how researchers, within this discipline, express certainty in what they say. (91)

To determine whether conditions have changed significantly enough to merit terminating a servitude, one must examine the language of the agreement and how it articulates its purposes. [LAW22]

(92)

If your presentation focus in on the rule of Law, students will be looking up at the screen rather than down at their books. [LAW36]

(93)

On the other hand, conservation easement holders may wish to continue protecting the land and will have to argue against application of the doctrine as justification for dissolving the conservation easement. [LAW23]

(94)

There is a clear need for training and information with regard to biosafety and biosecurity codes of conduct, particularly for countries which have not yet adopted codes of conduct for biosafety and biosecurity. [LAW13]

5.3.2.3 Engagement markers In Law posters, a very high frequency of engagement markers was found (164 recurrences), indicating that for these writers it is important to involve readers and establish solidarity among scholars. Lawyers frequently use the pronoun one (40 instances), include extra information meant for the reader within parentheses (32 instances), pose questions to the reader, involving him/her in the argument (24 instances), and occasionally use the pronoun you (29 instances), as well as the possessive pronoun your (20 instances). The following are examples drawn from the Law subcorpus, showing how researchers, within this field, utilise engagement markers:

186

(95)

One first downloads and installs in the conventional way a free copy of Mathematica Player, available at . Once this is done, one goes to . Wolfram.com, browses or searches for the desired Demonstration and downloads it. […] One then double-clicks on the downloaded file and, voila, one has a fully interactive Demonstration with the ability to change all the possible settings in the model. […] And, if one wants to investigate how the Demonstration was created, you can just click on a request for the source code. […] One can then modify the Demonstration, create snapshots from the Demonstration for use elsewhere, create bookmarks to interesting settings of the controls in the Demonstration. [LAW37]

(96)

Your university quite likely has some sort of license for this product which will reduce the cost quite substantially, possibly to zero. [LAW37]

(97)

See what level of care proves optimal and the associated level of insured wealth for each optimal insurance contract you create. How does the optimal contract vary with the accuracy with which the insurer can determine the level of care taken by the insured? [LAW04]

(98)

Coco Chanel visually taught us the wisdom of the little black dress pearls. You already teach pearls of legal wisdom, now address the visuals. Are they effectively articulating your message? Are they engaging your audience? Are they readable and visually legible? Take a full-length view at your visual aids: Do they aid long-term memory? [LAW35]

5.3.2.4 Self-mentions If we look at the use Lawyers make of self-mentions, we notice that they seldom refer to themselves or to their work, both individually as well as a group. When they do, the self-mention which recurs more often is the pronoun I (32 instances), revealing that, unlike Physicists, Lawyers tend to work independently and not in large research groups. The second most frequent resource is the plural pronoun we (26 instances), followed by the possessive pronoun my (19 instances). As the examples below demonstrate, the writing style that Lawyers use for posters is very personal and direct, effectively engaging readers and establishing a close, almost intimate, relationship.

187

(99)

We examine whether having a dedicated levy impacts the number of children in state care over time, the numbers of adoptions finalized and the mean number of days spent awaiting adoption. [LAW33]

(100) We concluded that educational intervention should include interviewing and communication skills training in order to improve student scores. [LAW28] (101) Overall, I was very pleased with the outcome of the project. [LAW29] (102) Although I believed in this project from the outset, I wasn’t sure that the students would be enthusiastic about an out-of-class project that was so different from usual Law school tasks. I was thrilled that the students’ feedback was generally positive and every group put significant effort into the project, some going well beyond the requirements. [LAW29] (103) My students were very engaged this semester and the level of classroom discourse was at an all-time high. [LAW25] (104) Our research raises a cautionary call to advocates and policymakers who focus on the substance of the mandates governing the intimate family relations in the child welfare system or the type of funding stream available at the federal level. [LAW33]

5.3.2.5 Attitude markers Attitude markers are the least frequent interactional device used by Lawyers; therefore, it can be said that Lawyers rarely convey surprise, agreement, importance, obligation, or frustration in their texts, related to the information given. Amid the few attitude markers found within this subcorpus are the auxiliaries should (32 instances) and must (9 instances), followed by the adverb important(ly) (6 instances). Hereafter are four examples drawn from the posters analysed, showing how attitude markers are used within the discipline of Law and in posters in particular: (105) If attributed, the fair use exception to the copyright Laws should allow you to display the images in class. [LAW36]

188

(106) PR Profile should describe the kind of Lawyer you want to be and why you want to be that kind of a Lawyer. [LAW38] (107) In these instances, the Law must allocate responsibility among the insurers. [LAW37] (108) Unfortunately, while it is often appropriate to advise elders to execute broad, immediately effective DPOA, such documents can jeopardize elders’ financial and personal well-being. [LAW01]

5.3.3 Visual interactive resources As Table 5.7 shows, if we apply the framework of analysis explained in Chapter 4 to the visual components of Law posters, we find that researchers within this discipline, to create well-organised and visually comprehensible posters, make use of a number of visual resources. Connective elements and interactive fonts are the most popular resources utilised by authors, followed by graphic elements and framing. Information value, instead, is utilized less frequently. Table 5.7. Visual metadiscourse occurrences in the Law subcorpus. INTERACTIVE RES.

Occurrences

% on total

Connective elements

66

30.8

Interactive Fonts

52

24.2

Graphic elements

36

16.8

Framing

34

15.8

Information value

26

12.1

TOTAL

214

 100

A more detailed table, specifying the frequency of each type of interactive visual resource, is Table 5.8. Each interactive element will be explained in detail in the sections that follow.

189

Table 5.8. Visual interactive resources used in Law posters. INTERACTIVE RESOURCES Framing

Achieved through

Frequency

Colour contrast

20

9.3

Frame lines

17

7.9

Subtotal

Connective Elements

34

15.8

Repetition of shapes

21

9.8

Repetition of colour

18

8.4

Allignment/Disallignment

16

7.4

Vectors (size, colour, shape, attenuated/amplified (density/frequency))

11

5.1

66

30.8

Font size

24

11.2

Font colour

16

7.4

Font type

12

5.6

Subtotal Fonts

%

Subtotal

Graphic elements

52

24.2

Use of schematic analytical pictures

13

6

Pictures

8

3.7

Chart

8

3.7

Taxonomies (Covert/Overt)

4

Conversion process

1

1.8

Networks

1

1.8

Table

1

1.8

Flowcharts

1.8

0

0

36

16.8

Triptych

11

5.1

Left–Right

6

2.8

Left–right + top–bottom

5

2.3

Top–Bottom

4

1.8

Centre–Margin

0

 0

Subtotal

26

12.1

Total

214

 100

Subtotal

Information Value

190

5.3.3.1 Framing The most recurring visual interactive resource used is framing, a technique that recurs 94 times in the posters analysed. About half the posters in the subcorpus highlight part of the visual or the text by using line frames. The other half of the subcorpus (20 posters) distinguishes certain sections of the poster by contrasting colours, as in Figure 5.11, where we see coloured blocks of text that are not framed by a line but by the contrast between the white background and coloured boxes. What divides the blocks of text is, in this case, not a line but simply white space.

Figure 5.11. Example of a poster using colour contrast to create frames [LAW29].

5.3.3.2 Connective elements The second most recurring visual interactive resources are connective elements, which recur a total of 66 times in the subcorpus. Researchers within this discipline very often use the repetition of shapes (21 occurrences) and colours (18 occurrences), the alignment or disalignment of elements 191

(16 occurrences), and/or vectors (11 occurrences) in the poster to create logical connections. In Figure 5.12 for instance, we see the concept ‘Using visual aids to demonstrate legal analysis’ connected to three blocks of text: ‘Flow charts’, ‘Sentence diagrams’, and ‘Propositional logic’. We are able to connect elements thanks to the vectors utilised, and also because a number of elements are repeated, such as the red frames, the black rectangles containing the examples, and the graphs framed in yellow.

Figure 5.12. Example of a poster using vectors, repetition of shapes, and colour to create logical connections [LAW20].

192

5.3.3.3 Interactive fonts Much attention is also given to the use of font size, font colour, and font type to guide the reader in the comprehension of the poster (52 recurrences). In Figure 4.7 for example, we see four font colours depending on the content of the text. The title of the poster is dark blue, the text related to the conversion process graph on the upper left part of the poster is orange, whereas the text related to the conversion process graph on the bottom right part of the poster is green. The remaining text is black. By using different colours the reader is visually helped in understanding that the phrase ‘The Link between Animal Abuse and Human Violence in the Family Creates Problems for Victims’ refers to the orange graph, whereas the phrase ‘The Law Must Target the Link between Animal Abuse and Human Violence in the Family’ relates to the green graph. 5.3.3.4 Graphic elements As explained in Section 4.4.1, Graphic elements can help clarify the content of the text by picturing data and representing it visually. For example, as happens with High Energy Particle Physics posters, schematic analytical pictures help viewers understand and retain content and they are the most frequent graphic resource used within this subcorpus (13 instances). The second most frequent graphic resource is pictures (8 instances), followed by charts (8 instances). Other types of graphs found, although much less frequently, are taxonomies (4 instances), whereas conversion processes, networks and tables are only found once among the poster searched. The scarcity of graphs is not surprising because Law is not an experimental discipline and does not rely heavily on statistics and numerical data. What is instead interesting to note is that pictures are used to show visually the message contained in the text, so that readers immediately associate what they read with what they see. Like in advertising, many Law posters do not use real people but actors. Figures are therefore ‘staged’, and actors pose in front of the camera. The result is an image that serves more easily the message of the author, as in Figure 5.13, where we see two actors playing the role of a warrior and a wise man. The connection between the figure and the title is immediate, and 193

the text found on the left and right side of the poster further explains the concept.

Figure 5.13. Example of a poster displaying a picture, serving an interactive purpose [LAW40].

5.3.3.5 Information value Less noticeable in Law posters is the information value resource (11 instances), which ensures that the poster is organised coherently and that the reader knows which information to process first. In Law posters we mostly find a triptych layout, which divides logically the poster into three main sections, the most important one being the centred one (see Chapter 4, Section 4.4.1). As Table 5.8 specifies, we seldom find Law posters in which the flow of information moves from left to right (6 instances), from left to right and from top to bottom (5 instances), and from top to bottom (4 instances). Instead, no posters with a centre–margin layout were found. 194

5.3.4 Summary The analysis carried out on the Law subcorpus has revealed that in these posters, textual interactive resources are utilised less than textual interactional resources. The percentage of textual interactional resources (58%) is slightly higher than the percentage of interactive resources found (42%). These results show that within the discipline of Law, preference is given to the involvement and engagement of the reader rather than rendering the text comprehensible and the development of discourse clear and coherent. Looking at the normalised occurrences found (per 100,000 words) in Figure 5.14, we can see that the top three textual metadiscource resources found in the subcorpus are hedges (1,502), followed by transitions (1,405) and boosters (913). The bottom three textual metadiscourse resources found are instead attitude markers (334), evidentials (290), and endophoric markers (40). Hedges Transitions Boosters Engagement markers Code glosses Self mentions Frame markers Attitude markers Evidentials Endophoric markers 0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

Figure 5.14. Distribution (in order of frequency) of textual interactive and interactional occurrences in Law posters.

195

If we take into consideration the visual interactive elements present in Law posters (Figure 5.15), we see that the top three visual resources utilised are framing (35%), connective elements (24%) and interactive fonts (20%). The bottom two visual resources utilised by Lawyers are instead graphic elements (12%) and information value (9%).

Framing Connective elements Interactive Fonts Graphic elements Information Value 0

10

20

30

40

Figure 5.15. Frequency of visual interactive occurrences in Law posters.

5.4 Textual and visual analysis of the Clinical Psychology subcorpus 5.4.1 Textual interactive resources As Table 5.9 indicates, in the Clinical Psychology subcorpus we find that interactive resources are much more frequent than interactional resources. The strikingly lower amount of interactional resources might also be due to the frequent use of bullet points to make lists and the recurrence of chunked text. As happens in Law posters, fragmented text results in condensed, straightforward discourse, which is comprehensible but unadorned and does not need many interactional elements. The 196

few interactional resources found will be analysed in the sections that follow. Table 5.9. Interactive and interactional occurrences in the text of Clinical Psychology posters (in order of frequency). INTERACTIVE RES.

Raw frequency

Normalized frequency (per 100,000 words)

Frame Markers

345

887

Transitions

121

311

Code Glosses

115

296

Evidentials

100

257

Endophoric Markers

14

36

TOTAL

695

1,787

Raw frequency

Normalized frequency (per 100,000 words)

Hedges

78

200

Boosters

25

64

Self Mentions

19

49

Engagement Markers

9

23

Attitude Markers

5

13

136

350

INTERACTIONAL RES.

TOTAL

5.4.1.1 Frame markers Unlike in the other two corpora analysed, the text in Clinical Psychology posters is mainly organised through bullet point lists. An example of bullet point list found in a Clinical Psychology poster is (112) but also numbered lists ((113) and (114)) are frequently found. The frequency of sequencing frame markers is therefore extremely high, with a total of 210 listings, 120 numberings, and only 1 instance of the frame marker last(ly) found in the subcorpus (see Appendix 7, Table 21). Examples (115) and (116) instead show the use of frame markers to announce goals and to label stages. No instances of topic shifts have been found.

197

(112) • •

•

Results from the DARTEL-normalized VBM analysis were consistent with increased registration accuracy. Treatment of global effects in the model significantly influences magnitude and spatial distribution of results, and must be carefully considered in interpreting the data. Because linear global effects dominate age-related cortical change, whole brain proportional scaling may be a reasonable approach to identifying regional differences in age-related GM loss. [PSY05]

(113) STUDY AIMS: 1.

2.

Investigation of the risk for compassion fatigue/secondary traumatic stress (CF/STS – the trauma suffered by the helping professional due to secondary exposure to extremely stressful and frightening experiences at work) and burnout (BO – emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced sense of personal accomplishment that can be associated with a very high workload or a non-supportive environment), and the potential for compassion satisfaction (CS – the fulfilment from helping others and positive collegial relationships) among ICU nurses. Exploration of the relationship between nurses’ characteristics (demographic and occupational) and CF risk. [PSY03]

(114) Study Questions: 1.

Which factor models of psychopathy provide the best fit to our sample?

2.

How do the psychopathy factors generated by two rival factor models correlate with a self-report personality measure, the MACI? [PSY04]

(115) The aim of the present study is to evaluate quality of life and sexual satisfaction in an Italian group of women affected by endometriosis. [PSY39] (116) In conclusion: CaMKII is elevated in both humans with schizophrenia and in an animal model of the disease. [PSY20]

198

5.4.1.2 Transitions Transitions are the second most recurring interactive device found in the text of Clinical Psychology posters. A very high number of transition markers render a text more comprehensible because connections are created between parts of text. The transition which is most often used is, as always, the conjunction and (72 instances), as in example (117). Other transitions used much less frequently are the adverb also (8 instances) as in example (118) and (119), the conjunctions however (6 instances) (example 120), and therefore (3 instances) (example 121). Hereafter are five examples showing the frequent use of transitions in the corpus: (117) A comparative analysis of biochemical bases of natural and pharmacologically induced aggression indicates that the natural aggression is genetically predetermined and is a manifestation one of the type of activity of central nerve system. [PSY02] (118) It might also be beneficial to collaborate with ethnic community ‘leaders’ (faculty, administrators, counselors) in providing information, facilitating dialogues to build relationship networks, and developing alternative activities (stress-reducers and distracters) to reduce the use of alcohol as a coping mechanism. [PSY01] (119) Provoking role of serotonin in suicide cases also emerged. [PSY02] (120) E treatment may enhance the recovery of schizophrenia in women1. However, adverse effects on uterine and breast tissue and other physical side effects may limit its long-term therapeutic use. (121) […] women with endometriosis, compared with the CG, showed lower level of sexual and relational satisfaction and a high presence of pain during intercourse. […] Therefore, it is important to implement an integrated work between physicians and psychologists to provide support for women in their daily lives. [PSY39]

199

5.4.1.3 Code glosses Code glosses are the third most frequent interactive resource utilised in the present subcorpus. The reason for this is that Clinical Psychologists frequently add extra information for the reader within parentheses (85 instances), most of the time indicating abbreviations, such as in example (121), where technical terminology such as Experimental Group, Control Group, and McCoy Female Sexuality Questionnaire is abbreviated as (EG), (CG), and (MFSQ), respectively. At times, we find additional information included in parentheses or signalled by the code glosses e.g. and i.e., as in examples (122), and (123): (121) The Experimental Group (EG) is made of 60 participants who had been diagnosed with endometriosis, recruited at the Endometriosis Outpatient Clinic at Policlinico Agostino Gemelli of Rome from January to March 2012. The Control Group (CG) is composed by 60 healthy women matched for age and relational status. Both groups received a protocol with: an informative questionnaire for socio-demographic data, the McCoy Female Sexuality Questionnaire (MFSQ) and the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-BREF). [PSY39] (122) The sensory processing deficits associated with SPD and Autism result in commensurate responses (e.g. feed-forward) based upon the ways various areas of the brain process information. [PSY08] (123) Interventions at 60bpm appear to have aided in redirecting or reducing repetitive behaviors and ‘fear’ aspects during sessions. Entrainment to slow pulse appears to have taken place, e.g. less frequent hand-over-hand prompting was required as sessions progressed. [PSY08]

5.4.1.4 Evidentials A total of 100 evidentials have been found in Clinical Psychology posters, mostly citations (39 instances), quotations (19 instances), and the evidentials studies, research, and literature (22 instances), followed by verbs such as show, claim, and found (see Appendix 7, Table 24, for the complete set of evidentials found). These results indicate that for

200

psychologists it is important to refer to previous literature so that the writer is able to demonstrate an authorial command of the subject and the reader’s interpretation is well guided, as in the following examples: (125) Although studies have shown a main effect for pubertal timing on depressive symptoms in adolescents, recent research supports a vulnerability-stress model (Ge & Natsuaki, 2009); stressful life events may trigger latent vulnerability conferred by early pubertal timing to result in increased depression (Ge et al., 2001). [PSY34] (129) Coping style was related to alcohol use among APIs and Hispanics, but not among Caucasians, which is consistent with a recent finding that drinking motives were different for ethnic minority versus White college students (Martens, Rocha, Martin, & Serrao, 2008). [PSY01] (128) Research into the psychosocial needs of transplant patients has produced mixed findings. [PHY10] (130) Endometriosis is a chronic gynecological disease affecting women in reproductive age; it is generated by endometrial tissue growth (glands and stroma) outside of the uterine cavity, causes intractable pelvic pain, dysmenorrhea, dyspareunia, and infertility (1). The numbers of women being diagnosed with the disease is increasing. The etiology of the disorder is still unknown. The most accepted theory is the one of retrograde menstruation, according to which during menstruation small pieces of endometrial tissue move backwards in the tube implanting themselves in the abdomen outside of the uterine cavity (2). Endometriosis is one of the most common causes of CPP (Chronic Pelvic Pain), it is associated with symptoms of pelvic pain, painful sexual intercourse and infertility (3). The disorder has negative effects on women quality of life and sexual satisfaction (4). [PSY39]

5.4.1.5 Endophoric markers Only 14 endophoric markers were found in the Clinical Psychology subcorpus, and they were related to figures (see examples (131) and (132) and (133)). This seems to be characteristic of the poster genre: it does not require endophoric markers to refer to parts of text because the entire document is displayed on a panel and the viewer does not need

201

to flip pages as in a research article. The table or figure is right below, above or next to the text, so that the reader does not necessarily need any textual element to make the connection between the content and the figures, tables, or images displayed on the poster. A connection could instead be done through interactive visual elements such as connectors, as explained in Section 4.4.1. The few examples of textual endophoric markers found, making reference to figures (131) (132) and tables (133) displayed on the poster, are shown hereafter: (131) As expected, the levels of CaMKII mRNA were reduced by 50% in heterozygous CaMKII knock-out animals (+/-), as compared to their wild-type littermates (+/+), in both the frontal cortex and the striatum (Fig. 1). [PSY20] (132) KN-93 completely inhibited D2High in rat striatum (inactive analog, KN-92, had no effect) (Fig. 4). [PSY20] (133) Table 1 shows descriptive statistics of the MFSQ and the WHOQOL-BREF total scores. [PSY39]

5.4.2 Textual interactional resources The scarce number of interactional resources found in the Clinical Psychology subcorpus (see Table 5.10) suggests the idea that within this subdiscipline, authors prefer communicating their research results in a formal and rather impersonal manner, thus avoiding the use of attitude markers, engagement markers, and self-mentions. As can be seen from Table 5.10, amongst the interactional resources found, hedges are the most numerous, followed by boosters and self-mentions. Engagement markers and attitude markers, as mentioned before, are scarcely found in Clinical Psychology posters.

202

Table 5.10. Recurrence of textual interactional resources in Clinical Psychology posters. INTERACTIONAL RES.

Raw frequency

Normalized frequency (per 100,000 words)

Hedges

78

200

Boosters

25

64

Self Mentions

19

49

Engagement Markers

9

23

Attitude Markers

5

13

136

350

TOTAL

5.4.2.1 Hedges Boosters and hedges are scarcely found in Clinical Psychology posters, and boosters in particular are very rare (only 25 instances found in the subcorpus). Hedges are three times as numerous as boosters (78 instances found), but still less frequent than in the other discipline and subdiscipline analysed. This suggests the idea that psychologists tend to avoid expressing a stance, and when they do, they prefer hedging their results by using hedges such as may (11 instances), most (11 instances), and likely (7 instances) as in the following examples: (134) Taken together, these findings suggest that the implications of pubertal timing may be different for African American and Caucasian girls, and thus may provide insight into the mechanisms through which puberty contributes to the gender difference in depressive symptoms that emerges during this time. [PSY34] (135)

The most accepted theory is the one of retrograde menstruation, according to which during menstruation small pieces of endometrial tissue move backwards in the tube implanting themselves in the abdomen outside of the uterine cavity (2). [PSY39]

(137) Therefore, upregulation of CaMKII? (or of CaMKII ratio) is likely a key component of schizophrenia. [PSY20] (138) It is therefore likely that different alcohol prevention and intervention strategies would be effective for these disparate populations. It might be useful to adapt

203

the Brief Motivational Intervention (BMI; Monti, Tevyaw, & Borsari, 2008) for use with this population, given its reflective listening and empathy components and specific techniques for change; it would be possible to use a brief group/ cohort model with a prevention or early intervention focus. [PSY01]

5.4.2.2 Boosters As mentioned above, Clinical Psychologists utilise boosters less frequently than hedges but this type of metadiscourse resource still ranks second among the textual interactional resources searched. Only 4 instances of the booster show (examples (139), (141), and (142)) and 3 instances of the booster essential were found (example (140)). Other boosters utilised are the verbs confirm, determine, found + that, must, and perceive and the adverbs actually, indeed, and clearly, the adjectives apparent and clear, the preposition more + than, the phrase it is clear, and the noun evidence. (139) Heterozygous CaMKII? knock-out mice show a 50% reduction in CaMKII mRNA and features analogous to schizophrenia. [PSY20] (140) Calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) plays an essential role in neurodevelopment and in neural function. [PSY20] (141) Multivariate Analysis of Variance also shows a significant correlation between total score obtained by the two groups in both questionnaires. [PSY39] (142) Table 1 shows descriptive statistics of the MFSQ and the WHOQOL-BREF total scores. […] Our results provide evidence that women with endometriosis have a reduced quality of life and a negative perception of their health confirming data literature and our hypothesis. Furthermore, women with endometriosis, compared with the CG, showed lower level of sexual and relational satisfaction and a high presence of pain during intercourse. It is clear that the disease has a strong negative impact on women’s life. Therefore, it is important to implement an integrated work between physicians and psychologists to provide support for women in their daily lives. [PSY39]

204

5.4.2.3 Self-mentions Only 20 instances of self-mentions were found in the posters analysed ‒ a clear indication that the writing style of Clinical Psychologists tends to be impersonal and objective instead of subjective. As can be seen in Appendix 7 (Table 28), the only instances of self-mention found are the first person plural pronoun we (10 instances) (see example (143)), the first person singular pronoun I (6 instances), as in example (144), and the possessive adjective our (3 instances), as in example (145). (143) CaMKII knockouts satisfy a large list of behavioural parameters of a schizophrenia animal model (12) and have an elevated level of D2High, a biomarker of all schizophrenia animal models we have examined thus far (8). [PSY20] (144) I hypothesized that: 1) early pubertal timing in interaction with peer victimization would predict increased symptoms of depression for boys and girls of both races, and 2) the effect of the Pubertal Timing x Peer Victimization interaction on depression symptoms would be strongest. [PSY34] (145) Our results provide evidence that women with endometriosis have a reduced quality of life and a negative perception of their health confirming data literature and our hypothesis. Our results provide evidence that women with endometriosis have a reduced quality of life and a negative perception of their health confirming data literature and our hypothesis. [PSY39]

5.4.2.4 Engagement markers Like attitude markers, engagement markers are an important indication of the involvement of the reader and the creation of solidarity among scholars. In the case of psychologists, instances of questions directed to the potential reader were found (4 instances), as well as of the verb note, and the possessive pronoun our. Hereafter are examples of few engagement markers found in the subcorpus. Extracts (146) and (147) are examples of how readers can be addressed directly through a question, and (148) shows how the reader is included in the on-going discussion through the pronoun our.

205

(146) What role might ‘everyday’ sounds play as sensory triggers? At what particular times of the day/night can ‘startle’ responses or elevated anxiety be observed? [PSY33] (147) Issue: Is the deficit in configural processing of faces in DP due to atypical LSF processing? [PSY09] (148) With our ears we can pick up particular frequencies and yet others are transmitted to the brain by vibrations collected through the physical organism ‘the body’ and all its parts. [PSY33]

5.4.2.5 Attitude markers Surprisingly, within the whole subcorpus, only 5 instances of attitude markers were found, indicating that within this subdiscipline, authors very rarely convey surprise, agreement, importance, obligation, or frustration related to the information given. The only attitude marker utilised within this subcorpus is the adjective/adverb important(ly) (4 instances) (examples (149) and (150)) and the auxiliary verb must (1 hit), as shown in Appendix 7, Table 30. (149) Since schizophrenia is thought to be a disease of neurodevelopment, it is important to note that CaMKII plays an essential role in the establishment and modulation of the GABA, AMPA and NMDA pathways, which have been shown to be central to the etiology of the disease, and that abnormal CaMKII activity was shown to permanently alter neurodevelopment (1). [PSY12] (150) Importantly, CaMKII also controls one of the most important neuropathological phenomena present both in humans with schizophrenia and in animal models of the disease, an enhanced amphetamine-induced dopamine release (4, 5). [PSY12]

206

5.4.3 Visual interactive resources Table 5.11 highlights the use of visual interactive resources in Clinical Psychology posters, which help in creating clear and organized posters, easy to read and understand. Table 5.11. Visual interactive resources found in the Clinical Psychology subcorpus. INTERACTIVE RES.

Occurrences

% on total

Interactive Fonts

89

31.4

Graphic elements

76

26.8

Framing

52

18.3

Information value

37

13

Connective elements

29

10.2

TOTAL

283

 100

The most frequent visual interactive resources used are interactive fonts (31.5%), graphic elements (26.8%), and framing (18.4%). The two visual interactive devices that are used less frequently, but are still quite recurrent, are information value (13%) and connective elements (10.3%). Looking at Table 5.12, we see the preferred use Clinical Psychologists make of every type of visual interactive resource. Each single resource will be analysed in the sections that follow. Table 5.12. Visual interactive resources in Clinical Psychology posters. INTERACTIVE RESOURCES Interactive Fonts Subtotal

Achieved through Font size Font colour Font type

Frequency

%

38 37 14 89

13.4 13 4.9 31.4

207

INTERACTIVE RESOURCES

Graphic elements

Achieved through Chart Table Use of schematic analytical pictures Pictures Taxonomies (Covert/Overt) Flowcharts Conversion process Networks

Subtotal Framing

Colour contrast Frame lines

Subtotal

Information Value

Left–Right Top–Bottom Left–right + top–bottom Triptych Centre–Margin

Subtotal

Connective Elements

Allignment/Disallignment Repetition of shapes Repetition of colour Vectors (size, colour, shape, attenuated/amplified (density/frequency))

Subtotal Total

Frequency

%

29 21 9 9 4 2 1 1 76 30 22 52 31 3 2 1 0 37 10 8 8

10.2 7.4 3.1 3.1 1.4 0.7 0.3 0.3 26.8 10.6 7.7 18.3 10.9 1 0.7 0.3 0 13 3.5 2.8 2.8

3

1

29 283

10.2 100

5.4.3.1 Interactive fonts As noted in Table 5.11, Clinical Psychologists use first and foremost interactive fonts to guide the reader in the comprehension of the poster. These authors often use different font colours, font types, and font sizes to immediately signal different sections of the poster. In Figure 5.16 for example, we see text in four colours: the title is in red, the authors’ names are in orange, the sections in the text titled ‘Aim’ and ‘Conclusions’ 208

are in red, and the rest of the text is in black. When we look at the poster we immediately understand that the reader wants us to concentrate on the title and the authors’ names first, followed by the aim of the research and the conclusion, as they stand out from the rest of the text. The same poster also uses font size and font type as interactive devices, because the titles of the sections contained in the poster are written in a bigger, underlined font, so that the reader immediately grasps that those are the main sections of the poster.

Figure 5.16. Example of font colour, font size, and font type used as visual interactive resources in a Clinical Psychology poster [CPSY09].

5.4.3.2 Graphic elements The number of tables found in posters is high, which indicates that this subdiscipline, as High Energy Particle Physics, provides experimental data and places itself midways along the continuum from hard sciences to soft sciences. It retains the typical wordiness of soft sciences, but also provides experimental data in the form of tables and graphs. Graphs recurred 58 times, charts and tables being the most popular choice of 209

poster authors. Of the 40 posters in the subcorpus, 38 displayed either a table or a chart or both. Schematic analytical pictures, pictures, taxonomies, flow charts, conversion processes, and networks also appear in the subcorpus, but much less frequently. Schematic analytical pictures and pictures are the second most recurring visual interactional resources found. Indeed, they help the reader understand the data presented by visualizing it schematically. Focusing on pictures used as an interactive resource, it can be said that they are scarcely used in Clinical Psychology posters, because they represent only 3.1% of the visual resources available. As will be further explained in Chapter 6, this tendency is in sharp contrast with the results found in the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus, where interactive pictures are widely utilised. Of the 40 posters analysed, 9 displayed at least one picture that clarified or visualized what was explained in the text, as in Figure 5.17, where we see the picture of the actual experiment setting, as described in the methods section.

Figure 5.17. Detail of a Clinical Psychology poster depicting an interactive picture [CPSY25].

210

5.4.3.3 Framing As can be seen in Table 5.11, and more clearly in Table 5.12, the third most popular interactive resource used is framing, which encases text in frames, clearly separating discourse into sections. As explained in Chapter 4 (Section 4.4.1), framing can be realised by framing part of the text with a line or by creating a contrast in colour. In the Clinical Psychology subcorpus, 31 of the 40 posters selected displayed either frames created by contrast in colour (11.3%) or frame lines (8.3%) or both resources. 5.4.3.4 Information value Clinical Psychology posters are certainly the most organised of the entire corpus: within this subdiscipline the vast majority of authors (77.5%) organise content using the ‘left–right’ type of information value. Only 7.5% of the Clinical Psychology posters collected displayed an unclear organisation of content, not following any of the information value types considered. Also important is the fact that no centre–margin information value has been found in the subcorpus, revealing that this type of layout is not a popular choice among Clinical Psychologists. 5.4.3.5 Connective elements Connective elements are the least utilised visual interactive resources. In the 10 posters in which the alignment/disallignment resource was found, tables and graphs are aligned so that the content of the tables and graphs is clearer by association and the entire poster is well organised and balanced. In Figure 5.18 for example, we see four two-dimensional graphs aligned vertically, one above the other, so that we know that data should be compared and contrasted.

211

Figure 5.18. Example of a Clinical Psychology poster displaying aligned elements [CPSY20].

Repetitions of shapes and colours are two other visual interactive resources that have been found in the posters analysed, although less frequently (they each represent 3% of the visual interactive resources found in the subcorpus).

5.4.4 Summary The analysis carried out in the Clinical Psychology subcorpus has revealed that in these posters, textual interactive resources are utilised much more than textual interactional resources. The percentage of textual interactive resources (84%) is markedly higher than the percentage of interactional resources found (16%). These results show that within the subdiscipline of Clinical Psychology, preference is given to making the text comprehensible and the development of discourse clear and coherent, than it is to involve and engage the reader.

212

Looking at the normalised recurrences found (per 100,000 words) in Figure 5.19, we can see that the top three textual metadiscource resources found in the subcorpus are frame markers (887), followed by transitions (311) and code glosses (296). The bottom three textual metadiscourse resources found are instead endophoric markers (36), engagement markers (23), and attitude markers (13). Frame Markers Transitions Code Glosses Evidentials Hedges Boosters Self Mentions Endophoric Markers Engagement Markers Attitude Markers 0

200

400

600

800

1000

Figure 5.19. Distribution (in order of frequency) of textual interactive and interactional occurrences in Clinical Psychology posters.

Among the visual interactive resources found, we can see in Figure 5.20 that the top three visual resources utilised are interactive fonts (31.5%), graphic elements (26.8%), and framing (18.4%). The bottom two visual resources utilised by clinical psychologists are instead information value (13%) and connective elements (10.3%).

213

Interactive Fonts

Graphic elements

Framing

Information value

Connective elements 0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

Figure 5.20. Percentage (in order of frequency) of visual interactive resources in Clinical Psychology posters.

5.5 A cross-disciplinary comparison of academic posters In this section I compare the distribution of textual interactive and interactional features, as well as visual interactive resources found in posters, belonging to the subdisciplines of High Energy Particle Physics and Clinical Psychology, and the discipline of Law. A number of features that are not directly related to a metadiscourse analysis but offer additional information on the content and organisation of posters are also analysed here and later discussed in Chapter 6 (Section 6.2). In particular, I briefly discuss the amount of text contained in each subcorpus, the average number of words per poster, and the average length of a sentence in High Energy Particle Physics, Law, and Clinical Psychology posters. I then consider the ‘orientation’ of the poster, meaning whether the poster is horizontally (or ‘landscape’) oriented or is vertically (or ‘portrait’) oriented. Finally, I consider the number of posters following the IMRD format (Burrough-Boenisch, 1999). 214

After this general analysis of the content and organisation of posters, in Section 5.5.4, I report on the differences found in academic posters, depending on the discipline and subdiscipline, in the use of textual interactive and interactional resources found. In Section 5.5.5, I instead report on the differences found, depending on the discipline and subdiscipline, in the use of visual interactive resources in posters. The data presented here will be discussed in Chapter 6, where I answer my research questions (Sections 6.2, 6.3 and 6.4).

5.5.1 Wordiness in posters If one looks at the size of the three subcorpora under study, a number of important characteristics emerge. First, based on a mere word count, the biggest subcorpus is the Clinical Psychology one, amounting to 38,898 words. The average sentence length in this subdiscipline is 14 and the average words per poster are 972. As Table 5.13 shows, clinical psychologists are the ‘wordiest’ authors on posters of the entire corpus, followed by particle Physicists and Lawyers. High Energy Particle Physicists have been found to write less than Clinical Psychologists when it comes to the poster genre, but they produce longer, more articulated sentences that are 27 words in length on average. Lawyers are the ones who display less text in posters, so much so that the total number of words in the subcorpus (22,769) is nearly half that found in the Clinical Psychology one.

215

Table 5.13. Total and average number of words per poster and sentence in the three subcorpora. Law

Clinical Psychology

High Energy Particle Physics

38,898

32,280

Average words in sentence

14

27

18

Average words per poster

972

807

569

Total number of words in subcorpus

Mean

Variance

Standard Deviation (SD)

65,733,614.3

8,107.6

19.6

44.3

6.6

782.6

41,046.3

202.5

22,769 31,315.6

If clinical psychologists on the one hand produce textually dense posters, Lawyers on the other hand are more brief and succinct. In the Law subcorpus, the average number of words per poster is 569 ‒ about half the one found in Clinical Psychology posters, and much less than the text found in High Energy Particle Physics posters. Table 5.13 also reveals which figures are above standard deviation (SD) and which figures are below SD. Any value above SD (resulting from medium + SD) or below SD (resulting from medium – SD) is considered non-standard and, therefore, relevant for this research because it highlights significant differences between disciplines. Having said this, we note that the Law subcorpus shows non-standard values for the total number of words contained in the subcorpus as well as the average number of words per poster (both with values below SD). The High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus instead shows a value above SD for what concerns the average words contained in sentences and therefore is statistically relevant. All the remaining values shown in Table 5.13 are within SD.

216

5.5.2 Landscape/portrait orientation of posters A poster author can choose between two types of orientation: a ‘landscape orientation’ versus a ‘portrait orientation’. A landscape orientation sees the poster oriented horizontally, whereas a portrait orientation sees the poster oriented vertically. As Table 5.14 shows, the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus contains only 8 landscape-oriented posters (i.e.  20% of the subcorpus) and 32 portrait-oriented posters (i.e.  80% of the subcorpus), where the flow of information develops from top to bottom. A more detailed analysis of how the content of the poster is organised using interactive visual markers such as columns, a central image, or contrastive sections will be carried out in Section 6.2.2. It is sufficient here to state that the great majority of poster presenters within this subdiscipline prefer working with a vertically oriented poster instead of a horizontal one. Table 5.14. Number and percentages of portrait- or landscape- oriented posters in each subcorpus. Subcorpora

Portrait-oriented

%

Landscape-oriented

%

High Energy Particle Physics

32

50

8

14

Law

18

28

22

39

Clinical Psychology

14

22

26

46

TOTAL

64

56

Regarding the orientation of Law posters, 22 posters are ‘landscape’ oriented and 18 posters are ‘portrait’ oriented, revealing no marked preference for one orientation or the other. Concerning the orientation of Clinical Psychology posters instead, 26 posters out of the 40 collected displayed a landscape orientation, suggesting that within Clinical Psychology, the disciplinary convention is to design landscape-oriented posters or choose landscape-oriented templates.

217

5.5.3 Poster layout In the present research, each subcorpus has been analysed individually, and results in Table 5.15 show significant differences in the way posters are organised. In the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus for example, only 3 posters follow the IMRD format whereas 34 posters simply divide the text into numbered sections, which aid the reader in the comprehension of the content displayed. Finally, another 3 posters do not follow a clear format in the layout of the text. In these rare cases, the reader is not guided by an IMRD format or any textual or visual feature (headings, numbers, icons, etc.), leaving the reader guessing how the discourse develops. Earlier in the chapter, for example, we have seen a High Energy Particle Physics poster displaying a high number of figures, tables, and a few notes, but the reader is given no indication in which order he/she should follow while looking at the information displayed (see Figure 5.13). Table 5.15. Type of poster organisation present in each subcorpora. Subcorpora

IMRD format

%

Use of separate sections

%

No clear organization

%

High Energy Particle Physics

3

5

34

56

3

100

Law

17

30

23

38

–

Clinical Psychology

36

65

4

6

–

TOTAL

56

61

3

The Law subcorpus is more balanced from the point of view of content organisation. Of the posters analysed, 17 Law posters follow completely or in part the IMRD format, displaying an introduction, a methodology, results, and conclusions. The remaining 23 Law posters divide the text by numbering sections or by dividing parts of the posters in different sections. There are no posters here lacking a clear organisation of content. Likewise, we see the Clinical Psychology posters, the vast majority of which (36 posters) present content organised in an orderly way, separated into titled sections and following the IMRD format.

218

5.5.4 Distribution of textual interactive and interactional resources across subcorpora 5.5.4.1 Distribution of textual interactive resources across subcorpora If we consider the overall distribution of textual interactive resources, we notice that these resources are not distributed quite evenly among the discipline and subdisciplines considered. Of the textual interactive resources searched, 47% were found in Law posters, 30% in Clinical Psychology posters, and 23% in High Energy Particle Physics posters. Interdisciplinary differences are also visible in Figure 5.21, where the value for each type of interactive resource is shown in a histogram. Differences emerge when we consider the use of transitions, code glosses and endophoric markers. Transitions and frame markers in particular are more recurrent in Law posters, whereas endophoric markers are more frequently found in Law and Clinical Psychology than High Energy Particle Physics. Finally, evidentials are rare in all of the disciplines considered. 1600 1400 1200 1000

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

800

HIGH ENERGY PARTICLE PHYSICS

600

LAW 400 200 0 Transitions

Frame markers

Code glosses

Evidentials Endophoric markers

Figure 5.21. Distribution of textual interactive resources, per type, among subcorpora.

In Table 5.16 discipline and subdisciplines are listed according to their total frequency (last row), which ranges from a minimum of 1,372 219

interactive resources found in the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus to a maximum of 2,820 interactive resources found in the Law subcorpus. Table 5.16 also shows a full breakdown of results. SD is the square root of variance and any value above SD (resulting from medium + SD) or below SD (resulting from medium – SD) is considered non-standard. Table 5.16. Data found for textual interactive resources in the three subcorpora.

 

HIGH ENERGY CLINICAL LAW PARTICLE PSYCHOLOGY PHYSICS

Mean

Transitions

503

887

1,405

931.6

Frame markers

353

296

457

368.6

Code glosses

367

311

628

435.3

Evidentials

59

36

40

45

Endophoric markers

90

257

290

212.3

1,372

1,787

2,820

1,993

TOTAL

Variance

204,897.3 6,664.3 28,624.3 151 11,496.3 556,003

Standard Deviation (SD) 452.6 81.6 169.1 12.2 107.2 745.6 

Table Key: figures in bold: figures above standard deviation (SD) figures in italics: figures below SD)

The figures in Table 5.16 indicate that figures above SD are mostly found in Law posters, and are for transitions, frame markers and code glosses. The value for evidentials is instead above SD only in the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus. A below-SD value is found only in the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus, concerning the use of endophoric markers. Looking at the total amount of textual interactive resources found in each subcorpus, we see that it is in the Law posters that these textual metadiscourse resources are mostly used, as the total amount found here (2,820) is above SD.

220

5.5.4.2 Distribution of textual interactional resources When we consider the distribution of textual interactional resources in the corpus, we note that marked differences emerge, particularly in the Law subcorpus where the use of these resources is significantly higher. Of the textual interactional resources searched, 70% were found in Law posters, 24% in High Energy Particle Physics posters, and 6% in Clinical Psychology posters. Table 5.17 reveals in detail which interactive resources are used the most and where they are mostly found. The table offers a full breakdown of results. The discipline and subdisciplines are listed according to their total frequency (last row), which ranges from a minimum of 350 (Clinical Psychology) to a maximum of 3,948 (Law). The difference between the two ends of the spectrum is the first indication of a great variation in the use of textual interactional resources, as the amount of textual interactional resources in Law posters is more than eleven times the amount found in Clinical Psychology posters. Table 5.17. Data found for textual interactional resources in the three subcorpora.

Boosters

Clinical High Energy Law Mean Variance Standard Psychology Particle Deviation Physics (SD) 696.7 200 421 1,502 707.6 485,434.3

Hedges

64

400

913

Engagement markers

49

266

720

Self mentions

23

229

479

Attitude markers

13

53

334

TOTAL

350

1369

3948

459

182,811

427.5

345

117,241

342.4

243.6

52,145.3

228.3

133.3

30,600.3

174.9

1889

3,439,201

1,854.5

Table Key: figures in bold: figures above standard deviation (SD) figures in italics: figures below SD)

221

In Table 5.17 a significant degree of variation is observed in the use of each type of textual interactional resource. Data indicate that figures above standard SD are only found in Law posters, concerning the use of all textual interactional resources, that is, hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagement markers, and self-mentions. No below SD-values have been found, instead, in the three subcorpora. Looking at the total amount of textual interactional resources in each subcorpus, we see that it is in the Law posters that these textual metadiscourse resources are mostly used, as the total amount found here is above SD and therefore, non-standard. To better comprehend interdisciplinary differences we can look at Figure 5.22, where we graphically see that hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagement markers, and self-mentions are used most often in Law posters, whereas they are scarcely found in Clinical Psychology posters. Figure 5.22 also graphically shows how, in all three disciplines, the number of textual interactional resources diminishes gradually from boosters to attitude markers. 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400

Clinical Psychology High Energy Particle Physics Law

200 0

Figure 5.22. Distribution of interactional resources, per type, among subcorpora.

222

5.5.5 Distribution of visual interactive resources across subdisciplines When researching the use of visual resources that render a poster more comprehensible, results have shown that there is no difference in the amount of visual interactive resources among the discipline and subdisciplines considered. All three fields have been found to produce posters that are comprehensible to their public, by using visual interactive resources that successfully manage and organize the flow of information. However, a disparity in the distribution of each type of resource has emerged and is visible in Table 5.18 and, graphically, in Figure 5.23. As Table 5.18 shows, in Law posters, figures above SD have been found for the visual interactive resources defined as framing and connective elements. Table 5.18. Data found for visual interactive resources in the three subcorpora.

 

HIGH ENERGY PARTICLE PHYSICS

LAW

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

11 %

13 %

Information value

12 %

Framing

16 %

33 %

18 %

Connective elements

16 %

24 %

10 %

Graphic elements

39 %

13 %

27 %

Fonts

17 %

19 %

32 %

Mean

Variance

Standard Deviation

12%

1

1%

22.3%

86.3

9.2%

16.6%

49.3

7%

26.3%

169.3

13%

22.6%

66.3

8.1%

Table Key: figures in bold: figures above standard deviation (SD) figures in italics: figures below SD)

The Clinical Psychology subcorpus is characterised by an above-SD value for fonts, which reveals that Clinical Psychologists prefer using fonts (font type, size, and colour) to signal important textual elements and guide the reader in understanding content. No below-SD values 223

have been found for visual interactive resources. Figure 5.23 shows how the use of visual interactive resources diminished depending on the type of resource. In the table we see that the most utilized visual resource are graphic elements, followed in decreasing order, by fonts, framing, connective elements and lastly, information value. 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5

High Energy Particle Physics Law Clinical Psychology

0

Figure 5.23. Distribution of visual interactive resources, per type, among subcorpora.

Table 5.19 summarises the results found for each type of visual interactive resource in each subcorpus, showing not only the percentage for each category, but also the percentage of each single resource and the SD for each value. We see that graphic elements are the visual resources most frequently utilised in the corpus, followed by interactive fonts, framing, connective elements, and information value.

224

Table 5.19. Visual interactive resources, per type, among the three subcorpora.

 

 

Frame lines Framing Colour contrast

6,4

6.5

6.8

0.5

0.7

10.1

7.7

10.6

9.4

2.4

1.5

16.4

36.4

18.3

27.3

121.87

11

Font types

7.8

5.6

4.9

6.1

2.29

1.5

Font color

5.6

7.4

13

8.6

14.8

3.8

Font size

3.7

11.2

13.4

9.4

25.8

5

17.2

24.2

31.4

24.2

50.4

7.1

Conversion process

1.3

1.8

0.3

1.1

0.5

0.7

Taxonomies

1.2

1.8

1.4

1.4

0.09

0.3

Flowcharts

1.8

 0

0.7

0.8

0.8

0.9

3

1.8

0.3

1.7

1.8

1.3

5.3

1.8

7.4

4.8

8

2.8

8.6

3.7

10.2

7.5

11.4

3.3

Schematic Analytical Figures

9.7

6

3.1

6.2

10.9

3.3

Pictures

8.3

8

3.1

6.4

8.5

2.9

39.2

16.8

26.8

27.6

125.9

11.2

Subtotal Interactive Fonts Subtotal

Networks Graphic Table Elements Chart

Subtotal

% in the HIGH % in the Variance ENERGY % in the   CLINICAL Mean LAW PARSD PSYCHOsubcorTICLE LOGY pus PHYSICS subcorpus subcorpus

225

 

 

Vectors

7.4

5.1

1

4.5

10.5

3.2

Repetition of shapes

2.2

9.8

2.8

4.9

17.8

4.2

3.3

8.4

2.8

4.8

9.6

3

2.6

7.4

3.5

4.5

6.5

2.5

15.6

30.8

10.2

18.8

114

10.6

Left–Right

1.1

2.8

10.9

4.9

27.4

5.2

Triptych

1.8

5.1

0.3

2

1.3

1.1

Top–Bottom

3.3

1.8

1

2.1

1.7

1.3

3

2.3

0.7

2

1.3

1.1

2.2

0

0

0.7

1.6

1.2

11.4

12.1

1.3

12.1

0.6

0.8

Connective Ele- Repetition ments of colour Allignment/ Disallignment Subtotal

Information Value

Left–right + top– bottom Centre– Margin

Subtotal

% in the HIGH % in the Variance ENERGY % in the CLINICAL Mean LAW PARSD PSYCHOsubcorTICLE LOGY pus PHYSICS subcorpus subcorpus

Table Key: figures highlighted in green: figures above standard deviation (SD) figures highlighted in violet: figures below SD)

However, the distribution of each single visual interactive resource and its statistical significance should also be analysed because it uncovers discipline-specific patterns. First of all, all the authors in the corpus use the framing technique, although Clinical Psychologists prefer using frame lines instead of colour contrast to delimit an area of the poster. Colour contrast is instead scarcely used in the Law subcorpus if compared to the other two subcorpora. The use of interactive fonts shows discipline-related preferences: Physicists prefer aiding comprehension 226

of the text by using different font types, whereas clinical psychologists opt for different font colours. A value below SD is instead found in the use of font size in the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus. Different graphic elements are also used depending on the discipline of the author. Flowcharts and schematic analytical pictures are mostly used by High Energy Particle Physicists, whereas taxonomies are the preferred graphic element of Lawyers. Conversion processes, networks and pictures are scarcely found in Clinical Psychology posters, and tables and charts are the graphic elements that Lawyers use the least. Connective elements show a larger degree of disparity among disciplines: On the one hand, Clinical Psychologists rarely use vectors and on the other hand, Lawyers clearly favour repetition of shapes, repetition of colour and alignment/disallignment to clarify the flow of information. Finally, the category ‘information value’ is not used in the same way across the discipline and subdisciplines investigated. Clinical Psychology posters typically follow a left–right organisation of content, whereas High Energy Particle Physicists prefer organising content using a centre–margin layout, which is only found in this subcorpus. Finally, Lawyers have been found to favour the triptych type the most.

5.5.6 Summary of findings across subcorpora The interdisciplinary analysis reported in the present chapter has revealed interesting patterns in the interactive and interactional textual and the interactive visual resources present in posters, highlighting different communicative strategies employed by poster presenters, depending on their discipline and subdiscipline: •

•

First, a word count reveals that Clinical Psychologists are the ‘wordiest’ poster authors of the entire corpus, followed by High Energy Particle Physicists and Lawyers. High Energy Particle Physicists however, are the authors that produce longer, more elaborated sentences. Concerning the portrait or landscape orientation of posters, we have seen that High Energy Particle Physicists and Clinical Psychologists prefer different types of orientation, the first choosing 227

•

•

•

•

228

portrait-oriented posters more, while the latter displaying landscape-oriented posters more often. Lawyers however display no particular preference, and we see both orientations represented equally in their subcorpus. Significant differences have been found in the layout of posters: a tendency not to use the standard IMRD format, thus displaying apparently disorganised posters, has been found in High Energy Particle Physics, whereas the Law subcorpus as well as the Clinical Psychology one can count on posters with a clear organisation of content, that mostly utilise the IMRD format. Textual interactive resources are not distributed evenly among the discipline and subdisciplines considered. Law posters contained the largest amount of textual interactive resources, followed by Clinical Psychology and High Energy Particle Physics posters. Lawyers can therefore be said to be more concerned than High Energy Particle Physicists and Clinical Psychologists with guiding the reader through the text and with making content highly accessible. High Energy Particle Physics poster authors seem to produce textually dense posters that are seldom reader-friendly. Textual interactional resources, which are meant to ‘involve the reader collaboratively in the development of the text’ (Thompson, 2001:58), are used in different degrees in the corpus, depending on the discipline/subdiscipline. Law posters in particular have been found to display text in a form that aids the comprehension of the reader but that also takes into account the presence of potential viewers. They are the ones who, among a group of posters displayed at a poster session, would involve readers more, thanks to the large use of textual interactional resources. In comparison, High Energy Particle Physics and Clinical Psychology posters have been found to use less textual interactional resources, thus involving the reader less. Clinical Psychologists in particular have been found to use textual interactional resources extremely rarely. Visual interactive resources play a fundamental role in poster design, because they help readers understand content and manage

the flow of information, making a poster easily understandable to the public. Presenters in all three academic fields have been found to produce posters that are comprehensible to their public, by using visual interactive resources that successfully manage the flow of information. However, a disparity in the distribution of each type of resource has emerged. High Energy Particle Physicists have been found to use graphic elements more frequently than colleagues in the other two disciplines; Lawyers instead prefer guiding the reader through frames and connective elements, whereas Clinical Psychologists prefer using interactive fonts and graphic elements.

229

Chapter 6: General discussion and conclusions

6.1 Introduction In the previous chapter, the interdisciplinary analysis carried out revealed interesting patterns in the way posters are organised as well as the textual interactive/interactional resources used, and the visual interactive resources present. The textual and visual analysis highlighted a range of communicative strategies employed by poster presenters. With the results at hand, I proceed now to discuss why such patterns are present, drawing from the literature in Chapter 2 and the information collected from the interviews conducted across the discipline of Law and the subdisciplines of Clinical Psychology and High Energy Particle Physics. More specifically, I answer the first research question in Section 6.2, where I discuss the results of the cross-disciplinary analysis of the general features of academic posters, such as wordiness, orientation, and layout. I then proceed to answer my second research question in Section 6.3, where I relate on the textual interactive and interactional resources found in academic posters. In Section 6.4, I answer my third research question, where I discuss the visual interactive resources found across the three subcorpora considered. In section 6.2, 6.3 and 6.4, I draw on the information gathered in the interviews to explain what the motives are for the cross-disciplinary differences found in the analysis. By doing this I answer my fourth research question.

6.2 Research question 1 What cross-disciplinary differences are there between three disciplinary subcorpora, in terms of word count, portrait/landscape orientation and layout of posters? The best way to begin discussing the general features of academic posters is to recollect what was said in Chapter 2 (Section 2.5.1), regarding the poster genre; that is, the poster presentation is a multi-modal genre, in which not only text but also graphics, colour, speech, and even gesture create meaning. Because each single element present in the poster can also be found in other, more prestigious, genres, the academic poster genre has been defined as a ‘hybrid’ (Bhatia, 2004). Also, Swales (2004) wrote that the academic poster has evolved from traditional genres, such as the research article, conference visuals, and handouts. So, on the one hand, the academic poster represents a shorter and schematized version of a research article. On the other hand, because content in posters is displayed on one single panel, this genre can be said to be unique in its form. What also makes the poster an unusual genre is the fact that all the visual and textual features work together to convey meaning (Bateman, 2008). How these features work together and where (i.e. in which discipline/subdiscipline) these techniques are used has been the object of the present research.

6.2.1 Wordiness in posters If one looks at the size of the three subcorpora under study, a number of important characteristics emerge. First, based on the word count conducted in Chapter 5 (Section 5.5.1), we know that Clinical Psychologists are the ‘wordiest’ authors in posters of the entire corpus, followed by High Energy Particle Physicists and Lawyers. High Energy Particle Physicists have been found to write less than Clinical Psychologists when it comes to the poster genre, but they produce longer, more articulated sentences. Lawyers instead are the ones who display less text in posters, so much so that the total number of words in the subcorpus is nearly half that found in the Clinical Psychology one. 232

It is now clear that academic posters display different amounts of text depending on the discipline and that a great difference exists between these disciplines in the humanities, the applied sciences, and the hard sciences. It is also clear that the poster guidelines mentioned in Chapter 2 (Section 2.5.1), which appear on the Internet and are most often produced and distributed by writing centres and department staff, do not apply to (or are not respected by) all disciplines alike. We have seen for example that Clinical Psychologists prefer ‘crowding’ the poster with text. This tendency goes against most of the advice found in online poster guidelines (Block, 1996; Woolsey, 1989), which repeatedly recommend to wisely use the limited space available by not inserting too much text. It also goes against one of the poster rules published by the American Psychological Association stating that a Clinical Psychology poster should display no more than 800 words (APA Poster Guidelines, 2009). What in a research article can be described, explained, and debated in several pages, in a poster must be condensed in the limited amount of space set by conference organisers. Conferences that organise poster sessions usually release poster guidelines limiting the size of the poster to an A0 or A1 format. Because of the limited space available, authors need to be extremely concise, choosing to display only essential information (Matthews, 1990). Besides having to schematize and summarize content, as we have seen in Chapter 2 (Section 2.5.1.1), poster authors are advised to use short sentences and even fragments (Matthews, 1990; Swales & Feak, 2000). Bullet points and a kind of writing that abbreviates words and condenses as much information as possible in short sentences, with the minimum number of words necessary, can help writers achieve these condensed texts. Across subcorpora, interviewees have stated that they know very well this frequently advertised rule of poster design, and have repeatedly confirmed the importance of brevity: I’ve always been told to avoid cramming the poster with everything I have done, because it simply does not impress. Things look cluttered, in the end. Of course, it’s really hard to distil your research into a few key sentences but the effort is well worth it. People have short concentration spans so it’s important to get a few points across rather than overwhelming them with data that they don’t retain in end. To get this part of the poster right, it takes a long time. [PPhy1, ln 25–29]

233

The data of the experiment should be clear and it should not be overwhelming. Too many times I see posters cluttered with small graphs and tables, so small one would need a magnifying glass to read the text. I simply move on when I see a poster like that. [PPhy2, ln 35–37] I think it’s important to keep poster information succinct and readable because that effort increases exposure to the core ideas of the poster. [Law1, ln 90–91] You have to learn to condense, because you cannot possibly present everything you know on a topic in such a small space. Also, you should just include the most important points in bullet points, because complete sentences are not required. [CPsy3, ln 193–195]

Brevity, however, as we can see from the word count conducted, is not easily achieved, and researchers often struggle to condense results while still making the text comprehensible to their audience, especially if an entire article has already been written before the poster is presented. It is not a surprise therefore to see that several guidelines available online6 and through university departments and writing centres advise paying much attention to the written part of the poster, as it often results in being the hardest to master. The fact that posters too often display excessive text is stressed by Stoss (2003), a Subject Specialist in the hard sciences and a Reference Librarian with many years of experience in helping students prepare for poster presentations: The poster is NOT the pasting of a scholarly article on poster board or foamcore and standing by to defend results reproduced in miniature on the poster. However, it is far too often that one attends a conference poster session and finds this format to dominate the method of poster presentations. The poster 6

234

The International Honor Society in Psychology. ( 2011). ‘Tips for paper/poster presentations’. Retrieved from ; Design of Scientific Posters. (2008). Retrieved from ; ; ; (template and how to); (step-by-step guide).

may be closer to “an illustrated abstract” (Hess and Liegel 2000) written large and put on display.

Briscoe (1996: 136), the author of a well-known manual that teaches researchers in the hard sciences how to prepare better posters and presentations, goes as far as stating that It takes intelligence, even brilliance, to condense and focus information into a clear, simple presentation that will be read and remembered. Ignorance and arrogance are shown in a crowded, complicated, hard-to-read poster.

If Clinical Psychologists on the one hand produce textually dense posters, Lawyers on the other hand are extremely brief and succinct. The amount of text contained in Law posters is about half the one found in Clinical Psychology posters, and much less than the text found in particle High Energy Particle Physics posters. This result is quite interesting because brevity is a characteristic that is not found in other academic genres used by Lawyers, such as the research article and the book review (see Chapter 2, Sections 2.3.4). In these genres, Lawyers have been found to produce longer texts and generally longer, more articulated sentences (Hyland & Salager-Meyer, 2008; D’Angelo, 2010). Instead, Lawyers generally use shorter, less articulated sentences, when writing the text of posters. This suggests the idea that when dealing with the poster genre, Lawyers use a different style than they would usually do with other genres, using visual elements besides the text, to guide the reader through the content displayed. In fact, in a number of Law posters collected for the present study, the use of the text is very limited and the concept developed around the poster is presented with the aid of one or more pictures, figures or schematic analytical figures, or even through a visual/verbal metaphor. See the poster in Figure 6.1, for example; in this academic poster, which appears radically different from other posters in the corpus but was nonetheless included in the Law subcorpus because it was presented at the AALS 2008 conference, the brief text reads: Coco Chanel visually taught us the wisdom of the little black dress and pearls. You already teach pearls of legal wisdom, now address the visuals. Are they effectively articulating your message? Are they engaging your audience? Are

235

they readable and visually legible? Take a full-length look at your visual aids: do they aid long-term memory?

The metaphor between the pearls depicted in the visual and the ‘pearls of wisdom’ mentioned in the text is an example of how interactive pictures can help convey meaning and make the message instantly clear.

Figure 6.1. Example of a Law poster containing only 63 words [LAW35].

236

At the same time, Tham (1997, cited in MacIntosh-Murray, 2007: 352) emphasises that a poster should not need the presence of the author to be understood by the public: A poster is simply a static, visual medium (usually of the paper and board variety) that you use to communicate ideas and messages. The difference between poster and oral presentations is that you should let your poster do most of the ‘talking’; that is, the material presented should convey the essence of your message.

Poster guidelines also advise to construct posters in such a manner that they are self-explanatory and presenters are free to answer and discuss particular points of interest, instead of loosing precious time answering obvious questions. In the case of Law posters, the small amount of text presented is highly readable thanks to the textual and visual interactive resources used, but it is also engaging, thanks to the textual interactional resources employed. The poster is used here to convey only the main ideas revolving around the research, whereas much of the communicative message is left to the oral component of poster presentations. It is the author himself who stands by his poster and completes the information displayed on the board, answers questions, and debates the concepts presented. An assistant professor of Law confirms the usefulness of inserting a small amount of text and utilising interactive pictures to accompany the textual message for a better understanding: I actually really like my poster, because it’s very simple. We brought this poster to a conference and it was really nice to discuss the poster in front of people because there is only very few text and just a few pictures so it’s not overwhelming. It’s very clear and you can point out important things with the pictures so it’s very easy to note the main ideas to the people who are interested in your poster. [Law4, ln 138–141]

Why such a big discrepancy exists between the discipline of Law and the subdiscipline of Clinical Psychology is not clear, as the interviewees involved have not provided any plausible explanation for the brevity of Lawyers and the density of Clinical Psychologists. One interpretation could be that Lawyers very seldom use poster templates, whereas Clinical Psychologists frequently use them. The use of a poster template might give an indication to poster authors about the approximate 237

amount of words to include in a poster ‒ an indication that Lawyers are not able to receive, because they do not normally use templates. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we see instead the Clinical Psychology subcorpus, where the total number of words is almost twice the amount found in the Law subcorpus. In these posters, the textual element is predominant, and the very few visual elements present are tables or graphs. In these cases, information appears dense, sometimes divided in different sections, very much recalling the layout of a research article. A novice writer in Clinical Psychology commented that authors attempting for the first time to create a poster often display great amounts of text to show everything they have done, but this is, from his point of view, detrimental: The very first poster I made it was just the typical wall of text that you see so often. Everyone just tries to put as much information on the poster as they can but in a conference no one will stand in front of a poster and read it for ten minutes. [CPsy4, ln 204–207]

Theoretically, displaying great amounts of text goes against one of the most frequent pieces of advice found in poster guidelines, which say that a balance between text and images should be obtained, also leaving 40% of blank space on the view plane, which renders the poster more legible and less ‘crowded’ (see Chapter 2, Section 2.5.1). The choice of posting text only on a poster, however, is not only found among Clinical Psychology researchers, but has also been noticed in the Law and High Energy Particle Physics subcorpora. In these cases, information appears dense, sometimes divided in different sections, very much recalling the layout of a research article. To help explain the choice of posting text only on a poster, it is useful to mention an interview conducted with a Lawyer, who confessed that authors often display great amounts of text not because the discipline lacks experimental data or laboratories and instruments to be shown, but because authors find it easier to construct their posters from one or more research articles they have already written and, in many cases, already published:

238

The first time I attended a poster session, I remember I copied and pasted a great deal of my paper onto the poster. It was easy, I was happy with it and didn’t know any better. Now I would definitely select my text better. [Law4, ln 149–151]

The great amount of text already written before the poster is created seems therefore to influence the way the poster is presented, allowing authors to simply copy and paste sections of text from their papers to their posters. An interviewed associate professor in Law explains that this could be caused by the fact that the poster genre is still in its initial stage in the discipline of Law. I honestly had no idea how to devise a poster because they are new to the Law scene. I understood what they were only when I saw them for the first time, at the AALS 2007. [Law2, ln 108–109]

Researchers and practitioners working in this field have only recently begun to see poster sessions at conferences, and still only a few of them venture to make or present a poster. The lack of examples in the field, a limited knowledge of the genre as used in other disciplines and the habit of not using poster templates that would give precious insights on how to construct a poster, probably explain the diversity found in this corpus. In Law, as in the other two subdisciplines, it is however clear that whenever authors are not informed of the norms and conventions used in their discipline, an odd mixing of genres occur. A number of authors, for example, rely heavily on the format and presentation of more traditional genres such as the research article; others collate PowerPoint slides (see Figure 6.2 for an example) and still others use a very limited number of words per poster (Figure 6.1 for example shows a poster containing only 63 words).

239

Figure 6.2. High Energy Particle Physics poster displaying the slides of a PowerPoint presentation (red lines added by the present author) [PPHY06].

240

6.2.2 Portrait/landscape orientation in posters One of the first choices a poster presenter has to make when s/he begins working on the layout is whether the poster will have a ‘landscape’ or ‘portrait’ orientation. The way the poster is oriented changes considerably the organisation and the flow of information (see Figure 6.3). Because no preference is indicated in any available poster design tips, recommendations, or examples found online, it can be deduced that the choice of orientation is highly personal.

Figure 6.3. Flow of information in a landscape-oriented poster (left) and in a portrait-oriented poster (right).

If we look at the total number of portrait- or landscape-oriented posters found in the entire corpus (see Chapter 5, Section 5.5.2), we notice that no particular preference emerges for one orientation or the other. However, if we look at each single subcorpus, different trends do emerge in the choice of poster orientation. In particular, High Energy Particle Physicists and Clinical Psychologists prefer a different type of orientation, the first choosing portrait-oriented posters more, while the latter displaying landscape-oriented posters more often. Lawyers however display no particular preference, and we see both orientations represented equally in their subcorpus. Although the reason for choosing an orientation is highly subjective and generic poster guidelines do not favour one orientation instead of another, an explanation can be found for choosing the portrait orientation over the landscape one: Conference organisers do often indicate 241

a preference, which is frequently justified by the limited space available for poster sessions (vertical posters occupy less space than horizontal ones) or by utilisation of display stalls in which a horizontal poster would not fit (see for example Figure 6.4, showing a landscape-oriented poster displayed at the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL) 2012 conference, which does not fit into the vertical display stalls available, thus occupying more space than necessary).

Figure 6.4. Landscape-oriented poster not fitting into a vertical display stall at the BAAL 2012 conference.

To justify the preference of the landscape versus portrait orientation found in Clinical Psychology and Law no other explanation can be given, other than the fact that conference organisers within these two academic fields do not give precise indications and limitations when it comes to poster orientation.

242

6.2.3 Layout of posters As explained in Chapter 2 (Section 2.5.1), when discussing the layout of posters, it is important to consider first and foremost that, like research articles, posters need to follow a precise format and content organisation to be clear and exhaustive: as Alley (2003) notes, posters usually display a title/author label, an abstract, an introduction, method, subjects, procedure, results, and conclusion section (Alley, 2003). This IMRD structure offers a precise format that renders the layout and content well-organized and structured so that the presenter can easily follow the format when presenting content orally and at the same time, the viewer knows what to expect when reading the poster (Alley, 2003). Making the discourse contained in a poster clear to its audience should be the first and most important goal of a poster presenter. Without a clear organisation and a well-developed layout, the content of a poster becomes in fact difficult to understand. As mentioned in Chapter 2 (Section 2.5.2), in a previous study (D’Angelo, 2012) analysing the organisation and structure of academic posters, I found that the majority of posters (65%) gathered from the disciplines and subdisciplines of Medicine, Law, Economics, and Applied Linguistics followed the scientific ‘IMRD’ (introduction, methodology, research, and discussion) format (APA, 2009) and displayed content as an experimental research article would. These results are also confirmed by the present research, which sees the Law subcorpus as well as the Clinical Psychology one producing posters with a clear organisation of content, which mostly utilise the IMRD format. On the other hand, differences have been found in the layout of High Energy Particle Physics posters, where the tendency is not to use the standard IMRD format: here posters often displayed disorganised posters, where the division of sections was ambiguous and the flow of information unclear. In this case, the reader is not guided by an IMRD format or any textual or visual feature (headings, numbers, icons, etc.), and s/he is left guessing how the discourse develops. The tendency of not using the standard IMRD format in High Energy Particle Physics posters is confirmed by the fact that only one out of the four Physicists interviewed suggested following the IMRD format to make the poster more comprehensible: 243

I think a well-done poster should first of all highlight main key points so that the reader recognizes them immediately. It should also be logically so that it all comes out like a sort of story. Finally, it should read like a research paper, with sections such as motivation, methods, results, discussion, conclusions and acknowledgments. If these things are missing, people might simply move on to the next poster. [PPhy3, ln 55–58]

A possible explanation might be the inexperience of poster presenters in organising the layout of the poster and the fact that they have not read the tips and suggestions available online, a mistake that novice writers often do, as a young Particle Physicist tells us: I always ask myself “What do I want my audience to take away from my poster?.” Then I select one statement or graphic that best illustrates my message and I make it the centerpiece of my poster. I’ve learned that people will not come closer if they don’t understand immediately what your topic is. If I had informed myself better and asked for advice, I and many others like me probably would have avoided a number of ‘painful’ poster presentations, where no one was interested in what we wrote. [PPhy3, ln 63–67]

The Law subcorpus is more balanced from the point of view of content organisation, and, most importantly, there are no posters here lacking a clear organisation of content. Likewise, we see the majority of Clinical Psychology posters presenting content organised in an orderly way, separated into titled sections and following the IMRD format. Because of this, the text displayed in this subcorpus very much recalls the structure and style of research articles, proving that a poster, although it is a multi-modal, rather eclectic genre, in many cases still borrows a lot from more traditional genres. An interview with a Ph.D. student in Clinical Psychology underlines the idea that the use of the IMRD format and highly standardised templates has become the norm for Psychologists, who prefer constructing clear, formal, yet unadorned, posters: I have learned from reading other people’s papers and posters that I need to follow some sort of format. First I include an introduction, then the literature review, the methodology and so on. If I didn’t proceed like this, I wouldn’t be following APA guidelines and my paper or poster, I think, would not be accepted anywhere. [CPsy3, ln 188–191]

244

A tenured professor also interviewed on this particular aspect provided a simple explanation: It’s frequent I think, for researchers in this discipline to rely on templates downloaded from Internet, borrowed from colleagues or provided by free software. It helps authors in designing and constructing balanced and professional-looking conference posters. […] That’s my main concern: I want my poster to look professional and to be clear. With templates, I get the right colours, the right proportions and I just have to fill in the blocks of text. [CPsy1, ln 163–167]

This could very well be the reason behind the highly standardised poster format found in this subdiscipline: a well-established tradition of relying on poster templates, when devising a poster presentation. In this case, individual creativity is discouraged in favour of clarity and professionalism. At the same time, also Lawyers, who seldom use poster templates, usually display the same type of layout. We can either see this as a confutation of the previous hypothesis (i.e. that using poster templates encourages the use of IMRD format) or we can seek another explanation, for example that Lawyers, not using guidelines and not downloading templates, rely mainly on the well-established and wellknown IMRD format, which they use when they write research articles. This is an example of the occasional difficulty found when interpreting results, that is further discussed in Section 6.5.

6.3 Research question 2 What cross-disciplinary differences are there between three disciplinary subcorpora, in terms of textual interactive and interactional metadiscoursal resources found in posters?

6.3.1 Textual interactive resources in posters As we have seen in Chapter 4 (Section 4.3.1), textual interactive resources 245

concern the way writers signal the arrangement of their texts based on their appreciation of the reader’s likely knowledge and understanding. This influences the ‘reader-friendliness’ of a text and primarily involves the management of information flow, addressing how writers guide readers by anticipating their likely reactions and needs (Hyland, 2005: 44).

The analysis carried out in Chapter 5 (Section 5.5.4) has found that textual interactive resources are not distributed evenly among the three academic fields considered. Law posters contained the largest number of textual interactive resources, followed by Clinical Psychology and High Energy Particle Physics posters. In particular, figures above SD are mostly found in Law posters, and are for transitions, frame markers and code glosses. Evidentials however are more numerous in Particle Physics posters. Transitions are the metadiscourse resources most frequently used in discourse in general and they have the important function of connecting ideas and sentences, guiding the reader in the unfolding argomentation. The frequent use of code glosses and frame markers indicates instead that in this subdiscipline authors demonstrate their expertise by constructing arguments in a clear manner as well as in a less personal or challenging way. Finally, the value below SD for endophoric markers indicates that this interactive resource is scarcely found in any of the three academic fields considered. These results give us a strong indication of how a poster author in different disciplines and subdisciplines decides to manage metadiscourse resources, thus constructing a relationship with the reader that is more or less collaborative. In fact, as we have seen in Chapter 2 (Section 2.6), with a judicious use of metadiscourse a writer is able not only to transform what might otherwise be a dry or difficult text into coherent, reader-friendly prose, but also to relate it to a given context and convey his or her personality, credibility, audience sensitivity, and relationship to the message (Hyland, 2000: 4).

Managing metadiscourse resource correctly is, in other words, the ability to relate to an audience in ways that they will expect and understand. It means creating texts, which see things as they do, so that the text is easier to comprehend, more interesting, and more likely to create the desired response in the reader. It is the ability of turning a lifeless

246

text into discourse that meets the needs of participants and facilitates communication and the spreading of knowledge (Hyland, 1998, 1999, 2005). Learning to master metadiscourse also means we are able to offer a credible and successful writing persona, who is capable of using the correct (and anticipated) forms of engagement and persuasion, thus establishing our point of view more persuasively. This research has shown that of the academic fields considered, Law can mostly showcase efficient writers, capable of mastering interactive metadiscourse resources efficiently, followed by Clinical Psychologists and High Energy Particle Physicists, who are the less reader-friendly of all. These differences might be due to the content that each discipline and subdiscipline is concerned with. High Energy Particle Physicists probably do not need to recur to many interactive metadiscourse resources as they deal mainly with numerical data. Data that do need, for the most part, long, complicated introductions, explanations and / or interpretations. Lawyers on the other hand, rarely have numeric data to display and must rely on their writing capabilities and personas to communicate research efficiently. Clinical Psychology, being an applied science, is located midway between these two extremes.

6.3.2 Textual interactional resources in posters Textual interactional resources, as explained in detail in Chapter 4 (Section 4.3.2), are meant to collaboratively engage the reader in the development of the text. With textual interactional resources writers can comment and evaluate material as well as understand the speaker’s angle, i.e. his attitudes, motives and judgements (Halliday & Hasan, 1989). More importantly, as already mentioned in Chapter 2 (Section 2.6), Hyland (2005: 17) argues that while the phrasing and expressions writers use may sometimes seem ‘automatic’ or unconscious, all language use consists of making choices from a system of finite options. […] The decisions we make when interacting with others, whether to use an active or passive verb, a categorical or hedged assertion, a contrastive or additive conjunction, and so on, are therefore choices motivated by intentions to express certain meanings in specific situations (Halliday, 1994).

247

With this idea in mind, one of the questions that was posed to the subjects interviewed across the three subcorpora was “What ‘elements’ in your poster do you think help the reader comprehend its content?.” None of the respondents focused on the text as an element that could make a poster clear. They merely suggested, at times, that the text had to be ‘clear’ and ‘succinct’, as in the following examples: I try to balance things in the poster, like I add quotes to a title and if I have any pictures or tables or charts, I add them too because visually they are more interesting. I also make sure to use headings, bullet points, maybe also numbered lists so that language is simple and clear, much like in a brief. [Law4, ln 135–137] I think it’s important to keep poster information succinct and readable because that effort increases exposure to the core ideas of the poster. [Law1, ln 90–91] I always tell my students that their poster must be tailored to their audience to be effective. They should ask themselves ‘Who is your audience? What do they want to know? What will capture their interest?’ and I give them this tip: Remember that competition for attention is fierce at poster sessions. People will decide in a few seconds if they are going to come closer to look at your poster, and in a few more seconds they’ll decide if they’ll talk to you. [PPhy2, ln 30–34]

The analysis carried out in Chapter 5 (Section 5.5.4) nonetheless has found that in the corpus textual interactional resources do appear, although in different degrees, depending on the discipline and subdiscipline. Law posters in particular have been found to display text that is dense with textual interactional resources. In comparison, High Energy Particle Physics and Clinical Psychology posters have been found to use fewer textual interactional resources. In particular, the high frequency of boosters found in the Law subcorpus indicates that within this discipline, authors of posters have more liberty to make bolder statements, draw conclusions, or argue for controversial positions. As mentioned in Chapter 4 (Section 4.3.2), the high frequency of engagement markers is also an important indication that Lawyers are the ones who mostly engage and involve readers through their posters. Engagement markers, in fact, enable writers to involve readers into the text and establish solidarity among scholars. Finally, the frequent use of attitude markers and self-mentions is a clear sign that Lawyers are the authors who mostly 248

show their persona in the text, by mentioning themselves and stating their personal ideas with emphasis. In contrast, Clinical Psychologists, use fewer boosters, engagement markers, and self-mentions, preferring a more impersonal and detached style, devoid of face-threatening utterances, but their values are, like for High Energy Particle Physicists, within SD values; the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus in particular, represents the most homogeneous subcorpus in the present study, for what concerns the use of textual interactional resources.

6.4 Research question 3 What cross-disciplinary differences are there between three disciplinary subcorpora, in terms of visual interactive metadiscoursal resources found in posters?

6.4.1 Visual interactive resources in posters Visual interactive resources play a fundamental role in poster design, because they help readers understand content and manage the flow of information, making a poster easily understandable to the public. Creating a poster that is immediately comprehensible to readers is crucial because, as mentioned in Chapter 4 (Section 4.4), this genre is characterised by high visual competition, because if the poster cannot be understood within the first few minutes, it will lose its audience. As mentioned in the literature review (Chapter 2, Section 2.5.1), Matthews (1990) and Tufte (1991) have underlined that in poster presentations, like in PowerPoint presentations and handouts, visual presentation and graphics play a fundamental role in presenting a research in a form that is easily understandable. After researching the use of interactive visual resources that render a poster more comprehensible and organized, results have shown that there is no significant difference in the overall amount of visual interactive resources among the three subcorpora considered (see 249

Chapter 5, Section 5.5.5). The discipline and subdisciplines considered have all been found to produce posters that use visual interactive resources, which successfully manage the flow of information. The importance of producing a clear poster through visual elements is a recurrent theme found in the interviews conducted, as the following examples demonstrate: Then in the Materials and Methods you have a nice flowchart that makes it really easy to explain to your viewers what you actually did and the most emphasised of course, are your results and also the graph is kept here very simple. [PPhy3, ln 59–62] I kind of break up my ‘story’ into different columns, more or less like a newspaper because I think most viewers start reading the poster at the upper left corner and then they read down and across. I the put the basic point at the topo of each of these columns so they’ll be read right away. [PPhy4, ln 74–76] Divide the contents of your poster into sections, such as introduction, methodology, results and conclusions andyes, also an abstract if necessary. But I don’t know sometimes I give that in a handout. [CPsy3, ln 185–186]

The fact that visual interactive elements are equally present in the three subcorpora considered underlines the idea that posters are designed first and foremost with the idea of communicating concepts in a clear and organised manner. The fact that academics are recurrently advised (by their peers as well as by guidelines found online) to achieve both coverage and clarity might explain why all authors strive to produce posters that follow a precise format and content organisation. The distribution of each single visual interactive resource should also be discussed because it uncovers discipline-specific patterns. If High Energy Particle Physicists prefer using graphic elements the most, Lawyers prefer using framing, whereas Clinical Psychologists clearly favour interactive fonts. The analysis carried out in Chapter 5 has also revealed more specific patterns in the corpus, regarding the use of these visual resources. For example, High Energy Particle Physicists use many schematic analytical figures, charts and interactive pictures to organize discourse and data, whereas Lawyers favour charts and tables to organize and present data. Clinical Psychologists instead use mainly

250

charts (see Table 5.12). Flowcharts are primarily used by High Energy Particle Physicists and are completely absent from Law posters. One of the Physicists interviewed justified his frequent use of flowcharts, by stating: If you have a picture it is always nice because people may not be familiar with your research. Then in the Materials and Methods you have a nice flowchart that makes it really easy to explain to your viewers what you actually did and the most emphasised of course, are your results and also the graph is kept here very simple. [PPhy3, ln 59–62]

Networks are also present in High Energy Particle Physics posters and quite marginally in Law and Clinical Psychology posters, a trend similar to the distribution of schematic analytical figures. Charts are used by High Energy Particle Physicists and Clinical Psychologists but are rare in Law posters. The fact that networks, flowcharts, conversion processes and interactive pictures are rare in Clinical Psychology posters can be explained by the fact that this subdiscipline produces posters that are more textually dense; in other words, authors within this subdiscipline are less likely to schematise concepts. The reason for this, once again, can be found in the scientific content of the disciplines and subdisciplines analysed: Lawyers and Clinical Psychologists work with more abstractions and do not deal with numerical data as much as High Energy Particle Physicists, who must necessarily display data using graphic elements. Also the use of interactive fonts shows discipline-related preferences: High Energy Particle Physicists prefer to use different font types, whereas Clinical Psychologists opt for different font colours and sizes. Lawyers instead opt for fonts of different sizes to highlight different parts of the text. The judicious use of interactive fonts was expressed by a number of interviewees, as shown in the examples below, demonstrating that knowing how to handle font size, font colour, and font type can render a poster legible or not: Text should not be overwhelming and most of all it should be written in a font size that lets aging academics read easily. [Law2, ln 101–102]

251

A poster I think, shouldn’t be frenetic, so I would say not to use too many fonts or too many colors. A colleague one told me to be bold, yet restrained. [Law2, ln 106–107] I don’t like mixing fonts much. Instead, I try using a sans serif type of font when I write headings and titles a a sans serif font for the rest of the poster. That usually works for me. [CPsy3, ln 170–171] I personally avoid fonts that are script or difficult to read. [CPsy4, ln 200]

Connective elements show a larger degree of disparity among subcorpora: Lawyers prefer using repetition of shapes, repetition of colour, and alignment/disallignment to logically connect parts of the poster. Clinical Psychologists, instead, very seldom make use of connective elements in general, which again can be due to the fact that within this field authors prefer not to schematise concepts. Almost confirming this suggestion, one of the Clinical Psychology subjects interviewed commented on the fact that connectives such as arrows can be useless (if not properly utilised): When you spot arrows in posters that are pointing to the next box you should read […] when you use arrows to point to the next box you should read, your layout is probably not very good. So the poster should have a natural flow and should be self-explaining which way it should be read. [CPsy2, ln 172–174]

Finally, all three academic fields have been found to produce posters that use the resource ‘information value’. However, the category is not used in a homogeneous way across the subcorpora investigated: Clinical Psychology posters typically follow a left–right organisation of content, whereas High Energy Particle Physicists prefer organising content using a top–bottom, a left–right + top–bottom, or a centre–margin layout, which is only found in this subcorpus. Lawyers have been found to use the triptych layout the most, which recalls magazine and newspaper layouts (Kress & van Leuween, 2006). One note that should be made on the use of visual interactive resources is the disparity among the three disciplinary fields considered, of the presence of template-generated posters. As explained in Section 3.5.3 because of the results of the survey on the use of posters two of the three subcorpora (High Energy Particle Physics and Clinical 252

Psychology) include a high number of posters created using a poster template. Interestingly, this fact does not seem to modify the overall amount of visual interactive resources in the corpus, as all three subcorpora display them in the same quantity. Also the differences in the distribution of the type of interactive visual resource does not justify a possible influence due to the use (or not) of poster templates. If poster templates did play an important role on the type of visual interactive feature used, there would have been a clear difference between the Law subcorpus (where the number of template-generated posters are scarce) and the Clinical Psychology and High Energy Particle Physics subcorpora (where a high number of template generated posters have been deliberately included). I can therefore state that, for what concerns the present research, poster templates do not reveal disciplinary differences when it comes to the use of visual interactive resources.

6.5 Research limitations and recommendations for further research The present research into the genre of academic poster presentations aims at drawing attention to an interesting multimodal genre, a genre that displays different, sometimes fascinating, communicative strategies. Although a corpus of 120 posters is not enough to draw definite results, it is nonetheless interesting that in every discipline and subdiscipline analysed a number of textual and visual metadiscourse resources can be found and distinctive trends can be spotted. Although the present study has been carried out on a limited number of posters belonging to the subdisciplines of High Energy Particle Physics and Clinical Psychology, and to the discipline of Law, already important cross-disciplinary differences and similarities have emerged. These differences and similarities are expected to become even more evident when the analysis is extended to other disciplines and subdisciplines and the number of posters is augmented, providing

253

information on the different (or similar) academic conventions surrounding the poster presentation genre. To continue to carry out the present analysis and to broaden the available data, a bigger corpus should be devised, representing several hard and soft disciplines. It is advisable to include more than one discipline or subdiscipline belonging to the soft/applied/hard sciences, so that the disciplinary continuum is more fully represented. By augmenting the number of disciplines and subdisciplines as well as the number of posters, the representativeness notion, which is very important in the design of corpora (see Chapter 2, Section 2.8.2), would be fully respected. In the present study during the poster collection, presenters were not asked what size their poster was printed in and then presented. This information was not collected because a poster, being usually a PDF or PowerPoint file, can be printed in different sizes, depending on the guidelines given by conference organizers. However, collecting this information from poster presenters in future poster corpora could be useful for semiotic analyses (e.g. to analyse the presence and use of different visual and textual elements depending on the actual size of the traditional poster presentation). A larger corpus that is not limited to the posters but also records poster presentations with video recordings carried out during conferences would provide a much richer source of data and numerous inspirations for genre-related research. For example, very interesting insights into spoken genres have emerged thanks to the analyses of data held in the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus, at the universities of Warwick and Reading, and the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (Thompson, 2001) (discussed in Section 2.4.2 above). One can expect to find only a rich soil for research in a corpus of academic poster presentations consisting of visual, textual, and spoken components, all complementing each other. As explained in Section 2.5.2, another aspect to consider is that unlike other more established genres, such as the research article, the academic poster is bound to change and evolve with technology due to its multi-modal nature. Several disciplines are exploring alternative poster sessions (MacIntosh-Murray, 2007), for example online poster

254

sessions, digital interactive poster presentations (DIPPs), poster projections followed by two- or three-minute oral presentations, and even virtual science fairs where participants can meet though online conferencing or by participating in weblogs (De Simone et al., 1991; Powell-Tuck et al., 2002). As the genre becomes inevitably more complex, I believe it is important to evaluate how this may affect the skills needed to communicate effectively in this multi-modal form of research communication and how the communicative event itself is affected. Corpus analysis would provide real-life examples of how the genre is used by academics and, by devising a framework of analysis, the genre could be studied systematically. As the present research has considered only traditional posters displayed on paper, other numerous multi-modal elements currently used in e-poster presentations have not been taken into consideration. For example, the DIPP is a PDF version of a traditional paper poster (De Simone et al., 2001), which can be projected on a wall or screen during allotted times. Conferences in medicine have often dedicated sessions during which poster presenters are asked to project their posters on a screen for a maximum of 3–5 minutes, and summarise their research work, so that the audience is able to search for the poster during the traditional poster session. The chance to take the floor, even for a few minutes, is undeniably precious. Presenters have the possibility of displaying their work even before the poster session starts and probably attract a higher number of interested viewers as a consequence. During the brief presentation, the presenter can enlarge parts of the posters, such as tables, graphs, and images, so that he can concentrate on certain aspects of the presentation. A DIPP can also be made available online by conference organisers, not only after but also before a conference takes place, so that participants can browse through a database of posters presented (or to be presented) and retain the information they are mostly interested in. Also important is the fact that when the digitalised poster is no longer just projected on a wall and instead shown through a computer or LCD screen, numerous features can be added that enhance communication between the presenter and audience, as well as expand the amount of information that can be communicated thanks to a number

255

of interactive elements such as a QR code (abbreviated from quick response code), links to web pages, and email addresses. Once again, I believe that a new corpus containing e-posters instead of traditional ones, together with the spoken component that complements the poster presentation, would be a valuable source of data to better comprehend this multi-modal genre. With regard to the framework of analysis I utilised in the present research, some improvements could be made. More precise details could be given regarding, for example, the size, style and colour of fonts and typefaces. This way, many other metadiscourse visual features, which I did not notice, could probably have been uncovered and classified. With the aid of experts in graphic design and typography, a more precise analysis could certainly be achieved and a more detailed framework of analysis could be devised. Also the statistics carried out in the corpus could be improved, especially for what concerns the visual analysis of posters. The binary system utilized in the present study could be replaced by a more accurate and sophisticated count. Also the interpretation of the frequencies found might be seen as faulty at times, in the sense that different frequencies in the use of visual and textual metadiscourse can be interpreted in different ways and can only rely on suppositions and the intuition of the researcher, not on definite data. My discussion and interpretation of the results have been guided mainly by the feedback received by the interviewees in the various disciplines, but I am aware that longer interviews and a more in depth knowledge of the academic fields analysed would probably have resulted in more reliable interpretations. Another aspect that should be considered in future poster analyses is whether to include or not in a corpus, posters generated by templates. For my research I have decided, for two subcorpora (the High Energy Particle Physics subcorpus and the Clinical Psychology subcorpus), to include posters generated from a conference template, a university/institution template or a generic template downloaded from Internet. My decision was driven by the results of the survey conducted (see Section 3.5.3), which clearly suggest that a great number of poster authors do rely on the use of a template, perhaps because it is imposed by a University, a conference or simply because it is common practice

256

of a certain discipline or subdiscipline to download and use generic templates. My analysis suggests that the use of poster templates is not the cause of significant disciplinary differences (see Section 6.4.1) when it comes to visual resources, and that a clear connection between the use of a poster template and a discrepancy in the amount of words and in the layout of posters found in different subcorpora cannot be established. However, I do believe that this is an issue that should be considered attentively in future research concerned with academic posters. Because of the problematic issues raised here I consider this as just the beginning of more a detailed and rich analysis of the poster genre, as I am sure that much still needs to be discovered on this enticing academic genre, so well capable of informing the scientific community.

6.6 Conclusions The social practices of academics can be uncovered using a rich source of cross-disciplinary studies on academic genres. The concept of ‘community’ (Hartley, 2006; Hyland, 1998, 2001, 2004; Swales, 2004; Thompson, 2001;) has in particular interested researchers working in this field and has led them to focus their attention on how genres are written, the feedback they receive and how these genres are used by community members. In particular, research on academic writing has studied different genres such as research articles, essays, theses, and plenaries; other minor genres such as conference poster presentations, have instead received limited attention from researchers, and linguistic and semiotic analyses on this academic genre are still scarce and limited to guidelines published online by university departments and university writing centres (D’Angelo, 2010a). This general disinterest on the part of current linguists inevitably leads this genre to retain an invisible ‘second-class status’, compared to other more investigated genres. As Swales (2004) recognised, research genres are valued different depending on the discipline and its participants. Also, as Hyland (2000) pointed out, depending on the discipline, 257

members are required to engage in different kinds of arguments and communicate their research through different writing tasks: if PowerPoint conference presentations, for example, have become fashionable and increasingly common in almost every discipline, in the hard sciences conference posters are widely used already at undergraduate level (Bartsch & Cobern, 2003; LaPorte, 2002). Although a number of (sub)disciplines belonging to the humanities, such as Law and applied linguistics, are slowly discovering the advantages of using posters as vehicles of scientific knowledge, for the most part, this eclectic genre is still far from being widely and systematically included in conferences and workshops organised within the humanities. Posters however, no matter the discipline, can become an interesting and effective alternative to paper presentations. Posters are capable to initiate discussions between presenters, all the while maintaining an informal setting. Because of this, poster sessions offer an invaluable opportunity for networking – an important aspect of academic life, especially at the beginning of one’s career. Having said this, the present research has tried to, at least partially, fill the existing knowledge gap by investigating how discourse is presented through conference posters and which textual and visual reader-oriented strategies are more recurrent in posters, depending on the (sub)discipline within which they originate. The result of this study reveals which communicative strategies are employed where, which communicative strategies (visual and textual) are allowed, and, finally, which communicative strategies should be well known to novice authors attempting to enter the academic community. In particular, a word count revealed that Clinical Psychologists are the ‘wordiest’ authors on posters of the entire corpus, followed by High Energy Particle Physicists and Lawyers. Concerning the portrait or landscape orientation of posters, it has been noted that High Energy Particle Physicists and Clinical Psychologists prefer different types of orientation, the first choosing portrait-oriented posters more, while the latter displaying landscape-oriented posters more often. Lawyers however display no particular preference and both orientations represented equally in their subcorpus. Significant differences have been found in the layout of posters: a tendency not to use the standard IMRD format,

258

thus displaying disorganised posters, has been found in High Energy Particle Physics, whereas the Law subcorpus as well as the Clinical Psychology one can count on posters with a clear organisation of content, that mostly utilise the IMRD format. With regard to textual metadiscourse in posters, the analysis revealed that textual interactive resources are not distributed evenly among the three academic fields considered. Law posters contained the largest amount of textual interactive resources, followed by Clinical Psychology and High Energy Particle Physics posters. Lawyers can therefore be said to be more concerned than High Energy Particle Physicists and Clinical Psychologists with guiding the reader through the text and with making content highly accessible. Clinical Psychologists instead seem to produce textually dense posters that are seldom reader-friendly. Textual interactional resources are used in different degrees in the corpus, depending on the discipline and subdiscipline. Law posters in particular have been found to display text in a form that aids the comprehension of the reader. They are the ones who, among a group of posters displayed at a poster session, would involve readers more, thanks to the large use of textual interactional resources. In comparison, High Energy Particle Physics and Clinical Psychology posters have been found to use less textual interactional resources, thus involving the reader less. Concerning the visual metadiscourse resources searched, the analysis revealed that visual interactive resources play a fundamental role in poster design, because they help readers understand content and manage the flow of information, making a poster easily understandable to the public. Presenters in all three subcorpora have been found to produce posters that are comprehensible to their public, by using visual interactive resources that successfully manage the flow of information. However, a disparity in the distribution of each type of resource has emerged. Having summarized the study’s main findings and demonstrated that disciplinary preferences and conventions in poster design do exist, I can recall the rationale for the study. I can now state that these findings will allow me to produce more precise teaching material for students belonging to different departments and they will allow me to better prepare them for their professional lives. After a general introduction 259

into the poster genre, each student, depending on his/her disciplinary field will now be informed on how to present research results following particular norms and the conventions, meeting the expectations of the disciplinary community they belong to. Students will ultimately be informed on what is acceptable and what is not in their discipline or subdiscipline, based on what fellow students and researchers currently present at conferences.

260

Appendices

Appendix 1: Survey On Poster Use The present survey seeks to construct a generalized idea of who, how, when and why posters are used in the discipline of Psychology, Law and Physics. The results of this short survey will allow the design of a representative corpus of academic posters, gathering material from authors of different nationality, academic standing, affiliation and with different amounts of experience in poster production. The corpus will then be used not only to investigate the multimodal and visual features present in academic posters, but also to understand how these textual and visual elements influence and define academic poster production in different disciplines. By completing and returning this survey I understand that I am giving consent for my responses to be used for the purposes of this research project. Thank you for taking the time to participate in the survey! [Please notice: Tick one of the answers given. More than one answer is possible.] 1)

Where is the genre of academic posters MOSTLY used in your discipline? (Only one answer is allowed)

a)

Large International Conferences (>100 participants)

b)

Large National Conferences (>100 participants)

c)

Small International Conferences (100 participants)

–

40%

–

c) Small International Conferences (