Engagement markers in research project websites: Promoting interactivity and dialogicity
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Pilar Mur-Dueñas
Abstract
Scholars are currently not only required to produce primary output, i.e. peer-reviewed research articles, chapters or books, which constitutes certified and legitimised knowledge (Puschmann 2015), but also to disseminate such output, which is frequently carried out digitally and in English. In this context it is the aim of this paper to gain insights into scholars’ digital discursive practices by analysing academic websites of research projects funded under the European H2020 programme. More specifically, it explores the ways in which a potentially wide, blurred audience is addressed by means of engagement markers, particularly, reader pronouns, questions, and directives, including imperatives, obligation modals and adjectival phrases expressing necessity. Results indicate that the frequency of use of engagement markers varies across websites and that it may affect their degree of potential interactivity. They further show that some engagement markers are more common than others and that they tend to display specific rhetorical purposes. Differences on their use and function when compared to their use in RA writing are also shown. It is concluded that these interpersonality features have an important role in the potential promotion of dialogicity in this digital medium, and crafting an effective professional identity of the research teams.
6 Acknowledgements
This research is framed within the project FFI2017-84205 funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad and within the research group CIRES (H16_20R) financed by the Gobierno de Aragón. The research reported was mostly conducted during a research stay at the Centre for Advanced Research in English (CARE) at the University of Birmingham (UK), under the supervision of Dr Suganthi John.
Appendix list of engagement markers in the corpus
Reader pronouns: you, your, we, our, us, one, the reader
Questions
Modals of obligation: have/has/had to, must, need/needs/needed to, should
Imperatives: access, become, click, connect, contact, download, email, find, find out, follow, get (an insight into, articles, (email) updates, in touch, involved, started, the benefit, to know), have (an insight into, a look at), join, keep, learn, let, login, look, meet, note, participate, read, register, search, see, send show, setup, sign up, solicit, spread, stay, subscribe, view, visit, welcome.
Adjectival phrases: it is * to (advisable, conveniente, crucial, essential, important, necessary, paramount, required useful), it is * that (essential, important, remarkable, unquestionable), it could be * to
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© 2021 Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
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- Between feature mapping and thematic prominence: Old english se-demonstratives and pronouns in discourse
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- Engagement markers in research project websites: Promoting interactivity and dialogicity
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Articles in the same Issue
- Table of contents
- Perceptual mapping of linguistic variation in Saudi Arabic dialects
- Some notes on central causal clauses in Venetian
- Between feature mapping and thematic prominence: Old english se-demonstratives and pronouns in discourse
- What the frequency list can teach us about Turkish sign language?
- Engagement markers in research project websites: Promoting interactivity and dialogicity
- A sociolinguistic study of address terms in a Nigerian university’s staff club
- Book review
