Engagement markers in research project websites: Promoting interactivity and dialogicity

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

Dialogic interaction with diversified audiences in Twitter for research dissemination purposes

International research groups are expected to ensure global dissemination and visibility of their knowledge production, for which Twitter is effectively employed to reach diversified audiences. This paper analyses the dialogic dimension of tweets published in accounts of Horizon2020 research projects, where group’s productivity and work are promoted, and multiple readers addressed. Our study focuses on the use, in these Twitter accounts, of interactional pragmatic strategies, their verbal realisation through engagement markers, as well as on medium affordances and non-verbal markers. A sample of 1 454 tweets from 10 accounts of the EUROPROtweets corpus were coded and analysed through NVivo. The data-driven pragmatic analysis triggered the identification of 8 interactional strategies. We then quantitatively analysed the use of engagement makers and qualitatively studied the characteristic non-verbal markers with a dialogic function within each of these. Our findings will help understand the complexities of current digital academic professional practices, especially as regards the dynamics of dialogic interaction in social media. © 2022 Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Mur-Dueñas, P. and Šinkūnienė, J. (eds) (2018) Intercultural Perspectives on Research Writing. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 301 pp.

The growing importance of English in international academic communities has recently become one of the key issues in applied linguistics and discourse studies. The international role of English and the intercultural nature of most academic communities has emphasised the need for cross-cultural studies and in particular of cross-cultural rhetoric. Considered from this perspective, Pilar Mur-Dueñas and Jolanta Šinkūnienė’s edited volume on academic writing across cultures is a timely addition to the literature on Intercultural Rhetoric (IR). Thevolume not only continues the tradition of publications dedicated to various aspects of contrastive rhetoric, but also makes an original contribution to the field of intercultural studies by adopting IR approaches to the analysis of academic texts written in L2 English. The volume devotes particular attention to academic genres such as research articles, conference abstracts, PhD abstracts and research abstracts by writers of Czech, Lithuanian, Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese and Malaysian, with a focus on a wide variety of lexico-grammatical, discursive and rhetorical features, such as shell nouns, reformulation markers, the anticipatory it structure, personal pronouns, hedges, boosters, citations, evaluative acts and evaluative language.The volume consists of a preface by Ken Hyland and an introduction by the editors, followed by thirteen contributions which are organised into three thematic parts: Part I is devoted to a three-fold intercultural analysis, comparing L1, L1 English and L2 English academic texts; Part II focuses on a twofold intercultural analysis, comparing English L1 and L2 academic texts; Part III explores English L1 and L2 as examples of ELF academic texts. An afterword by Ulla Connor closes the book.A preface by Ken Hyland entitled Academic writing and non-Anglophone scholars sets the volume in the context of both intercultural studies and academic discourse studies. The preface highlights the close connection between the two approaches but also emphasises that the chapters “offer rich and nuanced findings of academic writing across cultures” (p. ix), as they contribute to a better understanding of the role of multilingual or EAL (English as an Additional Language) research in the context of increasing international English-medium publication.The introduction by the editors offers a nice overview of intercultural research in EAP and ELF and stresses the importance of adopting IR approaches to the analysis of academic texts written by non-Anglophone scholars in order to explore “the challenges they face while writing and publishing in English for an international readership” (p. 1).The three papers in Part I offer analyses of research articles (RAs) written in English by Czech and by Lithuanian scholars and are compared to RAs in their respective L1s and to RAs written by L1 English scholars in the Humanities. In the first, Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova looks at the rhetorical functions of integral and non-integral citations across the generic moves of research articles in a specialised corpus of Linguistics research articles including Czech-medium and English-medium texts written by Czech authors and English-medium texts by Anglophone scholars. Her careful analysis shows that Czech linguists writing in English tend to use fewer citations than their Anglophone colleagues, suggesting that these divergences are related to the linguacultural background in which Anglophone and Czech linguists strive to construct their identities as members of the global and/or local academic community. The next paper by Jūratė Ruzaitė and Rūta Petrauskaitė discusses the trends of internationalisation with a focus on academic conventions in Linguistics RAs articles published in a Lithuanian journal as compared to those published in a well established international English journal. Their paper points at an interesting finding that “in the field of Linguistics it is no so much the language that predetermines differences in the two journals, but the academic conventions that differ across cultures and publishing houses” (p. 39). Jolanta Šinkūnienė’s paper closes Part I with the analysis of personal pronoun use in Linguistics research articles written in Lithuanian and in English by Lithuanian scholars, and in English by British scholars. Interestingly, she finds that “Lithuanian linguists tend to employ personal pronouns more frequently when they write in English than when they write in Lithuanian” (p. 77), suggesting that this tendency is “the result of the influence of the Anglo-American academic writing tradition” and it reflects “an attempt of the scholars to adapt their writing style to the conventions of the language in which they compose the text” (p. 77).The focus of the four papers of Part II is on L2 and L1 English academic texts, covering genres such as research articles, PhD abstracts, conference abstracts, written by French, Malaysian, Chinese, and Czech writers in English and by Anglophone writers. By investigating the use of shell nouns in a comparable interdisciplinary corpus of 400 PhD abstracts written in English by English and French native speaking writers, Geneviève Bordet shows that “the discipline expresses its identity not only through the choice of specific encapsulating functions but also the adequacy of the selected labeling term considering this function” (p. 101). From a cross-cultural perspective, this result, as she suggests, may be related to a narrower available lexical range for writers of English in a Francophone context. In the second paper of Part II Maryam Mehrjooseresht and Ummul K. Ahmad investigate the use of evaluation markers in thesis abstracts (MA and PhD) written in English by Malaysian novice researchers in Science and Engineering fields. Interestingly, they find cross-disciplinary differences in the use of evaluation across the abstracts as well as some rhetorical difficulties by novice scholars to frame such evaluation, leading them to appear very assertive by using expressions of certainty. The third study by Xinren Chen is based on a corpus of 95 Linguistics research articles written by Chinese researchers with a research background in Applied Linguistics and published in the only English-language teaching journal entitled Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, representing three periods of time (1996, 2005-2006, 2015-2016). The author analyses the rhetorical structure of the introductory part of the RAs under investigation in an attempt to reveal whether and to what extent Chinese writers “move over time towards the conventional construction of the identity as creators of a research space in the introductory part of their RAs published in a national context” (p. 129). The study highlights a diachronic change, showing that Chinese writers, from the most recent period (2015 2016), tend to transfer Swales’ CARS model in their writing of the RA introductory part. The focus of the last paper in Part II by Renata Povolná is on the textual organisation of 80 conference abstracts written in English by both Anglophone scholars and scholars from countries where Slavonic languages are spoken (Czech, Slovak, Polish and Ukrainian). The author finds an interesting difference in the types of moves and patterns of move sequences applied by scholars from different groups: Anglophone writers show preference for a three-move pattern whereas non-Anglophone writers prefer a two-move pattern. As she suggests, this can be influenced “by a relatively lengthy style often associated with L1 academic texts, which authors of Slavonic origin sometimes transfer from their L1 texts into academic genres written in English” (p. 168).Part III of the book contains six papers, focusing on texts produced by non-native English scholars from various linguacultural backgrounds with the aim of exploring their impact on shaping English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in research settings. In the first paper Rosa Lorés-Sanz explores three corpora (abstracts written in English as L1, in English as ELF, and English abstracts translated from Spanish) to identify the rhetorical patterns which characterise English research article abstracts in Sociology. She highlights interesting differences between the English abstracts translated from Spanish and the texts written in L1 English and  in ELF. More specifically, she finds that the English abstracts translated from Spanish have “a less complex rhetorical structure (fewer moves in the structure)” (p. 188), showing a general level of hybridity as a result of the translation into English. On the other hand, she shows that in the abstracts written in ELF there is a co-existence of different rhetorical patterns together with the conventional ones. This, as she suggests, arises “as a result of contact among users of ELF” (p. 188). The second study by Jingjing Wang and Feng (Kevin) Jiang investigates hedges, boosters and self-mentions as main expressions of epistemic positioning used in research writing by Chinese PhD students as compared to expert writers’ texts across four science disciplines: Physics, Life Science, Material Science, Computer Science. Differences in their use have been found both across the two groups of authors and across disciplines. The authors emphasise the need to raise novice scholars’ awareness on the expression of stance and of constructing an authorial identity in expected, conventional ways within the discipline. The next four papers of Part III are based on the SciELF corpus, consisting of academic articles written by users of ELF in different disciplines (SciELF 2015). The papers have not undergone any professional proofreading and most of them are final drafts of unpublished manuscripts. Marina Bondi and Carlotta Borelli focus on markers of authorial voice and metadiscourse in a subcorpus of the ScieELF, collected from articles in the field of economics (the SciELF-Ec corpus). The results are contrasted with those from a corpus of published articles in English for general reference. They find that the SciELF-Ec corpus is “characterised by prototypical metadiscursive elements: frequencies insist on a restricted range of evidentials, frame markers pointing to topic and focus, as well as prototypical general labelling nouns and forms of locative self-mention” (p. 232). The paper provides valuable insights into the role of the “cooperative imperative” of ELF users, requiring language accommodation to ensure communication (Seidlhofer 2009). Silvia Murillo investigates reformulation markers and the processes they introduce. She contrasts these markers in the SciELF corpus and in a comparable corpus of English as a Native Language (ENL) texts (SERAC). The comparison between ELF and native English reformulation markers points to similar tendencies regarding their general frequency. However, as the author shows, the findings also “reveal a tendency towards specialisation/simplification in the SciELF corpus, in the types of reformulation markers used and in the functions performed” (p. 249). Enrique Lafuente-Millán’s study looks at evaluation in RA introductions in the Social Sciences extracted from the SciELF corpus and contrasts it with a corpus of published RA introductions written by ENL researchers (SERAC). His results reveal that ELF writers use evaluation much less often to promote the importance, comprehensiveness and usefulness of their own research, which can be a challenge when trying to get their research results accepted for publication in a competitive, international context. Part III closes with Pilar Mur-Dueñas’ study which looks at a specific lexico-grammatical feature, the anticipatory it pattern, in the SciELF corpus, with the aim of investigating its interpersonal functions. The results are compared to those found in a comparable corpus of ENL published RAs from the SERAC corpus. She nicely demonstrates that differences emerge from the specific realisations of the pattern, which appear to be creative uses of the language to express interpersonal meanings. As she suggests, “this reveals some degree of dynamism in the English language as it is being used internationally for scholarly communication” (p. 294).The afterword by Ulla Connor closes the volume emphasising the importance of IR approaches to academic writing studies in an English as a Lingua Franca world.Overall, Intercultural Perspectives on Research Writing offers a significant representation of corpus and discourse work on intercultural studies of academic writing. The organisation of the volume provides readers with the opportunity to either read the chapters in sequence or choose most relevant sections. The volume will be essential reading for scholars undertaking research in the field of intercultural studies, but it will be also relevant to anyone with an interest inIntercultural Rhetoric and ELF.                                                                                                                                           Giuliana Dian

Joint constraints on galaxy bias and σ8\sigma_8 through the N-pdf of the galaxy number density

We present a full description of the N-probability density function of the galaxy number density fluctuations. This N-pdf is given in terms, on the one hand, of the cold dark matter correlations and, on the other hand, of the galaxy bias parameter. The method relies on the assumption commonly adopted that the dark matter density fluctuations follow a local non-linear transformation of the initial energy density perturbations. The N-pdf of the galaxy number density fluctuations allows for an optimal estimation of the bias parameter (e.g., via maximum-likelihood estimation, or Bayesian inference if there exists any a priori information on the bias parameter), and of those parameters defining the dark matter correlations, in particular its amplitude ($\sigma_8$). It also provides the proper framework to perform model selection between two competitive hypotheses. The parameters estimation capabilities of the N-pdf are proved by SDSS-like simulations (both ideal log-normal simulations and mocks obtained from Las Damas simulations), showing that our estimator is unbiased. We apply our formalism to the 7th release of the SDSS main sample (for a volume-limited subset with absolute magnitudes $M_r \leq -20$). We obtain $\hat{b} = 1.193 \pm 0.074$ and $\hat{\sigma_8} = 0.862 \pm 0.080$, for galaxy number density fluctuations in cells of a size of $30h^{-1}$Mpc. Different model selection criteria show that galaxy biasing is clearly favoured.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables. v2: Substantial revision, adding the joint constraints with \sigma_8 and testing with Las Damas mocks. Matches version accepted for publication in JCA

Shell-like structures in our cosmic neighbourhood

Signatures of the processes in the early Universe are imprinted in the cosmic web. Some of them may define shell-like structures characterised by typical scales. We search for shell-like structures in the distribution of nearby rich clusters of galaxies drawn from the SDSS DR8. We calculate the distance distributions between rich clusters of galaxies, and groups and clusters of various richness, look for the maxima in the distance distributions, and select candidates of shell-like structures. We analyse the space distribution of groups and clusters forming shell walls. We find six possible candidates of shell-like structures, in which galaxy clusters have maxima in the distance distribution to other galaxy groups and clusters at the distance of about 120 Mpc/h. The rich galaxy cluster A1795, the central cluster of the Bootes supercluster, has the highest maximum in the distance distribution of other groups and clusters around them at the distance of about 120 Mpc/h among our rich cluster sample, and another maximum at the distance of about 240 Mpc/h. The structures of galaxy systems causing the maxima at 120 Mpc/h form an almost complete shell of galaxy groups, clusters and superclusters. The richest systems in the nearby universe, the Sloan Great Wall, the Corona Borealis supercluster and the Ursa Major supercluster are among them. The probability that we obtain maxima like this from random distributions is lower than 0.001. Our results confirm that shell-like structures can be found in the distribution of nearby galaxies and their systems. The radii of the possible shells are larger than expected for a BAO shell (approximately 109 Mpc/h versus approximately 120 Mpc/h), and they are determined by very rich galaxy clusters and superclusters with high density contrast while BAO shells are barely seen in the galaxy distribution. We discuss possible consequences of these differences.Comment: Comments: 9 pages, 10 figures, Astronomy and Astrophysics, in pres

The quasiclassical theory of the Dirac equation with a scalar-vector interaction and its applications in the theory of heavy-light mesons

We construct a relativistic potential quark model of $D$, $D_s$, $B$, and $B_s$ mesons in which the light quark motion is described by the Dirac equation with a scalar-vector interaction and the heavy quark is considered a local source of the gluon field. The effective interquark interaction is described by a combination of the perturbative one-gluon exchange potential $V_{\mathrm{Coul}}(r)=-\xi/r$ and the long-range Lorentz-scalar and Lorentz-vector linear potentials $S_{\mathrm{l.r.}}(r)=(1-\lambda)(\sigma r+V_0)$ and $V_{\mathrm{l.r.}}(r)=\lambda(\sigma r+V_0)$, where $0\leqslant\lambda<1/2$. Within the quasiclassical approximation, we obtain simple asymptotic formulas for the energy and mass spectra and for the mean radii of $D$, $D_s$, $B$, and $B_s$ mesons, which ensure a high accuracy of calculations even for states with the radial quantum number $n_r\sim 1$. We show that the fine structure of P-wave states in heavy-light mesons is primarily sensitive to the choice of two parameters: the strong-coupling constant $\alpha_s$ and the coefficient $\lambda$ of mixing of the long-range scalar and vector potentials $S_{\mathrm{l.r.}}(r)$ and $V_{\mathrm{l.r.}}(r)$. The quasiclassical formulas for asymptotic coefficients of wave function at zero and infinity are obtained.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure

A combined FEG-SEM and TEM study of silicon nanodot assembly

Nanodots forming dense assembly on a substrate are difficult to characterize in terms of size, density, morphology and cristallinity. The present study shows how valuable information can be obtained by a combination of electron microscopy techniques. A silicon nanodots deposit has been studied by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) to estimate essentially the dot size and density, quantities emphasized because of their high interest for application. High resolution SEM indicates a density of 1.6 × 1012 dots/cm2 for a 5 nm to 10 nm dot size. TEM imaging using a phase retrieval treatment of a focus series gives a higher dot density (2 × 1012 dots/cm2) for a 5 nm dot size. High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM) indicates that the dots are crystalline which is confirmed by electron diffraction. According to HRTEM and electron diffraction, the dot size is about 3 nm which is significantly smaller than the SEM and TEM results. These differences are not contradictory but attributed to the fact that each technique is probing a different phenomenon. A core-shell structure for the dot is proposed which reconcile all the results. All along the study, Fourier transforms have been widely used under many aspects

Spherical model of the Stark effect in external scalar and vector fields

The Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization rule and the Gamow formula for the width of quasistationary level are generalized by taking into account the relativistic effects, spin and Lorentz structure of interaction potentials. The relativistic quasi-classical theory of ionization of the Coulomb system (V_{Coul}=-\xi/r) by radial-constant long-range scalar (S_{l.r.}=(1-\lambda)(\sigma r+V_0)) and vector (V_{l.r.}=\lambda(\sigma r+V_0)) fields is constructed. In the limiting cases the approximated analytical expressions for the position E_r and width \Gamma of below-barrier resonances are obtained. The strong dependence of the width \Gamma of below-barrier resonances on both the bound level energy and the mixing constant \lambda is detected. The simple analytical formulae for asymptotic coefficients of the Dirac radial wave functions at zero and infinity are also obtained.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to Int. J. Mod. Phys.