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

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

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

Pragmática, discurso y género en la formación del traductor especializado

El objetivo de este artículo es describir y evaluar la implementación de una asignatura obligatoria de carácter transversal del Máster oficial en Traducción de textos especializados de la Universidad de Zaragoza que intenta poner en contacto los desarrollos teóricos de la Pragmática y del Análisis del Discurso con la práctica de la traducción especializada (inglés-español). Se presentan el programa y los contenidos, así como la planificación y desarrollo de tareas en torno a ellos. Además, se muestran los resultados de una encuesta cumplimentada por los estudiantes para evaluar sus percepciones y actitudes hacia el planteamiento de los conceptos abordados en la asignatura y su utilidad. The aim of this article is to describe and evaluate the implementation of a cross-sectional module from the syllabus of the official master''s degree in Translation of Specialised Texts of the University of Zaragoza (Spain). This module seeks to relate the theoretical aspects of Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis with the practice of English into Spanish specialised translation. Its syllabus and contents are presented together with the planning and design of tasks in the different units and topics. In addition, the article shows the results of a questionnaire which was filled in by the students in order to evaluate their attitudes and perceptions regarding the concepts targeted in the module and their usefulness

Search for slow magnetic monopoles with the NOvA detector on the surface

We report a search for a magnetic monopole component of the cosmic-ray flux in a 95-day exposure of the NOvA experiment’s Far Detector, a 14 kt segmented liquid scintillator detector designed primarily to observe GeV-scale electron neutrinos. No events consistent with monopoles were observed, setting an upper limit on the flux of 2 × 10−14 cm−2 s−1 sr−1 at 90% C.L. for monopole speed 6 × 10−4 < β < 5 × 10−3 and mass greater than 5 × 108 GeV. Because of NOvA’s small overburden of 3 meters-water equivalent, this constraint covers a previously unexplored low-mass region

Measurement of the νe -Nucleus Charged-Current Double-Differential Cross Section at «eν »=2.4 GeV Using NOvA

The inclusive electron neutrino charged-current cross section is measured in the NOvA near detector using 8.02×1020 protons-on-target in the NuMI beam. The sample of GeV electron neutrino interactions is the largest analyzed to date and is limited by ≃17% systematic rather than the ≃7.4% statistical uncertainties. The double-differential cross section in final-state electron energy and angle is presented for the first time, together with the single-differential dependence on Q2 (squared four-momentum transfer) and energy, in the range 1 GeV≤Eν<6 GeV. Detailed comparisons are made to the predictions of the GENIE, GiBUU, NEUT, and NuWro neutrino event generators. The data do not strongly favor a model over the others consistently across all three cross sections measured, though some models have especially good or poor agreement in the single differential cross section vs Q2

Measurement of the double-differential muon-neutrino charged-current inclusive cross section in the NOvA near detector

We report cross-section measurements of the final-state muon kinematics for νμ charged-current interactions in the NOvA near detector using an accumulated 8.09×1020 protons on target in the NuMI beam. We present the results as a double-differential cross section in the observed outgoing muon energy and angle, as well as single-differential cross sections in the derived neutrino energy, Eν, and square of the four-momentum transfer, Q2. We compare the results to inclusive cross-section predictions from various neutrino event generators via χ2 calculations using a covariance matrix that accounts for bin-to-bin correlations of systematic uncertainties. These comparisons show a clear discrepancy between the data and each of the tested predictions at forward muon angle and low Q2, indicating a missing suppression of the cross section in current neutrino-nucleus scattering models

Supernova neutrino detection in NOvA

The NOvA long-baseline neutrino experiment uses a pair of large, segmented, liquid-scintillator calorimeters to study neutrino oscillations, using GeV-scale neutrinos from the Fermilab NuMI beam. These detectors are also sensitive to the flux of neutrinos which are emitted during a core-collapse supernova through inverse beta decay interactions on carbon at energies of O(10 MeV). This signature provides a means to study the dominant mode of energy release for a core-collapse supernova occurring in our galaxy. We describe the data-driven software trigger system developed and employed by the NOvA experiment to identify and record neutrino data from nearby galactic supernovae. This technique has been used by NOvA to self-trigger on potential core-collapse supernovae in our galaxy, with an estimated sensitivity reaching out to 10 kpc distance while achieving a detection efficiency of 23% to 49% for supernovae from progenitor stars with masses of 9.6 M_⊙ to 27 M_⊙, respectively

An Improved Measurement of Neutrino Oscillation Parameters by the NOvA Experiment

We present new $\nu_\mu\rightarrow\nu_e$, $\nu_\mu\rightarrow\nu_\mu$, $\overline{\nu}_\mu\rightarrow\overline{\nu}_e$, and $\overline{\nu}_\mu\rightarrow\overline{\nu}_\mu$ oscillation measurements by the NOvA experiment, with a 50% increase in neutrino-mode beam exposure over the previously reported results. The additional data, combined with previously published neutrino and antineutrino data, are all analyzed using improved techniques and simulations. A joint fit to the $\nu_e$, $\nu_\mu$, $\overline{\nu}_e$, and $\overline{\nu}_\mu$ candidate samples within the 3-flavor neutrino oscillation framework continues to yield a best-fit point in the normal mass ordering and the upper octant of the $\theta_{23}$ mixing angle, with $\Delta m^{2}_{32} = (2.41\pm0.07)\times 10^{-3}$ eV$^2$ and $\sin^2\theta_{23} = 0.57^{+0.03}_{-0.04}$. The data disfavor combinations of oscillation parameters that give rise to a large asymmetry in the rates of $\nu_e$ and $\overline{\nu}_e$ appearance. This includes values of the CP-violating phase in the vicinity of $\delta_\text{CP} = \pi/2$ which are excluded by $>3\sigma$ for the inverted mass ordering, and values around $\delta_\text{CP} = 3\pi/2$ in the normal ordering which are disfavored at 2$\sigma$ confidence.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures. Supplementary material attached (7 figures