'Universidad de Sevilla - Secretariado de Recursos Audiovisuales y Nuevas Tecnologias'
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to present a linguistic analysis of scientific discourse from a pragmatic point of view. The study will focus on texts complementing graphs and diagrams in English medical research articles. A corpus of 25 texts was randomly drawn from 25 medical research papers and studied according to Brown and Levinson‘s linguistic politeness theory (1978, 1987), though only a few illustrative examples are included due to space limitations. The findings of the study point out that these texts are vital ingredients of academic discourse since they have a clear communicative purpose: namely, to help the reader understand the meaning of the visual information included in the graphs. Moreover, the authors' use of politeness strategies indicates that there is an interaction between author and audience since the aim of maintaining social relationships is attached to the transmission of information. Finally, it is suggested that this section of the article, which is often ignored by genre analysts, should be taken into account in the teaching of Language for Academic Purposes due to its important role from a linguistic perspective
