Expressing Lesser Relevance in Academic Conference Presentations

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.21.2.1
Keywords: metadiscourse, lesser relevance markers, conference presentations

Abstract

While marking importance and relevance in academic discourse has been a widely researched topic, markers of lesser significance have so far been understudied. The article therefore focuses on some of the discoursal means of expressing lesser importance in conference presentations. The corpus of the study comprises recordings of 20 presentations in English at international linguistics conferences by speakers of various cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The methodology follows Deroey and Taverniers’s (2012) study of lecture discourse, whereby depending on the way lesser importance is expressed, the markers are grouped under five categories. Their methodology is checked against the data provided by the transcriptions of the conference recordings to ascertain the extent to which it is applicable to other spoken academic genres. The ultimate objective is to provide steppingstones for interpreting information and distinguishing between what is important and relevant and less so in conference presentations, as well as for the identification of presenters’ motivation for employing this type of metadiscourse.

Author Biographies

Diana Yankova, Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria

Diana Yankova, PhD, is Professor of Linguistics and current head of the Languages and Cultures Department, New Bulgarian University, Sofia. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in text linguistics, translation of legislative texts, American and Canadian culture studies. She is the author of several monographs and numerous articles on legal language with special emphasis on culture and genre-specific characteristics of Common law and Continental legislation, points of convergence between legal studies and linguistics, terminological and structural considerations in translating supranational law, approximation of legislation, teaching EALP.

Irena Vassileva, Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria

Irena Vassileva, PhD, is Professor of English and German and has worked extensively on spoken and written academic communication in English, German and Bulgarian. She has published three monographs and a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals and collections of articles. Vassileva has also received various research awards from outstanding foundations in international competition and has worked at universities in Bulgaria, Germany, and the UK.

References

Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Cortes, V. (2004). If you look at … Lexical Bundles in University Teaching and Textbooks. Applied Linguistics, 25(3), 371-405. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/25.3.371

Caffi, C. (1999). On mitigation. Journal of Pragmatics, 31(7), 881-909. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(98)00098-8

Campagna, S. (2009). Projecting Visual Reasoning in Research Conference Presentations. In Gotti, Maurizio (Ed.), Commonality and Individuality in Academic Discourse. Peter Lang, (pp. 371-391). http://hdl.handle.net/2318/136567

Cassens, J., & Wegener, R. (2018). Supporting Students Through Notifications About Importance in Academic Lectures. In Kameas A., Stathis K. (Eds.), Ambient Intelligence. AmI 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11249. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03062-9_18

Clyne, M. (1987). Cultural differences in the organization of academic texts: English and German. Journal of Pragmatics, (11)2, 211-241. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(87)90196-2

Deroey, K., & Taverniers, M. (2012). ‘Ignore that ‘cause it’s totally irrelevant’: Marking lesser relevance in lectures. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(14), 2085-2099. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.10.001

Ede, L., & Lunsford, A. (1984). Audience Addressed / Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy. College Composition and Communication, 35(2), 155-171. https://doi.org/10.2307/358093

Formentelli, M. (2017). Taking Stance in English as a Lingua Franca: Managing Interpersonal Relations in Academic Lectures. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Fraser, B. (2009). Topic orientation markers. Journal of Pragmatics 41(5), 892-898. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.08.006

Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. (2004). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Routledge.

Heino, A., Tervonnen, E., & Tommola, J. (2002). Metadisourse in Academic Conference Presentations. In Ventola, E., Shalom, C., Thompson, S. (Eds.), The Language of Conferencing. Peter Lang, (pp. 127-146).

Hood, S., & Forey, G. (2005). Introducing a conference paper: Getting interpersonal with your audience. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, (4)4, 291-306. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2005.07.003

Huemer, B., Lejot, E. & Deroey, K. (2019). Academic writing across languages: multilingual and contrastive approaches in higher education. Böhlau. https://doi.org/10.7767/9783205208815

Hyland, K. (2005). Metadiscourse: exploring interaction in writing. Continuum.

Hyland, K. (2017). Metadiscourse: What is it and where is it going?. Journal of Pragmatics, 113, 16-29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.03.007

Hyland, K., & Tse, P. (2004). Metadiscourse in academic writing: A reappraisal. Applied Linguistics, 25(2), 156-177. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/25.2.156

Jucker, A. H., Smith, S.W., & Lüdge, T. (2003). Interactive aspects of vagueness in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 35(12), 1737-1769. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00188-1

Lin, C. (2010). ‘. . . that’s actually sort of you know trying to get consultants in. . .’: functions and multifunctionality of modifiers in academic lectures. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(5), 1173-1183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.10.001

Lunsford, A., & Ede, L. (1996). Representing Audience: ‘Successful’ Discourse and Disciplinary Critique. College Composition and Communication, 47(2), 167-179. https://doi.org/10.2307/358791

Lunsford, A., & Ede, L. (2009). Among the Audience: On Audience in an Age of New Literacies. In Elizabeth Weiser, Brian Fehler, and Angela González (Eds.), Engaging Audience: Writing in an Age of New Literacies. Urbana, IL: NCTE. (pp. 42–69).

Mariotti, C. (2012). Genre Variation in Academic Spoken English: The Case of Lectures and Research Conference Presentations. In Maci, S. & Sala, M. (Eds.), Genre Variation in Academic Communication Emerging Disciplinary Trends. (pp. 63-84). CELSB: Bergamo.

Mauranen, A. (2001). Reflexive Academic Talk: Observations from MICASE. In Swales, J. M. & Simpson, R. (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics in North America. University of Michigan Press, (pp. 165–178). https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11411

Mauranen, A. (2004). “They’re a little bit different”. Observations on hedges in academic talk. In K. Aijmer, & A-B. Stenström (Eds.), Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora, (pp. 173-198). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.120

Nesi, H., & Basturkmen, H. (2006). Lexical bundles and discourse signaling in academic lecturers. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 11(3), 283-304. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.11.3.04nes

Rowley‐Jolivet, E. & Carter‐Thomas, S. (2005). The rhetoric of conference presentation introductions: context, argument and interaction. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 15(1), 45-70. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2005.00080.x

Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1991). Loose talk. In Davis, Steven (Ed.), Pragmatics. A Reader. Oxford University Press, (pp. 540–549). https://doi.org/10.7202/602742ar

Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge University Press.

Vassileva, I. (2005). Englisch und Deutsch als Sprachen internationaler Konferenzdiskussionen. In Eva van Leewen (Ed.), Sprachenlernen als Investition in die Zukunft. Wirkungskreise eines Sprachlernzetrums. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, (pp. 389–405).

Vassileva, I. (2006). Author-Audience Interaction. A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Asgard Verlag.

Vassileva, I. (2009). Argumentative strategies in conference discussion sessions. In Eija Suomela-Salmi, Fred Dervin (Eds.), Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Academic discourse. John Benjamins. (pp. 219–240).

Ventola, E. (1999). Semiotic Spanning at Conferences: Cohesion and Coherence in and across Conference Papers and their Discussions. In Bublitz, W., Lenk, U., Ventola, E. (Eds.), Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. How to create it and how to describe it. John Benjamins. (pp. 101-123). https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.63.09ven

Ventola, E., Shalom, C., & Thompson, S. (Eds.) (2002). The language of conferencing. Peter Lang.

Zare, J., & Keivanloo-Shahrestanaki, Z. (2017). The language of English academic lectures: The case of field of study in highlighting importance. Lingua, 193, 36-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2017.04.005

Published
2021-12-30
How to Cite
Yankova, D., & Vassileva, I. (2021). Expressing Lesser Relevance in Academic Conference Presentations. English Studies at NBU, 7(2), 127-146. https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.21.2.1
Issue
Vol 7 No 2 (2021)
Section
Articles

Copyright (c) 2021 Diana Yankova, Irena Vassileva

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

All published articles in the ESNBU are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

In other words, under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license users are free to
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material

Under the following terms:

Attribution (by) - All CC licenses require that others who use your work in any way must give you credit the way you request, but not in a way that suggests you endorse them or their use. If they want to use your work without giving you credit or for endorsement purposes, they must get your permission first.

NonCommercial (nc) - You let others copy, distribute, display, perform, and modify and use your work for any purpose other than commercially unless they get your permission first.

If the article is to be used for commercial purposes, we suggest authors be contacted by email.

If the law requires that the article be published in the public domain, authors will notify ESNBU at the time of submission, and in such cases the article shall be released under the Creative Commons 1 Public Domain Dedication waiver CC0 1.0 Universal.

Copyright

Copyright for articles published in ESNBU are retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. Authors retain full publishing rights and are encouraged to upload their work to institutional repositories, social academic networking sites, etc. ESNBU is not responsible for subsequent uses of the work. It is the author's responsibility to bring an infringement action if so desired by the author.

Exceptions to copyright policy

Occasionally ESNBU may co-publish articles jointly with other publishers, and different licensing conditions may then apply.