AELFE 2025: ALBA ANSÓ-MILLÁN DISCUSSES PROXIMITY IN PSYCHOLOGY-RELATED PODCASTS

Alba Ansó-Millán participated in the XXIII International AELFE Conference celebrated between the 25th and the 27th of June 2025, which was aimed at “Revisiting LSP in the multimodal literacy age”. This year, it was organised by members of the GRAPE research group and was thus hosted by Universitat Jaume I.

Her presentation was entitled “Exploring proximity-building strategies in digital dissemination practices with diverse audiences: The case of psychology-related podcast discourse”. It consisted of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of metadiscursive interactional markers used by the podcaster and by the experts to communicate disciplinary knowledge whilst also engaging in opinion-sharing.

If you want to learn more, have a look at her abstract below:

Exploring proximity-building strategies in digital dissemination practices with diverse audiences: The case of psychology-related podcast discourse

The digital transformation has made it more attainable to endorse “science with and for society” (Bertemes et al., 2024: 14), in turn stressing the need for experts to recontextualise, disseminate and popularise their output on a global scale (Lorés, 2023; Mur-Dueñas, 2024). To satisfy such endeavour, researchers are finding new online outlets which afford and demand novel ways of communicating expertise to an elusive, heterogeneous digital audience with heightened knowledge asymmetries (Caliendo, 2014; Herrando-Rodrigo, 2014; Kastberg, 2019; Garzone, 2020; Maier & Engberg, 2021; Engberg, 2023). Podcasts, a digitally-born dissemination practice garnering more and more attention these days (McHugh, 2016; Egorova, 2018; Spinelli & Dann, 2019; Ye, 2021; Liu & Jiang, 2024), are considered a case in point. Against this background, this study sought to shed some light on the analysis of podcast discourse by looking into proximity-building strategies. To do so, a tailored version of Hyland’s (2005a, 2005b) interactional framework of metadiscourse was adopted to carry out a quantitative and qualitative analysis of ten dialogic podcast openings retrieved from The Psychology Podcast (Kaufman, 2014-present). Results showed that realisations of self-referencing, attitude-sharing and audience-addressing were the most prominent strategies deployed by both the podcaster and the experts. Their synergistic voices cooperated both to make their expertise accessible and their opinion visible. Yet, each of them performed a different role in the process of transferring and reacting to expert knowledge whilst drawing diverse listeners in. Building on a fertile body of research (Scotto di Carlo, 2014; Chang & Huang, 2015; Ye, 2021; Liu & Jiang, 2024), the findings of this analysis appear to point to the fact that a more personal, human touch may be purposefully harnessed in digital dissemination practices to make expert knowledge not only digestible but also relatable to diverse digital audiences.

References

Bertemes, J-P., Haan, S., & Hans, D. (Eds.) (Eds.) (2024). 50 essentials on science communication. De Gruyter. 

Caliendo, G. (2014). The popularization of science in web-based genres. In G. Bongo & G. Caliendo (Eds.), The language of popularization: Theoretical and descriptive models (pp. 111- 138). Peter Lang. 

Chang, Y., & Huang, H-T. (2015). Exploring TED talks as a pedagogical resource for oral presentations: A corpus-based move analysis. English Teaching & Learning, 39(4), 29-62. https://doi.org/10.6330/ETL.2015.39.4.02 

Egorova, L. A. (2018). Popular science discourse development in the cyberspace. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 9(5), 79-83. 

Engberg, J. (2023). Between infotainment and citizen science: Degrees of intended non-expert participation through knowledge communication. In R. Plo-Alastrué & I. Corona (Eds.), Digital scientific communication: Identity and visibility in research dissemination (pp. 149-170). Palgrave Macmillan. 

Garzone, G. (2020). Specialized communication and popularization in English. Carocci. 

Herrando-Rodrigo, I. (2014). Genre evolution in research communication in English. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 69, 35-49. 

Hyland, K. (2005a). Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7(2), 173-191. 

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

Kastberg, P. (2019). Knowledge communication: Contours of a research agenda. Frank & Timme. 

Kaufman, S. B. (Host). (2014-present). The psychology podcast [Audio podcast]. Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/show/4POIiQQjnQOuz0AqnLk3KZ 

Liu, L. &,, Feng, K. J. (2024). Podcasting science: Rhetorical moves and interactional metadiscourse in the Nature podcast. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 71, 101419. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2024.101419