AELFE 2025: PILAR MUR’S TALK INVESTIGATES ATTENTION-GETTING STRATEGIES
Our senior member Dr Pilar Mur-Dueñas took part in the International AELFE Conference that was celebrated last week, during the 25th and the 27th of June 2025, hosted by Universitat Jaume I. This 23rd edition, aimed at “Revisiting LSP in the multimodal literacy age”, was organised by the GRAPE research group based in Castelló de la Plana.
Dr Mur-Dueñas’s paper, entitled “Engaging scientific digital dissemination texts? Attention-getter strategies in writer-mediated and author-mediated practices” focused on exploring engagement strategies, which play a central role in the recontextualisation process of digital scientific dissemination practices. To meet this end, she carried out a rhetorical, discursive and multimodal analysis of writer-mediated and author-generated online texts related to environmental-friendly economy issues.
Her abstract is available below:
Engaging scientific digital dissemination texts? Attention-getter strategies in writer-mediated and author-mediated practices
In our context, knowledge dissemination and circulation are as important as knowledge creation and production. New ideas must be shared widely, beyond experts and peers, due to citizens’ growing interest in scientific endeavors and results, as well as increasing demands from institutions and funding bodies. This dissemination predominantly takes place online, in various forms, practices, and genres, requiring scientists, scholars, and knowledge mediators to recontextualise specialized knowledge in ways that make it accessible, understandable, and acceptable to diverse audiences. Previous research has identified two key types of strategies for recontextualising scientific knowledge: explanatory or illustrative strategies and engagement or attention-getting strategies (e.g., Luzón, 2013, 2019; Calsamiglia and Van Dijk, 2004; Gotti, 2004; Bondi et al., 2015; Carter Thomas and Rowley-Jolivet, 2020; Bondi and Cacchiani, 2021; Lorés, 2023). These strategies are expressed verbally and non-verbally, often employing diverse semiotic modes (especially visual and spatial) and leveraging specific digital affordances. This paper analyses the use of engagement or attention-getting strategies at a rhetorical, discursive, and multimodal level in a corpus of scientific dissemination texts on economic sustainability and circular economy (linked to SDG 12), a topic of significant social, scientific, and business interest. The study draws on a section of our SciDis database (Pascual & Sancho-Ortiz, 2024) consisting of 30 texts: 10 feature articles from Nature and The Smithsonian Magazine, 10 research digests from Science Daily and European Commission (writer-mediated, produced by scriptwriters), and 10 texts from The Conversation (author-generated, produced by scientists or scholars). Based on previous studies and a data-driven analysis using Nvivo, a taxonomy of engagement strategies will be proposed, and their frequency and use analysed across writer-mediated and author-generated texts. Preliminary results suggest more varied and frequent strategies in writer-mediated texts. These findings can inform the development of tools for researchers, scientists, scriptwriters, and other knowledge mediators to communicate specialised content to diverse audiences on digital platforms.
References
Bondi, M., & Cacchiani, S. (2021). Knowledge communication and knowledge dissemination in a digital world. Journal of Pragmatics, 186, 117-123.
Bondi, M., Cacchiani, S., & Mazzi, D. (Eds.). (2015). Discourse in and through the media: Recontextualizing and reconceptualizing expert discourse. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Calsamiglia, H., & Van Dijk, T. A. (2004). Popularization discourse and knowledge about the genome. Discourse and Society, 15(4), 369-389.
Carter-Thomas, S., & Rowley-Jolivet, E. (2020). Three Minute Thesis presentations: Recontextualisation strategies in doctoral research. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 48(1).
Gotti, M. (2014). Reformulation and recontextualization in popularization discourse. Ibérica, 27, 15-34.
Lorés, R. (2023). Dual voices, hybrid identities: The recontextualization of research in digital dissemination scientific discourse. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación, 93, 69-84.
Luzón, M. J. (2013). Public communication of science in blogs: Recontextualizing scientific discourse for a diversified audience. Written Communication, 30(4), 428-457.
Luzón, M. J. (2019). Bridging the gap between experts and publics: The role of multimodality in disseminating research in online videos. Ibérica, 37, 167-192.
Pascual, D., & Sancho-Ortiz, A. E. (2024). Investigating recontextualisation processes in scientific digital practices: The SciDis Database. Revista Electrónica de Lingüística Aplicada, 23, 101–118. https://doi.org/10.58859/rael.v23i1.649