A Corpus-based Approach to the Analysis of the Video Abstract Genre: A Phase-based Model

Abstract

Academics constantly strive to gain greater visibility for their research, in particular through digital platforms that allow their research to be communicated to a wider public. Alongside old and well-established academic genres (e.g. the Research Article, the Abstract, and the Conference Presentation), new genres have emerged including the Blog, the TED Talk Lecture, and the Video Abstract. While the first two of these genres have received considerable attention in the discourse analysis community, research into the Video Abstract genre has only recently been undertaken despite the fact that scientific publishers (e.g. Taylor & Francis, Elsevier and SAGE) urge authors to present their articles in this way in order to enhance article visibility and improve the chances of an article being cited. The present study, grounded in ESP genre analysis and multimodal discourse analysis, investigates the strategies used in video abstracts by researchers to share their research using a small corpus of video abstracts taken from international journals of three different academic fields, namely Medicine, Biology, and Chemistry. In particular, the study attempts to understand the changes brought about by the shift from the written to the video channel of communication vis-a-vis the dissemination of research findings.