TY - JOUR
T1 - Vague language in conference abstracts
AU - Cutting, Joan
PY - 2012/12/1
Y1 - 2012/12/1
N2 - This study examined abstracts for a British Association for Applied Linguistics conference and a Sociolinguistics Symposium, to define the genre of conference abstracts in terms of vague language, specifically universal general nouns (e.g. people) and research general nouns (e.g. results), and to discover if the language used reflected the level of completeness of the abstract (whether the ldata was collected or analysed). It was found that half the authors had not completed the analysis and some had not finished collecting their data, and that the abstracts mostly consisted of introduction and method moves. Vague language is part of the conference abstract genre as used by all authors. The function of general nouns appeared to be a matter of 'convenience' or 'anticipation'. Abstracts of less complete research contained open references to the incompleteness of the research, but the universal general nouns implication, resource, thing and problem appeared to 'disguise' the incompleteness, as did the clusters of research general nouns with no details about the research. It is considered that EAP lecturers guiding early career researchers will benefit from this description of vague language in the conference abstract genre.
AB - This study examined abstracts for a British Association for Applied Linguistics conference and a Sociolinguistics Symposium, to define the genre of conference abstracts in terms of vague language, specifically universal general nouns (e.g. people) and research general nouns (e.g. results), and to discover if the language used reflected the level of completeness of the abstract (whether the ldata was collected or analysed). It was found that half the authors had not completed the analysis and some had not finished collecting their data, and that the abstracts mostly consisted of introduction and method moves. Vague language is part of the conference abstract genre as used by all authors. The function of general nouns appeared to be a matter of 'convenience' or 'anticipation'. Abstracts of less complete research contained open references to the incompleteness of the research, but the universal general nouns implication, resource, thing and problem appeared to 'disguise' the incompleteness, as did the clusters of research general nouns with no details about the research. It is considered that EAP lecturers guiding early career researchers will benefit from this description of vague language in the conference abstract genre.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?partnerID=yv4JPVwI&eid=2-s2.0-84865490850&md5=2857aca904b1f0fcbc234c6c53f953bf
U2 - 10.1016/j.jeap.2012.05.004
DO - 10.1016/j.jeap.2012.05.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84865490850
SN - 1475-1585
VL - 11
SP - 283
EP - 293
JO - Journal of English for Academic Purposes
JF - Journal of English for Academic Purposes
IS - 4
ER -