Keynote speakers

Scientists’ digital dissemination practices: A look into the recontextualization of specialised knowledge

Pilar Mur Dueñas, University of Zaragoza

Researchers and scientists are increasingly encouraged by their institutions, by external organizations and by societal demands to foster the global dissemination of their knowledge production. Such dissemination is nowadays very frequently carried out online through different digital practices and texts, and responds to calls to open science up, to empower citizens, and to prompt their participation in scientific matters. The current Web 2.0 and Science 2.0 context in which we are immersed requires complex discursive practices to recontextualize and communicate specialised knowledge in a way that is accessible, understood and accepted by multiple audiences, ranging from experts in their own and other disciplines to a relatively uninformed general public.

Previous research has pointed out different strategies used in the recontextualisation of scientific knowledge. Two types of strategies have been discerned as especially salient: explanatory or illustrative strategies and engagement or attention-getting strategies (e.g. Luzón, 2013, 2019; Calsamiglia and VanDijk, 2004; Gotti 2004; Bondi et al, 2015; Carter Thomas and Rowley-Jolivet 2020; Bondi and Cacchiani, 2021; Lorés 2023). These strategies are verbally and non-verbally realised. To instantiate them diverse semiotic modes (especially visual and spatial) and specific digital affordances can be resorted to.

It is the aim of my talk (i) to focus on research which has unveiled digital practices commonly employed by scientists to globally disseminate knowledge, (ii) to identify and discuss digital medium affordances and aspects which have a bearing on how specialized knowledge is recontextualized to be communicated, and (iii) to illustrate how explanatory or illustrative strategies and engagement or attention-getting strategies are used in a section of our SciDis (Scientific Dissemination) corpus compiled by the InterGEDI research group, in particular, when knowledge on circular economy and sustainability is disseminated through diverse digital practices and texts.
Overall, a glimpse of the discursive challenges that digital global dissemination has brought about for scientists and mediators will be given, and some reflections on the ensuing challenges for discourse analysts when we look beyond the surface of the text will be shared.

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.
Carter-Thomas, S., & Rowley-Jolivet, E. 2020. Three Minute Thesis presentations: Recontextualisation strategies in doctoral research. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 48(1).
Calsamiglia, H., & Van Dijk. T.A. 2004. Popularization discourse and knowledge about the genome. Discourse and Society 15(4): 369-389.
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.

Pilar Mur Dueñas is a senior lecturer in the Department of English and German Studies at the Faculty of Education of the Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain), where she teaches several undergraduate courses in the degree in Primary and Pre-Primary Education and is also involved in the Master in Teacher Training for Secondary Education. Her research focuses on English for Academic Purposes and English for Research Publication Purposes. Her most recent research explores multilingual scholars’ digital practices when disseminating their research widely. She is a member of the research team InterGEDI and of the Research Institute of Employment, Digital Society and Sustainability (IEDIS).

She has published the results of her research widely (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pilar_Mur_Duenas).

Humour and conflict in public discourse

Jan Chovanec, Masaryk University

In recent years, there has been an increased interest in the research of humour in diverse communicative contexts, marking a clear shift of focus from the referential or cognitive properties of language to the interpersonal dimension of communication, as well as to language play and creativity (Attardo 2017, Vásquez 2019). Against the background of the traditional approaches to the study of humour, the talk argues for the need to adopt an explicit socio-pragmatic perspective (e.g. Tsakona and Chovanec 2023) in order to explain some of the forms and functions of this phenomenon in modern mediated contexts. The talk discusses some recent humorous data collected from various domains of public discourse to show how humour is present in the modern hybrid media environment (Koivukoski 2022), and how memetic humorous content (Shifman 2014, Wiggins 2019) flows between the social and public media spheres, particularly in relation to domestic and international conflicts.

References
Attardo, Salvatore (2017) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor. Routledge.
Koivukoski, Joonas (2022) Political Humour in the Hybrid Media Environment. Helsinki: University of Helsinki.
Shifman, Limor (2014) Memes in Digital Culture. Massachusetts: MIT Press
Tsakona, Villy and Jan Chovanec (2023) The sociopragmatics of humour. In: Ford, T.E., Wladyslaw Chlopicki and Giselinde Kuipers (eds.) De Gruyter Handbook of Humor Studies. De Gruyter.
Vásquez, Camilla (2019) Language, Creativity and Humour Online. Abingdon: Routledge.
Wiggins, Bradley E. (2019) The Discursive Power of Memes in the Digital Culture. New York and London: Routledge.

Jan Chovanec is Professor of English linguistics at Masaryk University in Brno, the Czech Republic, specializing in discourse analysis and socio-pragmatics. He has done research on the discursive processes of othering, e.g. in relation to the presentation of the ethnic minorities in online reader comments. He is the author of Pragmatics of Tense and Time in News (2014), The Discourse of Online Sportscasting (2018) and co-editor of a number of publications, including Representing the Other in European Media Discourses (2017), The Dynamics of Interactional Humour (2018) and Analyzing Digital Discourses: Between Convergence and Controversy (2021). He serves on the editorial board of the journals Internet Pragmatics, Discourse, Context & Media and Journal of Pragmatics.