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Part of
Emotion in Discourse
Edited by J. Lachlan Mackenzie and Laura Alba-Juez
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 302] 2019
► pp. 357–386

Chapter 14
Promoemotional science?

Emotion and intersemiosis in graphical abstracts

| Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain)

In this chapter I explore how the visual mode favors the expression of emotion in graphical abstracts, an academic genre increasingly demanded by high-impact scientific journals. My starting point is the set of expectations aroused by written scholarly discourse with regard to attitudinal projection, as well as recent research on emotion in computer-mediated communication in general. Next, I examine the major challenges posed by graphical abstracts and analyze the emotional language of some actual samples from researchers publishing in high-impact journals. My findings identify a hybridization of the genre and suggest that the presence of emotion may relate to the adoption of roles other than those of scientist, such as journalist, advertiser, and entertainer.

Keywords: graphical abstract, emotion, academic scientific discourse, hybridization, visual literacy
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Towards an emotional turn in the professions?
  • 2.Point of departure: Communicative expectations in academic communities of practice
    • 2.1Register expectations in written scholarly discourse
    • 2.2Medium and mode expectations: The visuals of science
    • 2.3Genre expectations: The role of abstracts in academia
  • 3.Transduction-generated challenges: Emotion as distracter and intersemiosis enhancement
    • 3.1Analytical procedure
    • 3.2Examples, analysis and findings
  • 4.A closing thought: The birth of a promoemotional science?
  • Notes
  • References
  • Sources of samples
Published online: 27 March 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.302.14san
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