Expressing Lesser Relevance in Academic Conference Presentations

Abstract

While marking importance and relevance in academic discourse has been a widely researched topic, markers of lesser significance have so far been understudied. The article therefore focuses on some of the discoursal means of expressing lesser importance in conference presentations. The corpus of the study comprises recordings of 20 presentations in English at international linguistics conferences by speakers of various cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The methodology follows Deroey and Taverniers’s (2012) study of lecture discourse, whereby depending on the way lesser importance is expressed, the markers are grouped under five categories. Their methodology is checked against the data provided by the transcriptions of the conference recordings to ascertain the extent to which it is applicable to other spoken academic genres. The ultimate objective is to provide steppingstones for interpreting information and distinguishing between what is important and relevant and less so in conference presentations, as well as for the identification of presenters’ motivation for employing this type of metadiscourse.

Lesser relevance markers in Chinese academic spoken English corpus: a cross-disciplinary study on pragmatic features

“…The research involved preliminary screening, corpus retrieval, determination of pragmatic function, categorization, and comparative statistical analysis. Previous studies, such asYankova and Vassileva (2021), have indicated substantial variations in the usage frequency of lesser relevance markers across different cultural backgrounds. Building on these findings, this study delves deeper into the distinctions between science and engineering and humanities and social sciences disciplines to investigate whether variations exist in the use of these markers across different cultures and disciplines.…”

“…Previous research has highlighted significant variations in the usage frequency of lesser relevance markers across disciplines, with reduced usage potentially impacting readers' comprehension and evaluation of academic papers (Hyland, 1998(Hyland, , 2004(Hyland, , 2005Xiao, 2010). Furthermore, Wang and Sun (2018) found that factors such as speaker gender, discourse mode, and academic discipline influence the use of lesser relevance markers in academic spoken language, while Yankova and Vassileva (2021) observed that Bulgarian scholars tend to use lesser relevance markers less frequently compared to native English speakers, potentially attributable to cultural backgrounds. Hence, the study of lesser relevance marker distribution across disciplines and cultures is essential for understanding their pragmatic and discourse functions in diverse academic contexts and cultural settings.…”