Textual and visual metadiscourse in academic posters : a cross-disciplinary study

Abstract

Due to the advancements in technology in recent years, academic posters have emerged as a popular multimodal genre for information exchange and communication within the academic community. This study investigates the distribution of metadiscourse in academic posters across two disciplines: physics and education, considering both textual and visual dimensions. Aiming to reveal similarities and disciplinary variance in the use of metadiscourse and to explore the factors contributing to these differences, this study examines a total of 60 posters from the fields of physics and education respectively, employing a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis with the help of statistical tools like AntConc and SPSS. The analytical framework for analyzing metadiscourse in text adopts Hyland’s model for classification (2005), while for analyzing visual elements, it introduces a framework for visual metadiscourse that incorporates Hyland’s classification with the theory of visual grammar (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006) and the theory of image-text relation (Martinec & Salway, 2005). The results shows that physics posters demonstrate an objective, evidence-driven style, relying more on visual elements as metadiscourse function, whereas education posters prefer smoother transitions and a more cautious, personalized discourse, balancing visual and textual metadiscourse. These variations can be attributed to discipline’s unique conventions, properties of academic posters, and the nature of research discourse. The findings offer valuable insights into how metadiscourse strategies are tailored to fulfill the specific communicative objectives and expectations of each field.