From technical reporter to personal guide
A comparison of plain language summaries
and abstracts in
scientific journals
Plain language summaries increasingly serve as a
strategy to make scientific research accessible to wide audiences.
However, authors often know little about plain language audiences or
their goals, so the rhetorical situation of this emerging genre
remains unstable and guidance for authors remains fraught. To better
understand these summaries, this chapter uses a DocuScope analysis
coupled with close reading to compare a corpus of 150 AGU/Wiley
Earth and Space journal abstracts with their plain language
counterparts. The study yields six areas of significant difference,
including less detailed information and more metadiscourse,
first-person references, and language of inquiry. These differences
collectively reveal the way authors rhetorically shift from the role
of technical reporter to personal guide to readers. The chapter
concludes with two recommendations for crafting and conceptualizing
plain language summaries.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background: The plain language movement and research
- 3.Methods
- 3.1Corpus selection
- 3.2DocuScope analysis and close reading
- 4.Findings and analysis
- 4.1Academic terms
- 4.2Information exposition
- 4.3First person
- 4.4Inquiry
- 4.5Metadiscourse
- 4.6Strategic positive
- 5.Discussion
- 5.1Stabilizing the rhetorical situation of summaries and
conceptualizing the author’s role as guide
- 5.2Limitations and future directions
- 6.Chapter takeaways
-
References
-
Appendix