Metadiscoursal Realisation of Pragmatic Strategies @ResearchProject Twitter Accounts

Abstract

To ensure the global communication and visibility of their investigations, international research projects leverage online settings and endorse specific digital academic practices. Twitter as a Social Medium for Research Purposes has become an effective outlet to widely disseminate their project development, knowledge production and research findings. To meet these aims, research groups display pragmatic strategies responding to three overarching communicative intentions –informative, interactional and promotional– as well as metadiscursive markers to establish links through their texts with the audience. This paper analyses these practices by looking into the metadiscoursal realisations of a taxonomy of twenty-seven data-driven pragmatic strategies in ten Horizon2020 research project Twitter accounts. First, we revisit metadiscursive adjustments for the digital environment of Twitter. Then, we identify salient metadiscourse features instantatiating the pragmatic strategies using NVivo. In general, interactional metadiscursive features predominate over interactive ones, being attitude markers, self-mentions and directives characteristic markers in informative, promotional and interactional strategies, respectively. Moreover, some metadiscourse categories are found to rely on non-verbal markers for their realisation. The analysis expands the understanding of complex digital discursive practices developed by researchers to disseminate their results, account for their funding, make themselves visible and engage multiple audiences.