A pilot study regarding the discourse of scientific research in Information Design: a critical-semantic approach of the coherence of textual structure

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a pilot study, together with a critical investigation of the semantic structure of the discourse in scientific papers, which have been published at conferences and in journals in the area of information design. The procedure involved the analysis of ten articles in Portuguese, with themes related to information design involving methodologies for non-projective scientific procedures. The main objective was to expose the strengths and weaknesses of the relationship between the discourse of the planned objectives, the methodologies used and the conclusions drawn by the researchers at the end of their experiments. To this end, two distinct analytical tools were employed: the semantic differential scale, developed in 1957, and the semantic analysis software - Tropes 8.4 (2013). These tools have demonstrated that there is weakness in both the transmission of ideas and structural coherence amongst the majority of the observed texts, indicating the need for special attention when specifying clear objectives and in selecting the most appropriate methodologies for the desired objectives, thus promoting consistent conclusions.

Keywords

• semantic analysis
• scientific methodology
• scientific discourse