Deconstructing applied linguistics conference paper titles: A syntactic analysis

Abstract

Following Swales’ (1990) influential study on research article (RA) introductions, some attention has increasingly been paid to other rhetorical units of both expert and learners’ writing, including titles. A key and effective discursive means through which titles are constructed and presented is the syntactic configuration. The present study, thus, investigates the syntactic structures employed by authors of conference paper titles (CPTs) in Applied Linguistics. A qualitative content analysis was employed to study a corpus of 592 CPTs from a popular conference for researchers, scholars, and practitioners of Applied Linguistics worldwide, supported by some descriptive statistics. The analysis of data study identified three main title styles: Single Unit Title, Compound Unit Title, and Complex Unit Title. The analysis showed that, out of these three title styles, Compound Unit Titles were preferred by researchers. Further, the colon was the dominantly used punctuation mark in separating the components of Compound Unit titles. The final point was that authors preferred prepositional phrases in the post modification of the noun phrase structure of CPTs. The findings of this study have implications for the scholarship on titlelogy, academic writing pedagogy as well as further research.

Keywords

• applied linguistics
• compound unit title
• conference papers; syntactic configuration; title style

References

1. Acquah, S. A. (2010). An analysis of conference paper titles: The case of applied linguistics. Unpublished BA dissertation, University of Cape Coast.
2. Afful, J. B. A. (2017). A linguistic analysis of conference paper titles in Applied Linguistics. International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 5 (18), 11-25.
3. Afful, J. B. A. & Mwinlaaru, I. (2010). Commonality and individuality in academic writing: An analysis of conference paper titles of four scholars. ESP World, Issue 1(27), V. 9, 1-32.
4. Alley, M. (1996). The craft of scientific writing. New York: Springer-Verlag.
5. Anthony, L. (2001). Characteristic features of research article titles in computer science. IEEE Transactions of Professional Communication, 44(3), 187-194. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/47.946464 .
6. Appiah, K. R., Ankomah, C., Osei, H. Y. & Hattoh-Ahiaduvor, T. (2019). Structural organisation of research article titles: A comparative study of titles of Business, Gynaecology and Law. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 10(3), 145-154.
7. Biacchi, A. (2003) Relation complexity of titles and texts: A semiotic taxonomy. In Merlini Barbaresi, L. (Ed.). Complexity in language and text, 319-341. Pisa: PLUS.
8. Biber, D. & Gray, B. (2010). Challenging stereotypes about academic writing: Complexity, elaboration, explicitness. Journal of English for Specific Purposes, 9(1), 20, 2-20.

9. Biber, D., Gray, B. & Staples, S. (2016). Contrasting the grammatical complexities of conversation and academic writing: Implications for EAP writing development and teaching. LIF-Language in Focus Journal, 2(1), 1-18. DOI: 10.1515/lifijsal-2016-0001
10. Bird, P. R. & M. A. Knight (1975). Word count statistics of the title of scientific Papers. The Information Scientist, 9(2), 67-69.
11. Busch-Lauer, I. A. (2000). Titles of English and German research papers in Medicine and Linguistics theses and research articles. In A. Trosborg (Ed.), Analysing professional genre (pp. 77-94). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin.
12. Canagarajah, S. (2002). A geopolitics of academic writing. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
13. Cheng, S. W., Kuo, C. & Kuo, C. (2012). Research article titles in Applied Linguistics. Journal of Academic Language and Learning, 6 (1), A1-A14.
14. Cianflone, E. (2010). Scientific titles in Veterinary Medicine research papers. English for Specific Purposes World, 9, 1-8.
15. Diener, R. A. (1984). Informational dynamics of journal article titles. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 35: 222-227.
16. Dillon, J. T. (1982). In pursuit of the colon: A century of scholarly progress: 1880-1980, Journal of Higher Education 53 (1): 93-99.
17. Fortanet Gómez, I., Coll García, J. F., Palmer Silveira, J. C. and S. Posteguillo Gómez (1997). The writing of titles in academic research articles. In R. C. Marín & A. Romero Navarrete (Eds.) Lenguas aplicadas a las ciencias y la tecnología: Aproximaciones (pp. 155-158) Cáceres (Spain): Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Extremadura.
18. Fortanet, I., Posteguillo, S., Coll, J. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1998). Linguistic analysis of research article titles: Disciplinary variations, In Ignacio Vázquez Orta, & Ignacio Guillén Calvé (Eds.), Perspectivas pragmáticas en lingüística aplicada, 443-447. Zaragoza (Spain): Anubar.
19. Fumani, M. R. F. Q., Goltaji, M. & Parto, P. (2015). The impact of title length and punctuation marks on article citations. Annals of Library and Information Studies, 62(1), 126-132.
20. Gesuato, S. (2009). Encoding of information in titles: Practices across four genres in linguistics. In C. Taylor (Ed.) Ecolingua: The role of e-corpora in translation and language learning (pp.125-157). Trieste (Italy): EUT.
21. Giannoni, D. S. (2008). Popularizing features in English journal editorials. English for Specific Purposes, 27(2), 212-232. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2006.12.001
22. Goodman, N. W. (2011). Fashion in medicine and language: Inferences from titles and abstracts of articles listed in PubMed. The Write Stuff, 20(1), 39-42.
23. Grant, J. M. (2013). What makes a good title? Health Information and Libraries Journal, 30(4), 259-260.
24. Greenbaum, S. (1996). English grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
25. Haggan, M. (2004). Research paper titles in literature, linguistics and science: Dimensions of attraction. Journal of Pragmatics, 36 (2), 293-317.
26. Halliday, M. A. K. (1998). Things and Relations: Regrammaticising Experience as Technical Knowledge. In J. R. Martin & R. Veel (Eds.), Reading science: Critical and functional perspectives on discourse of science (pp. 185-236). NY: Routledge.
27. Hartley, J. (2007). Planning that title: Practices and preferences for titles with colons in academic articles. Library and Information Science Research, 29 (4), 563-568.
28. Hills, P. (1997). Writing for publication. Workshop. Reading: UK: University of Reading.
29. Hudson, J. (2016). An analysis of the titles of papers submitted to the UK REF in 2014: authors, disciplines, and stylistic details. Scientometrics, 109 (1), 871-889.
30. Hyland, K. (2010). Constructing proximity: Relating to readers in popular and professional science. English for Academic Purposes, 9, 116-127. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2010.02.003 .
31. Imbelloni, L. E. (2012). Scientific articles’ titles: Thanks for the information contained in your title. Revista Brasileira de Anestesiologia, 62(2), 139-140.
32. Jalilifar, A. R. (2010). Writing titles in applied linguistics: A comparative study of theses and research articles. Taiwan International ESP Journal, 2(1), 27-52.
33. Jalilifar, A. Hayati, A, & Mayahi, N. (2010). An exploration of generic tendencies in Applied Linguistics titles. Journal of Faculty of Letters and Humanities, 5(16), 35-57.
34. Jamali, H. R. & Nikzad, M. (2011). Article type and its relation with the number of downloads and citations. Scientometrics, 88 (2), 653-661.
35. Labassi, T. (2009). Reading titles of empirical research papers. The Reading Matrix, 9 (2), 166-174.
36. Leech, G., Deuchar, M., & Hoogenraad, R. (1982). English grammar for today: A new Introduction. London: Macmillan.
37. Lewison, G., & Hartley, J. (2005). What’ s in a title? Number of words and the presence of colons. Scientometrics, 63(2), 341-356. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-005-0216-0.
38. Lillis, T. & Curry, M.J. (2010). Academic writing in global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. London and New York: Routledge.
39. Liumbruno, G. M., Velati, C., Pasqualetti, P., & Franchini, M. (2013). How to write a scientific manuscript for publication. Blood Transfus, 11, 217-226.
40. Moattarian, A. & Alibabaee, A. (2015). Syntactic structures in research article titles from three different disciplines: Applied Linguistics, Civil Engineering, and Dentistry. The Journal of Teaching Language Skills, 7 (1), 27-50.
41. Nahl-Jakobovits, D. & L. A. Jakobovits (1987). Dependent and independent variables in research articles. Research Strategies, 5: 164-171.
42. Paiva, C. E., Lima, J. P., & Paiva, B. S. (2012). Articles with short titles describing the results are cited more often. Clinics, 67, 509-513. http://dx.doi.org/10.6061/clinics/2012(05)17
43. Peritz, B. C. (1984). On the informativeness of titles. International Classification, 11(2), 87-89.
44. Quirk, R & Greenbaum, S. (1976). A university grammar of English. (5th ed.). London: Longman.
45. Rodriguez, K. (1996). The growth and development of research in the field of ecology as measured by dissertation title analysis. Scientometrics, 35(1), 9-70.
46. Soler, V. (2007). Writing titles in science: An exploratory study. English for Specific Purposes, 26 (1), 90-102. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2006.08.001
47. Soler, V. (2011). Comparative and contrastive observations on scientific titles written in English and Spanish. English for Specific Purpose, 30, 124-137. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2010.09.002
48. Stix, G. (1994) The spread of write. Trends on scientific communication. Scientific American, 271, 106-111.
49. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
50. Swales, J. (2004). Research genres. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wang, Y. & Bai, Y. (2007). A corpus-based syntactic study of medical research article titles. System, 35(3), 388-399.
51. Whissell, C. (1999). Linguistic complexity of abstracts and titles in highly cited journals. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 88: 76-86.
52. Yitzhaki, M. (1994) Relation of title length of journal articles to number of authors. Scientometrics, 30, 321-332.