当前位置: X-MOL 学术IEEE Trans. Prof. Commun. › 论文详情
Our official English website, www.x-mol.net, welcomes your feedback! (Note: you will need to create a separate account there.)
A Content Analysis of Figure Captions in Academic Journals from Four Disciplines
IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication ( IF 1.447 ) Pub Date : 2020-12-01 , DOI: 10.1109/tpc.2020.3032049
Jordan Smith

Background: Captions do important communicative work, but little research has investigated their content quantitatively. Literature review: Captions help facilitate learning and make retrieving information from databases easier. Yet, few studies have explored the rhetorical moves found in figure captions to better understand their communicative function. Research questions: 1. How do captions found in psychology, linguistics, biology, and technical and professional communication (TPC) journals differ in terms of length? 2. What are the rhetorical structures of figure captions in psychology, linguistics, biology, and TPC journals? 3. How do the rhetorical structures of captions in journals from these four disciplines differ? 4. To what extent does visual type interact with caption length and rhetorical structure? Research methodology: Using quantitative content analysis, I compared the frequencies of moves in captions across disciplines, determined whether the moves were conventional or optional, and identified patterns in the progression of moves in the captions that I analyzed. A supplementary analysis of the types of visuals that accompanied the captions offered insights into the findings of the caption-content analysis. Results: Results suggest a high degree of variation in the rhetorical structure of captions in academic journals. Biology captions were, on average, the longest and contained the most moves. TPC captions were the shortest and contained the fewest moves. Psychology and linguistics captions fell between the biology and TPC captions. Conclusions: Understanding variation in caption content can encourage a more rhetorical approach to caption writing. Researchers in disciplines where shorter captions are standard might consider writing elaborated captions.

中文翻译:

四大学科学术期刊图表标题内容分析

背景:字幕做了重要的交流工作,但很少有研究对其内容进行定量调查。文献综述:字幕有助于促进学习并使从数据库中检索信息更容易。然而,很少有研究探讨在图形标题中发现的修辞动作以更好地理解它们的交际功能。研究问题: 1. 心理学、语言学、生物学和技术与专业传播 (TPC) 期刊中的标题在长度上有何不同?2. 心理学、语言学、生物学、TPC 期刊中图形标题的修辞结构是什么?3. 这四个学科的期刊标题的修辞结构有何不同?4. 视觉类型在多大程度上与字幕长度和修辞结构相互作用?研究方法论:使用定量内容分析,我比较了跨学科字幕移动的频率,确定这些移动是常规的还是可选的,并确定了我分析的字幕移动进程的模式。对伴随字幕的视觉类型的补充分析提供了对字幕内容分析结果的见解。结果:结果表明,学术期刊标题的修辞结构存在很大差异。平均而言,生物字幕最长,包含的动作最多。TPC 字幕最短,动作最少。心理学和语言学字幕介于生物学和 TPC 字幕之间。结论:了解字幕内容的变化可以鼓励采用更具修辞性的字幕写作方法。
更新日期:2020-12-01
down
wechat
bug