“See Figure 1”: Visual moves in discrete mathematics research articles
Introduction
Through more than three decades of research by applied linguists and rhetoricians, genre analysis has grown into an interdisciplinary field of study. The field integrates theories and analytical tools from both schools in the study and teaching of genres with an emphasis on the relationship between the context, linguistic, rhetorical, and social features of genres (Tardy & Swales, 2014, pp. 165–187). The integrated approach in genre analysis has shown increasing interest in academic discourses and genres of disciplines revealing disciplinarity in their discourses, rhetorical organization and argument (see for example Bazerman, 1988, Hyland, 2000; Prior, 1998, Swales, 1990, Swales, 2004).
From among the disciplinary genres, the research article (RA) has attracted much interest, being associated with Swales' CARS model (1990, 2004) and Hyland's corpus studies of disciplinary discourses. As “the pre-eminent genre of the academy” (Hyland, 2010, p. 117), the RA requires novice researchers and an increasing number of graduate students to master it to achieve academic success, making it a focus of research by scholars tasked with helping these populations. Since 2010, RA genre research has extended Swales' model of move structure in introductions to other sections or similar genres across disciplines. These studies have included genres in science and technology disciplines—traditionally known for their multimodal discourse—yet most researchers analyze the textual components in RAs and ignore the visual ones (Hyland, 2006, Johns, 2013, Tardy and Swales, 2014, pp. 165–187). Genre research pioneers have argued that visual components equally deserve attention because they contribute to the RA's rhetoric. Johns, for example, proposed research in multimodalities as a future ESP topic in 2013. She recalled her earlier work (Johns, 1998) on visual and verbal interactions in economics thus: “It is surprising that so little research has been completed either on the visual/verbal interaction in texts or on academic or nonacademic visual rhetoric” (Johns, 2013, p. 20).
Tardy and Swales (2014) also identify multimodal/visual genre analysis as a new direction. They argue that in some genres multimodal elements are “so essential that it would be impossible to overlook them in an analysis” (p. 173). In addition, Hyland (2006) points out, the fact that they “can occupy up to a half a science research article testifies to the significance of visuals in academic genres” (p. 53). Summarizing Miller, 1998, Hyland, 2006 also points out that “while arguments are based on plausible, and well-constructed, interpretations of data, they ultimately rest on findings, and these are often presented in visual form” (p. 54). Furthermore, many engineers and scientists assess the visual data first, when either reading an RA or writing one, to determine the argument and, in the latter case, distribute these data to structure their argument (Graves, 2014, Kresta et al., 2011). From a literacy perspective, ignoring the visual components of academic genres compromises student learning; hence EAP/ESP practitioners must attend to visual literacy and teach students, especially those in science and technical disciplines, “to read visuals as much as texts” (Hyland, 2006, p. 53).
As part of a larger study, this paper uses visual rhetoric (Gross & Harmon, 2014) to explore verbal-visual interaction in research articles in discrete mathematics. Unlike rhetorical analysis, which is mainly concerned with the verbal components of argument, visual rhetoric in science analyzes nonverbal displays to understand their role in scientific practices, knowledge creation, and communication. The discipline of study is discrete mathematics, a major sub-discipline in mathematics with inter- as well as cross-disciplinary links to other fields, e.g., optimization, computer sciences, and engineering. The generic structure of research articles in the discipline has already been examined (Moghaddasi and Graves, 2017, Graves et al., 2013, Graves et al., 2014). Based on the results from our analysis of the rhetorical structure from the larger project, we sought to answer the following questions:
- 1.
What roles do visuals play in research articles in discrete mathematics?
- 2.
Which rhetorical structures in research articles in discrete mathematics rely more/less on visuals? Why?
- 3.
How can the results of the study be applied to the teaching of academic writing in mathematics and related disciplines?
To answer these questions, we used triangulation (Candlin & Hyland, 1999), which allows both collecting data from multiple sources and using multiple approaches to analyze the data (Hastings, 2012). Triangulation “provide[d] multiple lines of sight and multiple contexts” (Hastings, 2012) to examine and enrich our understanding of the move-visual interactions in research articles in discrete mathematics. Our results show notable associations between the move structure and the visuals used in the articles in ways that contribute to the central rhetorical purpose of the articles, namely establishing facts (i.e., new knowledge). Here we first summarize some existing research on visuals in academic genres. Next, we briefly describe the study design. We then present results including the roles that visuals play in RAs in discrete mathematics as well as examples of move-visual associations in their rhetorical structure. Lastly, we discuss the implications of our findings, including the pedagogical implications for academic writing classes in mathematics and related disciplines.
Section snippets
Studies of visuals in academic genres
The study of visuals in multimodal genres has a tradition in linguistic-oriented ESP research. In 1980 Dubois studied presentation slides in biomedical speeches (Dubois, 1980), becoming probably the first ESP researcher to demonstrate the potential of visuals to make meaning. Other researchers followed thereafter, mainly drawing on Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics in their analyses (Morell, 2015, O'Halloran, 2005, Rowley-Jolivet, 2002, Rowley-Jolivet, 2004). Rowley-Jolivet (2002), for
Research design and methodology
This research builds on earlier research analyzing the move structure of discrete mathematics RAs (Graves et al., 2013, Graves et al., 2014, Moghaddasi and Graves, 2017). Our corpus comprises five high impact discrete mathematics journals. Journal selection criteria included their being listed in two prestigious citation indexing service platforms (Thomson Reuters Web of Science and Scopus); their high impact factors; their coverage of a wide range of topics from both pure and applied
Results and discussion
Seventy percent (70%) of our corpus contains visuals, suggesting they are conventional in RAs in discrete mathematics. However, in 8 RAs (DAM3, DM3, G&C2, JCO5, SIAM1, 2, 3, 4), they are absent. Our informants suggested that the mathematical problems addressed in these RAs either are supported by existing objects or deal with simpler abstract objects, making visuals inessential. However, where present, the visuals project both disciplinarity and specificity.
Conclusion
In this study, we have examined how mathematical argument initiates, develops, and establishes new knowledge through structuring the verbal and visual rhetoric in interactive ways. We showed how the visuals collaborate rhetorically with the verbal to create tangible objects from abstract concepts (ontological function), supply the reasoning behind mathematical relations (argumentative function), and integrate to create and support arguments for new knowledge (epistemological function). One
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge our anonymous reviewers who helped improve this work. We would also like to thank the mathematicians who generously gave their time to participate in this study and provide insider data and insights about our findings. The first author would like to thank the WAC Program at the University of Alberta for its financial support while she worked on this project. We would also like to thank Shahnaz Shahtoosi for designing Figure 1 and Lily Lai for creating an earlier
Shahin Moghaddasi is a PhD candidate in applied linguistics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, AB, Canada. She teaches writing for the Writing Studies Program, with an emphasis on international students. She is also a researcher with the Writing Across the Curriculum Program. Her research interests include genre analysis, EAP, and blended learning.
References (61)
Chromatic properties of Hamiltonian graphs
Discrete Mathematics
(2007)Examining the “applied aspirations” in the ESP genre analysis of published journal articles
English for Specific Purposes
(2019)- et al.
The butterfly decomposition of plane trees
Discrete Applied Mathematics
(2007) The use of slides in biomedical speeches
The ESP Journal
(1980)- et al.
Bounds on total domination in claw-free cubic graphs
Discrete Mathematics
(2008) - et al.
“Let G = (V,E) be a graph”: Turning the abstract into the tangible in introductions in mathematics research articles
English for Specific Purposes
(2014) Constructing proximity: Relating to readers in popular and professional science
Journal of English for Academic Purposes
(2010)The visual and the verbal: A case study in macroeconomics
English for Specific Purposes
(1998)Visual persuasion: A comparison of visuals in academic texts and the popular press
English for Specific Purposes
(1998)- et al.
“Since Hadwiger's conjecture . . . is still open”: Establishing a niche for research in discrete mathematics research article introductions
English for Specific Purposes
(2017)
International conference paper presentations: A multimodal analysis to determine effectiveness
English for Specific Purposes
Visual discourse in scientific conference papers A genre-based study
English for Specific Purposes
The future of EAP genre studies: A personal viewpoint
Journal of English for Academic Purposes
Expressions of disciplinarity and individuality in a multimodal genre
Computers and Composition
The relation between logic, set theory and topos theory as it is used by Alain Badiou
Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in science
A case for historical “wide-angle” genre analysis: A personal retrospective
Iberica
Introduction: Integrating approaches to the study of writing
A multi-semiotic genre: The conference slide show
‘A textbook case revisited’: Rhetoric and series patterning in the American museum of natural history's horse evolution display
Technical Communication Quarterly
Practices of seeing visual analysis: An ethnomethodological approach
Subdivision extendibility
Graphs and Combinatorics
The rhetoric of (interdisciplinary) science: Visuals and the construction of facts in Nanotechnology
Poroi
Mathematics is the method: Exploring the macro-organizational structure of research articles in mathematics
Discourse Studies
Darwin's diagram: Scientific visions and scientific visuals
Science from sight to insight: How scientists illustrate meaning
Triangulation
Word and image in academic writing: A study of verbal and visual meanings in marketing articles
E.S.P. Today
Disciplinary discourses: Social interactions in academic writing
Cited by (13)
Developing genre awareness in collaborative academic reading: A case study of novice academic learners
2024, English for Specific PurposesA rhetorical function and phraseological analysis of commentaries on visuals
2024, English for Specific PurposesFigure legends of scientific research articles: Rhetorical moves and phrase frames
2023, English for Specific PurposesCitation Excerpt :This may impact the degree of detail and the moves and p-frames used in the legends, but more importantly it reveals the different roles visuals play in the construction of disciplinary knowledge and the informational density of the visualization. Specificity in the writing of legends can be also seen in the connection between the types of figures (and therefore the types of the legend) used in each section of disciplinary research articles and the move structure of the whole article (Moghaddasi et al., 2019). Therefore, one would expect the legend content to vary as a function of the rhetorical aim of the section in which the figure is placed.
Profiling figure legends in scientific research articles: A corpus-driven approach
2021, Journal of English for Academic PurposesCitation Excerpt :Similarly, focusing on nanotechnology as an interdisciplinary field, Graves (2014) examined the relationship between visuals and texts, and demonstrates that images and data displays contribute to the argument in experimental work to create knowledge in science. Therefore, visual figures are accorded special prominence in scientific texts, not simply accompanying academic texts but actively constructing meanings (Lemke, 1998; Moghaddasi et al., 2019). This should align with the fragmented accretion of knowledge in sciences which is assembled in relatively small pieces (Becher & Trowler, 2001; Hyland, 2004).
Is ESP a materials and teaching-led movement'
2021, Language Teaching
Shahin Moghaddasi is a PhD candidate in applied linguistics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, AB, Canada. She teaches writing for the Writing Studies Program, with an emphasis on international students. She is also a researcher with the Writing Across the Curriculum Program. Her research interests include genre analysis, EAP, and blended learning.
Heather Graves is Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies and the Director of Writing Studies at the University of Alberta. She has recently published articles in POROI, Rhetor, and English for Specific Purposes journal. Her research interests include the rhetoric of science, visual rhetoric, argument in academic discourse, and gamification in writing pedagogy.
Roger Graves is Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies, Director of Writing Across the Curriculum, and Associate Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Alberta. His current research interests include writing assignments across disciplinary fields and the gamification of peer response systems in writing classrooms.
Xavier Gutiérrez is an Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics and Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta. His research interests are knowledge representations of language, teaching and learning L2 grammar, task-based language teaching, and learners' perceptions about their learning experiences.