A presentation given at the University of Bergamo, June 27-29, at the Metadiscourse across Genres conference

1. Multimodal stance and engagement
strategies in digital video methods articles
Christoph A. Hafner
Department of English, City University of Hong Kong
MAG 2019, University of Bergamo, June 27-29, 2019

2. Overview
• Digital media in scholarly communication
• Case study: Digital video methods articles
– The genre
– An instructive case
• Implications

3. Digital media in scholarly
communication

4. The need for research
There is therefore a need for stimulating scholarly
conversation on issues of genre innovation and change
so as to better understand the new forms of research
communication in today’s academic settings.
Pérez-Llantada (2016, p. 24)

5. Video methods articles
See Hafner, 2018

6. JoVE began in response to a universally experienced problem within
the world of biomedical science: today only 10-30% of published
scientific articles can be successfully reproduced. As a result,
scientists and researchers around the world end up spending months
and years of time, effort, and funding simply trying to replicate the
findings of other labs instead of advancing toward new discoveries.
(www.jove.com, About page, retrieved January 2017)

7. (…) how a protocol is being executed is being captured visually. So there is like
no mistake on how it is being done, especially if, say, if we’re doing micro-
injection of DNA into eggs, okay, how do you handle the pipette? How deep
do you penetrate it? So there’s lots of finer details which are being sort of
captured visually (…)
(Biologist at CityU)

8. Established
December 2006
Listed in PubMed,
Scopus
JCR Impact factor of
1.232 in 2016
Video methods
articles in 13 areas
Science education
section

10. What metasdiscursive stance and engagement strategies are used in
the videos and how are these strategies expressed through a
combination of modes?

11. Stance and engagement in language
(Hyland, 2005)

12. Viewer interaction and engagement in visual
design
Involvement
Gaze
Distance of shot
Camera angle
Power
relations
Camera angle
Modality
Colour saturation
Colour differentiation
Colour modulation
Contextualization
Representation
Depth
Illumination
Brightness

13. A typology of images
• Graphical
• Figurative
• Scriptural
• Numerical
(Rowley-Jolivet, 2002)

14. Multimodal transcription in ELAN
• Phase, shot, frame
• Speech
• Action, gesture, gaze
• Soundtrack
• Camera position and perspective
• Setting, participants
• Text on screen
• Visual image type

16. An instructive case
Multimodal metadiscourse in the
Overview & Researcher’s
Introduction

17. The Overview: Purpose
• To provide a summary of the procedure in a
conventionalized way with three moves:
– Stating the Goal;
– Summarizing the Procedure;
– Explaining Significance.

18. The gel is then transferred to a staining dish and the
proteins are detected by staining with colloidal
coomassie.
During the focusing process the proteins are
separated according to their isoelectric point. Second
dimension separation is performed by S D S page.
In this video we will demonstrate the power of a
modified coomassie staining protocol for detecting
several nanograms of protein in polyacrylamide gels,
using the example of two dimensional gel
electrofuresis. Prior to first dimension separation,
immobilised P H gradient strips are rehydrated in
denaturing buffer conditions. After overnight
reswelling of the strips, protein samples are applied
via anodic cuploading.

19. The Researcher’s Introduction: Purpose
• To engage the audience and introduce the
demonstration of procedures, through a range
of optional moves:
– Introducing self
– Forecasting the demonstration
– Explaining significance
– Introducing additional researchers
– Inviting the audience

21. Hello, I am N***** D***** from the laboratory of
S***** M***** in the biological medical research
centre at the university of Düsseldorf.
Today I will draw your attention to a widely non-
famous procedure according to Kang and colleagues.
Coomassie brilliant blue is a dye commonly used for
the visualization of proteins after electrofluretic
separations, but is often assumed to be less
applicable for comparative proteomics. However,
Kang’s colloidal staining offers superior features
concerning sensitivity, costs and practicality.
We use Kang’s staining protocol in our laboratory for
nearly every gel-based application. But especially in
analytical proteomics to determine myocardial
protein expression changes.

22. I will demonstrate the use of this method to detect
myocardial proteins in the alkaline P H range of two
dimensional electrofluresis gels.
So let’s get started!

23. Implications
Metadiscourse in digital media:
What has changed?

24. Implications
• Digital media allow for more multimodal forms of
expression
• In order to provide a full account of the strategies
used, studies of metadiscourse should take this
into account
• Methods of genre analysis and metadiscourse
analysis will need to incorporate the notion of
media affordances (multimodality, hypertext and
interactivity) to account for the impact of
multimedia on metadiscourse

25. Thank you