Vague language in conference abstracts

This study examined abstracts for a British Association for Applied Linguistics conference and a Sociolinguistics Symposium, to define the genre of conference abstracts in terms of vague language, specifically universal general nouns (e.g. people) and research general nouns (e.g. results), and to discover if the language used reflected the level of completeness of the abstract (whether the ldata was collected or analysed). It was found that half the authors had not completed the analysis and some had not finished collecting their data, and that the abstracts mostly consisted of introduction and method moves. Vague language is part of the conference abstract genre as used by all authors. The function of general nouns appeared to be a matter of ‘convenience’ or ‘anticipation’. Abstracts of less complete research contained open references to the incompleteness of the research, but the universal general nouns implication, resource, thing and problem appeared to ‘disguise’ the incompleteness, as did the clusters of research general nouns with no details about the research. It is considered that EAP lecturers guiding early career researchers will benefit from this description of vague language in the conference abstract genre.

Conference abstracts of less complete research contain more research general nouns (e.g. analysis, data, discussion) than those of completed research. They tend to be used without expansion or explanation and in clusters, as in“Thus, the poster will include formal aspects such as brief descriptions of the participants and their communities of practice, the methodology used and the data collection procedures and analyses, as well as preliminary results and implications for both theory development (gender relevancy) and methodological issues.”Percentage of general nouns out of all words in each CA type and levels of completeness.Figure optionsDownload as PowerPoint slideHighlights
► Half the authors had not completed their analysis; many had not collected their data.
► Authors of less complete research devoted little space to results and discussion.
► They used clusters of non-modified non-cohesive general nouns.
► They used them as a matter convenience and to disguise their incomplete research.