The Article of the future: Strategies for genre stability and change

•The online journal RA is a “stabilised-for-now or stabilised-enough” genre.•Structural patterns and phraseological profiles are strategies for generic stability.•Online strategies for generic change do not impact actual text-composing/reception.•New online genre constituents might impact authors’ perceptions towards online RAs.•AofF shows potential for theoretical debate and pedagogical innovation in ESP.

This article compares the Article of the Future (AofF) prototypes () with a corpus of journal articles (Journal Article Corpus – JAC) to demonstrate that the article genre in an online environment is a “stabilised-for-now or stabilised-enough” site for social interaction (Schryer, 1994, p. 108). Results show that the prototypes adhere to the typical structural patterns of the JAC texts, while also embedding discernible structural variations across the disciplinary spectrum. They display generic stability concerning authors’ use of intertextuality for framing their texts in a social/institutional context. Comparison of the AofF with the JAC texts also illustrates a similar lexicogrammatical profile. Consistent with previous literature, recurring bundles in the AofF prototypes are associated with structural elaboration, complexity and a compressed style, and perform referential, text-organising and stance functions in the discourse. Complementing corpus findings, an exploratory survey of authors suggests that their actual text-composing/reading practices of online articles are governed by the long-established communicative purposes of the genre. Findings suggest, though, that the new online part-genres (research highlights, graphical abstracts, interactive graphs, embedded videos, hyperlinks), potential strategies for generic change, might be changing the writers’ perceptions towards online articles. The article concludes with some practical implications for ESP practitioners.

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