DOI: 10.25340/r4/bittf9
title: Related Data for Thesis/Dissertation: Investigating metadiscursive and visual features in three minute thesis presentations

description: The communication of academic research to diverse audiences is becoming increasingly necessary, thanks to the intensifying marketisation of higher education and democratisation of science over the last few decades. These global trends have given rise to newly-emergent and hybridised academic genres. A unique academic genre is the Three Minute Thesis (3MT), which challenges doctoral students to present their thesis in just 3 minutes, with the help of a single static slide, to a non-specialist audience comprising a judging panel, faculty, and graduate students from diverse disciplines. While 3MT presentations have recently begun to garner some scholarly attention, there has been no study to date that offers an examination of the functionality of the full range of linguistic metadiscourse in this genre. Nor have there been systematic investigations into the visual features of the single slide used in each presentation and the interplay between the slide and the language in this genre. The present study set out to bridge these gaps from a genre analysis perspective by investigating (i) how interactive and interactional metadiscourse works in successful 3MT speeches to guide and engage the audience, using Hyland’s (2005a) metadiscourse model, and (ii) how the accompanying slide works to enhance the speech, using the lens of multimodality. A mixed-methods research design was employed that involved not only quantifying the metadiscursive and visual features but also examining these features in context. A corpus-based text analysis was conducted on a dataset of 50 transcribed 3MT speeches and their accompanying slides by PhD students of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The quantitative frequencies of different metadiscursive features provide an overall picture of their use in the genre, while the qualitative examination of the metadiscursive and visual features in context enabled the identification of salient patterns, distinctive realisations, and interesting ways the visual resources work with the language in the genre. The results revealed the distinctiveness of 3MT presentations as an academic genre, which is manifested both in the use of linguistic metadiscourse and in the use of visual resources. To facilitate the audience’s comprehension, 3MT presenters prioritised interactive features that serve to clarify meanings, indicate logical connections, and signal discourse structure. To involve and persuade the audience, the presenters depended much on interactional features that function to connect with the audience, present a discoursal self, and convey affective attitudes. This study argues that the distinctive patterns and realisations of different interactive and interactional resources identified in the corpus are attributable to genre-specific factors such as the stringent time limit, competition judging criteria, audience makeup, and competitive nature of the 3MT. Further distinctive features of the genre have also been identified in the single slide, involving the orchestration of various compositional and interpersonal choices, such as foregrounding contrastive relations, and the use of popular imagery and photographs. These findings suggest that the 3MT presentation is a new hybrid academic genre distinct from other academic genres in many aspects while sharing some similarities with other spoken academic or popularisation genres. The study contributes new insights on the 3MT genre, has methodological implications for metadiscourse research, and offers pedagogical advice for presentation training.