Different Visions, Different Visuals: a Social Semiotic Analysis of Field-Specific Visual Composition in Scientific Conference Presentations

This study proposes a social semiotic analysis of visual communication in a scientific research genre, the conference presentation. It focuses on the spatial and temporal visual resources available in this genre to create texture and cohesion, and examines how logical relations, discourse structure and rhetorical claims are expressed visually in this particular communicative context. By comparing how three different scientific disciplines – geology, medicine and physics – exploit these resources in field-specific ways, it shows that visual communication in science is deeply embedded in disciplinary practice and varies in response to the type of data investigated, the methodology and epistemology of each field. The data used for the study and recorded on video film comprise over 2000 visuals (slides and transparencies) projected during 90 presentations given at international scientific conferences.

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