CALL FOR DIDACTIC WEBINAR: BRITISH SCIETIFIC COMMUNICATION GENRE

Abstract

The paper discusses some features of the structure and content of the “call for didactic webinar” genre that functions in the British scientific communication. “Call for didactic webinar” is established to belong to the up-to-date small-format written genres of the scientific communication. The authors reveal the reasons for its popularity with the user of educational servicers demand for formal and structural compactness, informativeness, and attractiveness of the product being dominant. Epistemics of the genre is identified to contain advertising valorative attributes. To study the content aspects of the genre basics of semiotics and deixis, lexical, modal, and textual semantics, principles of addressant-addressee communicative linguistics and communication channels were employed.
“Call for didactic webinar” genre is defined as a hybrid functional system and a unit of scientific communication that is characterized by multimodality, polycoding, polydirection, and hypertextuality. Hybridity of the studied genre lies in the incorporation of the attributes and components of the media, advertising, didactic, academic, and institutionalized discourses into its composition and content.
Multimodality of the “call for didactic webinar” genre is prevalently represented by lingual modi combined with audio-and-visual ones. Apart from verbal semiosis, polycoding of the studied genre is typically revealed through the following paraverbal semiotic complexes: icons, symbols, indices, idiographic signs, audio-visual, and proxemic signs, as well as signs of digital deixis.
Hypertextuality of the “call for didactic webinar” genre lies in the content syncretism of the inhomogeneous information blocks: verbal, paraverbal sign complexes and modi, as well as text compositional parts comprising the block of the metatext, structured basic text, headlines, titles, captions, legends, inforgraphics, audio-video series, and visuals.
The deictic semiotic system of the “call for didactic webinar” genre was studied within the coordinates of “who-where-when-how.” As a result, addressant-addressee’ substitutional roles were singled out; the principles of the proxemic deixis modelling were understood; finally, mediatory and facilitatory functions of the digital deixis were identified.
Polydirection of the up-to-date hybrid genre “call for didactic webinar” was understood to function within the deictic, spatial-temporal, and modus coordinate systems.