Webber 2005

ENGLISH FOR
SPECIFIC
English for Specific Purposes 24 (2005) 157–181 PURPOSES
www.elsevier.com/locate/esp
Interactive features in medical

conference monologue
Pauline Webber
Via Matteo Bartoli 302, 00143 Roma, Italy
Abstract
Academic lectures show formal and informal characteristics. Alongside passages of rigor-
ous scientific reasoning, conference English may therefore be expected to contain many fea-
tures identified by earlier studies as characteristic of the conversational mode, reflecting the
ongoing interaction between speaker and listener. To find out whether these features constitute
an important resource for creating a relationship with the audience, I analysed a corpus of
scientific conference talks and searched for these features to consider why they are used and to
what effect. The talks were also compared with a compatible corpus of written research articles
and reviews on the same topic. The spoken corpus consisted of seven plenaries and seven
paper presentations given at international medical conferences by competent speakers of
English of various nationalities. The written corpus comprised six research articles and six
review papers from reputed medical journals. The recordings of the spoken material were
transcribed and the interactive features in the electronic version of the two corpora were
detected and counted by computer. The features included in the study were: personal deictics,
markers and imprecise quantifiers. The computer analysis showed that these features formed
an integral part of the textual and interpersonal functions of an event influenced by the co-
presence of interactants and the preliminary nature of the material presented. Many speakers
were reporting work in progress rather than the finished product of the journal article. The
recordings disclosed many instances of personal reference in the data, particularly I think, used
either for purposes of hedging or for declarations of stance. A frequently occurring marker
was now, used to indicate the structure of the text and the stepwise presentation of the ar-
gument. In contrast, several of the features under study were entirely absent from the written
material. In conclusion, the spoken and written corpus differed markedly, probably because
conference speakers rely heavily on interactive devices to create a rapport with the audience.
Ó 2004 The American University. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
E-mail address: pauline.webber@uniroma1.it (P. Webber).
0889-4906/$30.00 Ó 2004 The American University. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.esp.2004.02.003
158 P. Webber / English for Specific Purposes 24 (2005) 157–181
1. Introduction
1.1. Background
In the medical profession, besides reading, the ability to follow oral communi-
cation of research is also very important because international conferences are an
essential part of the communicative network within the scientific discourse com-
munity (Ventola, Shalom, & Thompson, 2002). The demands placed on non-native
speakers in real time processing of lectures are, however, much greater than those
required in reading papers on the same topic, because listeners do not have the same
control over text as do readers (Flowerdew, 1994). Conference language seems to
have its own characteristics which distinguish it from written science and possibly
also from academic lectures because of the different audience and degree of back-
ground knowledge expected among participants. The written article, particularly the
research report, has increasingly been seen as a textual artefact (Rowley-Jolivet,
2002). Hence, it may be even further removed from the language of spontaneous
conversation, considered an archetypical variant of spoken discourse. In contrast to
written articles, one of the important aspects of medical conferences is that they
provide personal contact, the possibility for participants to meet the speaker and ask
questions, and for presenters to receive immediate feedback, either implicit in the
case of plenaries or explicit in the case of presentations followed by a discussion
phase. Spoken text has its own particular lexis and grammatical characteristics
(Flowerdew, 1994). However, the chaired meeting, as suggested by Sacks, Schegloff,
and Jefferson (1974), falls between the two extremes of conversation on the one hand
and formal debates on the other.
The motives participants have for attending conferences and the face-to-face
channel of the interaction may affect the interpersonal metafunction of this discourse
(Halliday, 1994) which concerns the relationship between producer and receiver, and
may lead to stronger audience orientation devices than in written reports. In other
words, in conferences, the social aspects of the interaction may lead participants to
use features of unplanned spoken discourse in talks which are in fact pre-planned
and possibly rehearsed. Amongst these are the ones included in this study, referred to
here as interactive features.
In the scientific field, apart from work on university lectures (Montgomery, 1976)
interactive features have received more attention in written scientific articles than in
conferences (Adams Smith, 1984; Salager-Meyer, 1994). A recent collection of pa-
pers on conference language edited by Ventola et al. (2002) has, however, filled a gap
in this field. Of particular interest for the present study are the papers by Thompson
(2002), on narrative elements, by Vassileva (2002), comparing instances of self-rep-
resentation and speaker-audience interaction in English and ‘‘Bulgarian English’’,
and by Rowley-Jolivet on differences between oral and written communication of
science as part of the multi-staged process in the construction of knowledge claims.
The last author includes some data from medicine in her study.
As regards biomedical conferences, the topic has not been totally ignored previ-
ously. Dubois published several interesting studies in the eighties (1980, 1987) and in
P. Webber / English for Specific Purposes 24 (2005) 157–181 159
1987 noted the ‘‘strikingly casual form’’ of numerical expressions used in biology
slide talks. Dubois attributed this to questions of practicality and modality in a genre
which is essentially a form of pre-information, following Ziman’s (1974) model of the
social production of science. Her study, however, is restricted to approximators and
imprecise numerical expressions in paper presentations. She does not take other
casual (or what are here termed interactive features) into account. To my knowledge,
the frequency and function of the features included here have not been studied in
medical conference discourse.
If they are characteristic of this genre, it would be worth studying their contri-
bution to the organisation and interpersonal nature of this discourse. The detection
of differences between the language of conferences and that of written articles could
also have theoretical and practical implications for our understanding of the dif-
ferences between the oral and written presentation of research. Therefore, I collected
and analysed a corpus of conference communications. This was compared with a
compatible corpus of written articles published by the same discourse community to
search for any evidence of the surface features under study in order to confirm this
difference between the two modes.
1.2. Choice of features included in the study
This study focuses on personal deictics, markers (referred to here simply as

markers,to cover both written and spoken material, rather than discourse markers,
generally used for spoken language) and imprecise quantifiers. These were chosen
because they are audience-oriented and are likely to be interactionally motivated.
While the depersonalized, highly nominalised style of discourse described as
characteristic of scientific English by Halliday and Martin (1993, p. 55–66) is evident
in the talks, there are also numerous occurrences of a more personal style, for ex-
ample in the use of personal pronouns and adjectives. These will be referred to as
‘personals’, following Halliday and Hasan (1976), to cover personal pronouns,
possessive determiners and possessive pronouns. This extensive use of personals is
typical of non-scientific language and closer to spontaneous spoken discourse which
Halliday and Martin take as a baseline. Chafe (1985), in a study of differences be-
tween spoken and written language, includes first person reference among the devices
used in speaking which contribute to the involved quality of spoken language as
opposed to the detached quality of writing.
As regards markers, most authors agree that items such as well (Owen, 1981;
Stubbs, 1983) and anyway (Owen, 1981) do not have ready counterparts in written
text. Schiffrin (1987) has shown that these and other markers act as contextual co-
ordinates in conversation which contribute to the coherence of the discourse. Biber
(1988), in a comprehensive multivariate factor analysis, found clusters of factors
rather than a clear-cut distinction between written and spoken language. Never-
theless, he found that well and now as discourse markers are rare outside conver-
sational genres. In academic lectures, Flowerdew (1994) found they were more
frequent in a biology lecture than in the textbook chapters the lecture course was
based on. Well and anyhow have been variously referred to as continuative adjuncts
(Halliday, 1994), or particles (Carter, 1987). Carter prefers this vague term because
their status is uncertain. Murphy and Candlin (1979) found they often occur in
lectures, and Heino, Tevonen, and Tommola (2002) include them among the met-
adiscourse signals used in conferences.
The vagueness of spoken language is another aspect noted by Chafe (1985) and is
apparent in conference talks in the use of imprecise quantifiers, investigated as noted
above by Dubois (1987). The present study concentrates on imprecise quantifiers
rather than other forms of vagueness or hedging because precise measurements and
calculations are usually considered to be the essence of scientific enquiry.
2. The investigation
2.1. Data and procedure
Fourteen spoken communications were analyzed, totalling 34,692 tokens and

3378 types (where tokens indicate the number of running words and types the
number of distinct word-types). I was present at the proceedings and recorded the
talks personally and then transcribed them. The material consists of seven plenary
lectures of about 40 min duration and seven oral presentations lasting 10 min, or 15
min in the case of one conference. They were all complete except one. The talks were
given by 14 different speakers of various nationalities, shown in Table 1. The tenor of
these texts is all expert-to-expert. The two sub-genres included in the study are i.
plenary lectures, which were not followed by a discussion, and ii. papers given at
concurrent sessions, termed by the conference organisers themselves as oral pre-
sentations, which were followed by a discussion. These sub-genres will be referred to
henceforth as plenaries and papers, respectively. Details of the spoken corpus are
Table 1
Composition of medical conference corpus
Talk number Nationality Type of talk Length of recording (min)
1 Italian Plenary 40
2 American Plenary 40
4 British Plenary 40
6 British Plenary 40
7 Swedish Plenary 22 (excerpt)
8 Swedish Paper 15
9 French Paper 10
10 British Paper 10
11 Australian Paper 10
12 Danish Paper 10
13 American Paper 10
14 Korean Paper 10
Total 337
summarised in Table 1. Although the corpus is small, the features found are suffi-
ciently numerous to give some insight into this text genre.
The texts were transcribed with the insertion only of minimal punctuation marks
to aid reading where that seemed appropriate. Capital letters are used conservatively
to show emphatic syllables, but intonation is not indicated in the transcription. It
was necessary to listen to the recordings several times, after which any items which
were still indecipherable were indicated by ? (see the notes for transcription con-
ventions). No other material was discarded.
The data were analyzed by the Aston Text Analyser (ATA), available from the
Language Studies Unit, Aston University, Birmingham, UK, giving frequencies,
concordances and synoptic profiles (showing frequencies of words to the left and
right of a chosen word from highest to lowest). Apart from the raw frequency of each
type, this analysis programme provides the relative frequency out of 10,000 words.
2.2. Context of the spoken corpus
Certain contextual aspects of the events under study may be important in that
they affect the kind of language used. To begin with, scientific conferences are very
numerous and attended by enormous numbers of specialists, who flock to these
meetings regularly to exchange ideas and keep in touch with the latest developments
in research.
There were no simultaneous translation facilities, except for talk 10 (Portuguese
translation available), and before a mixed audience from all over the world, speakers
talked naturally according to individual style, without apparently adapting their talk
to facilitate comprehension for any less competent non-native speakers who might be
in the audience.
The talks were recorded at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes
(EASD) Conference in Stockholm, 1995 (talks 3, 5, 7,9), and Helsinki, 1997 (talks
11,12), the American Diabetes Association (ADA) Scientific Sessions in San Diego,
1999, (talks 13, 14), each attended by over 5000 people, and at other smaller con-
ferences in Rome (talks 1, 4, 6), Austria (talks 2 and 8) and Portugal (talk10). At the
Austrian conference, on insulin pump therapy, the papers lasted 15 min instead of
10. The topics treated were connected with diabetology in all cases except talk 10,
which was on antibiotic therapy.
The plenary lectures at these conferences were given by invited speakers and were
not followed by a discussion. Plenary lecturers were not required to submit an ab-
stract but only the title of the lecture, whereas paper presenters had to submit an
abstract for the conferences under study. These are carefully evaluated anonymously
(only about two-thirds get accepted), but it is impossible to assess whether non-
native speakers of English had in some cases had their abstracts or, indeed, their
whole script, edited beforehand by native experts. Previously published papers are
not accepted. Even establishing the L1 of some of the speakers is not always easy in
such a community (the nationalities shown in Table 1 are based on details given in
the conference programme). Many of the non-native or second language speakers
operate in English speaking countries, or have done so in the past. The analysis of
pronunciation or other prosodic features is beyond the scope of this study. The
paper presentations were given to a smaller audience in parallel sessions and fol-
lowed by a discussion. They were moderated by a chairperson who introduced the
speakers and indicated at which point the discussion was open to the floor. The
discussions following the papers are not included here but form part of separate
studies (Webber, 1997, 2002). All speakers had to adhere to a strict time limit and the
talks were all accompanied by slides, including the plenaries. The proceedings of
these large sessions are not usually published.
2.3. The written component
For purposes of comparison, a written corpus was used, consisting of 38,409

words (the figure is slightly higher because written articles are usually longer than
conference talks). All tables, figures and lists of references were removed. The ma-
terial consisted of six research articles and six review papers. Thus, as in the spoken
corpus, some texts were theoretical, while the others reported on original research
carried out by the authors themselves. They were taken from two prestigious general
medical journals, The Lancet, and BMJ, and from two specialist journals belonging
to the same field as that of the spoken corpus, Diabetes and Diabetologia. The latter
are published by the same associations (EASD and ADA) that organized the con-
ferences providing the source of most of the spoken data analyzed in this study.
3. Results (summarised in Table 4)
3.1. Personals
3.1.1. Second person pronouns

The frequent use of you (Table 2a), is connected in over half (228) of occurrences
to the co-presence of the interlocutors (Table 2b), especially as speakers often point
to details on the slides and draw the audience’s attention to them:
Table 2
(a) Occurrences of second person pronouns
you 361
you’re 2
you’ve 2
you’ll 1
you’d 0
your 13
Total 379
(b) Personal/impersonal uses of ‘you’
Personal 288
Impersonal 149
Uncertain 2
Total 379
‘‘As you can see here- rather exciting results-. . .’’ (talk 10)
(see Appendix A for excerpts from the spoken corpus)
‘‘Here you have. . .’’ (12)
‘‘I hope you see the multidisciplinary approach we’re taking to this problem’’ (5)
This serves the purpose not only of orientation but also emphasis of certain data
which the speaker finds worthy of attention. In this way, the figures and other
findings appear to speak for themselves, supporting the argument so that the
speaker does not carry sole responsibility for the claims made. In reality, the speaker
often draws attention to those elements he or she considers interesting. The lis-
teners are thus drawn into the talk and invited to verify the validity of the speaker’s
claims.
Impersonal you (Table 2b), often referring either to the potential patient or the
researcher, accounted for 149 of the occurrences, as in the following:
‘‘When you think you cannot simply . . . change the syringe, change the pump’’ (2)
‘‘it means if you’re insulin resistant to begin with . . .’’ (3)
‘‘it doesn’t increase your chances of becoming diabetic’’ (6)
When impersonal you refers to other surgeons or researchers, the speaker iden-
tifies with other colleagues as one of the in-group.
The following were the only one or possibly two cases where it was not certain
whether you was being used in a personalised sense or could be replaced by
‘‘one’’:
‘‘I don’t know how you’re gonna answer that question’’ (2)
‘‘only if you defeat rejection early’’ (7)
3.1.2. First person pronouns

The analysis revealed frequent occurrences of first person references in the talks
(Table 3). The pronoun ‘‘I’’ collocates strongly with think. Of the 81 occurrences of
think, only 10 do not occur with the first personal pronoun singular, seven of
which with we, two with impersonal you, and one with people in the expression
‘‘people may think that the patient is. . .’’. This frequent use of I think – 71 oc-
currences, many used for purposes of hedging – is typical of the personal character
of the interaction involved. From the synoptic profile (see Appendix B), we see the
most frequent immediately following words after I are first think and then want.
However, as the first person seemed to be used also for presenting material on the
slides, a concordance of show was searched and revealed that in 29 out of 67
occurrences of the verb show, again I is the subject of the clause, although there
are often other words intervening, as in ‘‘I would just like to show you these
results. . .’’. From the context it was clear that both want and show are used in
orienting the audience to the content of the talk. It is notable that, although in the
Table 3
Occurrences of the first person singular and plural
I 282 we 431
I’m 13 we’re 7
I’ve 8 we’ve 8
I’ll 4 we’ll 4
I’d 5 we’d 0
me 16 us 23
my 27 our 50
mine 0 ours 0
Total 355 Total 529
case of papers most of the speakers were presenting research on behalf of a team,
they still chose to use the first person singular frequently, whereas it is entirely
absent from the written articles in this corpus, also all multi-authored. Although
not always the sole principal or author of the contents, the speaker is the animator
of the presentations and feels vested with the responsibility of presenting the
argument.
Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992) list I think as one of the lexical phrases used in
lectures for signalling agreement or disagreement. In this corpus, it is widely used for
hedging, as in the following examples:
‘‘In fact, I think maybe I can generalise and I can say. . .’’ (6)
‘‘So I don’t believe, but please understand, I’m the only person in the world
who takes this view I think, I don’t believe that obesity is. . .’’ (prominent stress
on the‘‘I’’ of ‘‘I don’t believe’’) (6)
On the other hand, I think is used also to declare speaker’s stance, as in the
following:
‘‘Now this slide is a little complicated but I think it’s useful’’ (4)
‘‘I don’t think this is true. . .’’ (6)
It is not always clear how far the utterance is a declaration of opinion or of
uncertainty and therefore it is not possible to give exact figures, but in any case a
bare assertion of the same clause without I think would sound more categorical.
As noted, speakers often address the audience directly to indicate the structure of
the talk and the speakers’ intentions, in which case both first and second person
pronouns are used, as in the following examples:
‘‘Let me try to explain this a little more’’ (3)
‘‘let me say one more thing before I go to those slides’’ (3)
‘‘I will not discuss. . .’’ (5)
‘‘I’d like to now just take up a few minutes of your time and say something
about’’ (7)
‘‘Well, before coming back to that, I’ll show you a few slides about macros-
copy’’ (7)
This is often modified by downtoning adverbs such as just, perhaps, a little, a few,
briefly :
‘‘perhaps I can just show you. . .’’ (4)
‘‘I want to say a few words’’ (6)
The first person plural is even more frequent than the singular, with a total of 529
occurrences (Table 3). Both the singular and plural may be used for anaphoric
reference. The following use of the past progressive for the reporting verb in indirect
speech has been shown by Carter and McCarthy (1995) to be typical of spoken
grammar, occurring rarely if at all in written prose:
‘‘As we were just saying. . .’’ (5)
‘‘I was saying just now, namely that this kind of. . .’’ (6)
As often occurs in this corpus, we find interweaving of modes, as namely is not
often found in casual conversation, as shown in the 15 million word spoken com-
ponent of the COBUILD corpus. The audience are drawn into the discussion also by
the use of the inclusive imperative with let’s, used four times:
‘‘Now let’s come back to this problem’’ (7)
‘‘Let’s just see what we are talking about’’ (10)
By these devices, the speaker avoids giving the impression of holding a mono-
logue.
The inclusive we may be used for reasons of deference or affiliation, where the
speaker tries to include the audience in the utterance:
‘‘. . .may help to improve the carbohydrate control which we all wish to see.’’
(4)
‘‘We all know that. . .’’ (9)
‘‘And one final intriguing point, which we perhaps as hemostasis and thrombo-
sis workers should be concerned about’’ (10)
Many talks start with an assumption of shared knowledge as in:
‘‘As we all know’’ (5)
Starting from given knowledge is a feature common to both written and spoken
text, but the personal element and the suggestion of modesty here are more char-
acteristic of conference discourse among peers. It is very unlikely that the same re-
searcher in a written article would have started off in this manner. More likely would
have been something such as:
‘‘It is well known that’’ or ‘‘It has long been established’’.
The word know occurs 40 times out of 53 with we, indicating the attempt to
unravel known from unknown facts in the quest for truth.
The exclusive we is also used frequently, because most speakers present their work
on behalf of a team or even an international group:
‘‘we reasoned that. . . and so we proceeded to adrenolectomise animals and
then’’ (5)
‘‘That’s what we’re looking for’’ (11)
‘‘we thought’’ (11)
‘‘We conclude from this study. . .’’ (13)
‘‘What we did was, all the patients underwent. . .’’ (14)
‘‘So we think- and I’ve seen this in a few more patients-’’ (7)
In the last example and some of the previous ones cited (‘‘intriguing’’, ‘‘rather
exciting results’’), and in the use of the first person perspective generally, the eval-
uative and subjective intrusions into a text which is otherwise highly technical invite
the audience to share the speaker’s attitudes. At times, speakers express personal
involvement with the subjects presented:
‘‘one of our patients sadly died of a cardiac arrest due to myocardial infarc-
tion’’ (4)
‘‘and the daughter, whom I have seen, has glycosuria in both pregnancies’’ (6)
Personal and attitudinal elements thus play an important part in this inter-
action, helping to personalise and bring closer the distant nature of the material
presented.
3.2. Markers
The markers included in the study are among those analyzed by Schiffrin (1987) in
conversation, but oh!, I mean and you know and others such as ok were excluded
because they were hardly found at all in this corpus. In fact, they seem to be rare
outside casual conversation. Items with an occurrence below 6 were excluded from
Table 4. Those found most frequently are: now, well and so. The frequency of thing as
a marker was also counted because it is included by Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992)
among markers typical of spoken language.
Speakers have their preferred discourse markers. The speaker in talk 7, for ex-
ample, uses now 13 times in 20 min.The same speaker uses well three times – twice as
a boundary marker, and once to introduce the answer to a rhetorical question. The
speaker in talk 8 uses three consecutive adjuncts at one point:
‘‘So then finally. . .’’ (8)
This would probably have been edited out of a written article.
Table 4
Interactive feature frequencies in the spoken corpus (tokens: 34,694; types: 3378)
Type Raw frequency Relative frequency (per 10,000 words)
Personal pronouns
we 450 129.69
you 366 104.34
I 312 89.92
our 50 14.41
my 27 7.78
us 23 6.62
me 16 4.61
your 13 3.74
Markers
now 104 29.97
so 81 24.76
well 23 6.62
thing 16 4.61
Imprecise quantifiers
about 34 9.79
rather 24 6.91
a little 8 3.74
approximately 6 1.72
N.B. Only frequencies over 5 are included in this table.
Items for which more than one interpretation is possible are counted only once.
Where there is a lack of discourse markers, this may make the talk rather more
difficult to follow, as they are part of the redundancy of natural conversation, giving
speakers and listeners a brief space to process what is being said, although how far
this is so is still controversial (see Dunkel & Davis, 1994). Listening to a very in-
tensive ten-minute talk accompanied by slides and statistical information and con-
taining few redundant elements can be very demanding. These three items will now
be considered in more detail.
3.2.1. Now
Now is by far the most frequent word used as a marker in the spoken corpus.
There are 104 instances of now occurring after a pause, indicating a new unit of
discourse. A few of these may be considered ambiguous, in the sense that they could
be taken literally to mean ‘‘at the present moment’’. For example:
‘‘Well now, based on that experience,. . .’’ (4)
‘‘Now, I want to talk about. . .’’ (12)

There is one instance of the item used in both senses in the same clause:
‘‘Now we now have’’ (6)
The interpretation depends mainly on intonation and whether or not there

is a pause which warrants the insertion of a comma in the transcript.
However, in the following example the use of ‘‘then’’ and the past tense
indicate that ‘‘now’’ is used here as a discourse marker and not a temporal
adverb:
‘‘had pretty much disappeared. Now we then felt strongly. . .’’ (7)
Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992) found that now could be used for various
functions – as qualifier (level intonation, no pause), topic shifter (falling into-
nation + pause), relator (level intonation, no pause). In this corpus, now repre-
sents an important structuring device in presenting the progression of ideas. It is
found mainly as a boundary marker which in this context indicates to the lis-
teners that the speaker is moving on to the next stage in the unfolding narrative
or argument:
‘‘Now after about forty days very suddenly the blood sugar rose again’’ (4)
‘‘Now let’s come back to this problem. . .’’ (7)
3.2.2. So
There were 81 occurrences of the marker so. This is, however, an approximate
figure, because in some cases it is difficult to be certain whether it is being used as a
marker or as a conjunction expressing consequence or a consequential reasoning
process. So has referential meaning associated with result and transition. It is used
commonly in writing as part of the cause-consequence or purpose elements of ar-
gumentative prose. In conversation it is used as a discourse marker indicating a
transition such as a topic shift or a potential locus for offering hearers a turn at talk.
In the monologues studied here, it is used particularly for expressing consequence
and for summarising. It is very flexible and, as in the case of now, it is not always
easy to distinguish between the different functions of so If there is no pause, we may
consider that it does not start a new unit and hence may be considered a con-
junction:
‘‘you have this high concordance even when weights are different so I think
there is an association in some cases’’ (6)
In other instances it is used clearly as a marker, as in the following examples:
‘‘So let’s begin here’’, ‘‘So this slide illustrates’’ (4)
‘‘a couple of examples. OK so there are glucose. . .’’ (5)
‘‘So it seems to me’’ (6 and 10)
3.2.3. Well
Well as a marker has no lexical meaning or grammatical status and is typically
conversational, used mainly as a response marker (Schiffrin, 1987). The spoken
corpus contained 23 instances of well used as a marker, always in clause-initial place.

In eight instances it came at the beginning of the answer to a rhetorical question, a
feature noted already by Baka and Sheikh Al-Shabab (1996) in biology lectures.
Here are some typical examples:
‘‘Is the disease entirely due to some virus infection? Well, no, we know that that
is not so’’ (6)
‘‘perhaps she is the perfect subject for treatment. Well, I can’t answer that ques-
tion’’ (6)
‘‘look at the future for a moment - well of course in the future . . .’’ (7)
‘‘well, anyhow, one thing that we really learnt a lot about was rejection. . .’’ (7)
The examples from talk 6 show how this marker often contains an indication of
an unsatisfactory response (in this case to a rhetorical question), whereas in 7 they
might have a bracketing and summarising function with the addition of anyhow in
the last example to mark a topic shift.
3.2.4. Thing
Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992) include thing together with well and so as dis-
course markers which distinguish spoken language (they also include OK, which
occurs only three times in this corpus). Thing occurs in fact 16 times in the corpus in
focus constructions of the kind exemplified below:
‘‘it’s crucial to the whole thing’’ (3)

‘‘the one thing that everybody would agree on’’ (3)
‘‘the interesting thing is. . .’’ (6)
‘‘it’s also a confirmatory thing because it’s not a thing you can do every day’’
(7)
In conclusion, now seems the most typical marker in this discourse genre. How-
ever, it is the conjunction of these markers working together with pronoun choice
and a certain imprecision (see next section) which enacts the social relations of the
event and contributes to the recipient design of the discourse.
3.3. Imprecise quantifiers
Imprecise quantifiers are distributed throughout the talks. Let us first consider the
approximators which occurred over five times in the spoken corpus, that is: about,
approximately, rather and a little.
In line with the findings of Dubois (1987), about is the most frequently used ap-
proximator, with 34 occurrences in this corpus. Approximately occurs only six times,
all in the paper presentations. Rather, used in the sense of quite, is also used 24 times
as a hedging device:
‘‘it certainly is rather striking that. . .’’ (7)
‘‘there was a rather marked decrease’’ (7)
‘‘there’s are rather severe degeneration’’ (7)
‘‘there has been some criticism because of the rather high dropout’’ (10)
‘‘a little bit too late’’ (10)
A little occurs six times and there are also five occurrences of a bit (the
combination a little bit occurs twice), which may be considered close to the in-
formal end of the formality scale. In fact, in the 15 million word COBUILD
corpus of recorded speech, there are 5.4 per million instances of a bit. A lot and
lots are found only followed by of with noun phrases, not as modifiers of
adjectives.
The following are some further examples of imprecise quantifiers which occur less
frequently, with the number of occurrences of each item given in parentheses. These
items occurring less than six times are not included in Table 4:
‘‘They did a bunch of experiments’’ (3) (once)
‘‘somewhat elevated’’ (4) (3 times)
‘‘some 5 days’’ (4), ‘‘some two weeks later’’ (4), ‘‘some 6 to 7 years ago’’ (10) (3
times)
‘‘nothing much really happened’’ (4) (once)
‘‘had pretty much disappeared’’ (7) (once)
The use of ‘‘pretty much’’ as in the last example is very informal according to the
COBUILD dictionary (1995).
There are also a few fixed expressions in the data which have a conversational
flavour, such as kind of in ‘‘kind of floundering’’, sort of in ‘‘sort of wind around
here’’, or ‘‘at first go, round here’’, ‘‘I can’t really make up my mind’’. Moreover,
there is other vague language apart from quantifiers:
‘‘What we have here is an islet and the brown stuff is. . .’’ (5)
‘‘why she had this funny or peculiar situation’’ (7)
A complete study of other hedges and stance markers is, however, beyond the
scope of this paper.
3.4. Comparison with a corpus of written articles
Linguists have devoted more attention to the study of written articles than oral
presentations (see Adams Smith (1984), Hyland (1994), Pettinari (1983)). This may
be partly because of the higher prestige of the written language in our culture (Hoey,
1983), but also because reading and writing academic texts are seen as priorities for
students. It must also be noted that transcribing spoken language is very time
consuming and expensive.
Writing is generally considered to be both logical and interactional. Myers
(1989) has shown how items such as personal pronouns are used as a positive
politeness strategy in written science communication among peers (see also Salager-
Meyer, 1994), and Skelton (1997) and Hyland (1998) have described the extensive
use of hedging in written articles. However, there were no examples of the first
person pronoun singular in this whole sub-corpus, and the 100 instances of the first
person plural were still far below the 450 of the spoken corpus. Almost all the
papers were published by more than one author, which could explain the lack of
first person singular forms – but this is true also of the paper presentations, where
the presenters were all speaking on behalf of a team of researchers. We is found
frequently in the last sentence of the introduction in research articles, announcing
the authors’ present study (Webber, 1996). This occurs five times out of six in this
corpus. There were 40 occurrences of our, but used mostly in a general sense, in
phrases such as ‘‘our knowledge of this. . .’’, less often in a personal sense (‘‘our
point is’’) and five of us. Examples of impersonal you were also not found (see
Table 5).
There were no examples of the markers so frequently found in the spoken corpus.
Written text, being displaced in time and place, makes use of other resources to
signal text structure to the reader, in particular what Halliday and Hasan (1976) term
internal conjunction. The continuatives they refer to, such as well, now and of course
did not occur in the written corpus, although of course could presumably have been
found. Markers such as so as a continuative in sentence-initial position were not
found in the written corpus and may therefore also be considered more typical of
face-to-face interaction.
Approximately is considered by both Dubois (1987) and Channell (1994) as
chosen more often for written texts, but in this corpus only four instances could be
found. There were 20 occurrences of about, but approximation was usually realised
differently from the way it is in the spoken language, using expressions such as ‘‘to
some extent’’, ‘‘reasonable confidence limits’’, ‘‘not particularly sensitive’’, which
are evidently perceived as more appropriate for this genre. It seems therefore that
lectures have their own distinctive features. Other forms of hedging are found fre-
quently in written articles, as noted by Hyland (1998).
In written articles, authors have to adhere to editorial norms and so the whole
text is carefully evaluated, not only for content but also for linguistic quality,
whereas for conferences, applicants wishing to present research communications
have to submit a copy of the abstract alone, not the entire paper. It is true that
conference abstracts are written according to strict instructions and go through a
selection process. The audience will generally expect presenters to follow the
outline provided in the abstract book (although they do not always do so), but
otherwise the form of the presentation offers more freedom than the written ar-
ticle. Thus, linguistic choices in talks are governed more by considerations such as
Table 5
Interactive feature frequencies in the written corpus (tokens: 38,409; types: 5330)
Type Raw frequency Relative frequency per 10,000 words
Personal pronouns
I 0 0
me 0 0
my 0 0
mine 0 0
you 0 0
your 0 0
we 100 26.03
us 5 1.30
our 40 10.41
Markers
now 0 0
so 4 1.04
thing 0 0
well 0 0
Imprecise quantifiers
about 20 5.20
approximately 4 1.04
rather 1 0.26
a little 0 0
time constraints, audience expectations and affiliation conventions than in written

articles.
4. Discussion
The analysis shows that the features under study are more frequent in talks than
in written articles on the same topic. This frequency may be ascribed to the situa-
tional or physical context and to considerations of social pragmatics, particularly
politeness, in accord with the findings described by Thompson (1997) in a study on
intranational academic research monologue. They are, however, also a result of the
preliminary nature and interpretation of the complex data in the research presented,
which is not yet ready for publication and is part of ‘‘science in the making’’
(Rowley-Jolivet, 2002).
A brief survey among specialist informants to find out why people go to these
conferences yielded two main responses: to hear what is new and to be able to
meet the speakers and interact with them. These are important clues to the
language behaviour of the participants. These congresses do not accept presen-
tations of published papers. Much of the material presented is very new and
presenters themselves may not be sure how to fully interpret the data. They may
at times be groping for the truth, a fact reflected in the frequent use of ‘‘we
know’’, ‘‘we don’t know’’ used in trying to find explanations for uncertain phe-
nomena. Plenary speakers, on the other hand, may describe the general ‘‘state of
the art’’ as well as their own past work and current research, but this again is
often very complex material since the speaker may be one of the few experts in
the field and only a handful of experts in the audience may be able to follow the
speaker’s argument adequately. The frequent use of personal deictics - not only
the first person plural, commonly used also in written articles, albeit less fre-
quently, but also the first person singular and the second person - depends partly
on contextual factors. Many of the items used are part of language-in-action, as
speakers point to details on the slides and comment on their significance. Miller
(1988) has described the importance of visual elements in written articles, but in
conference communication they are even more important because the whole talk
hinges on the presentation of the slides. Personal pronouns occur in the signalling
devices used in expressions such as ‘‘Now I will turn to. . .’’. These, together with
the appearance of the slides on the screen and other structuring metadiscourse,
such as the markers found in the corpus, signal rhetorical structure (Heino et al.,
2002).
The use of personal pronouns also reflects a wish to create empathy with the
audience and to bond members of the discourse community. The sense of both
in-group affiliation and competition with other researchers, with frequent refer-
ences to other research groups, is likely to be stronger in this discourse than in
that of academic lectures. Members of the medical community have a particularly
strong sense of affiliation. Speakers adopt a tone of modesty or deference. They
seem to express a desire to share their experiences with others of similar interests
and hear what they have to say. As regards politeness and face-saving strategies
(Brown & Levinson, 1987), expressions such as ‘‘As we all know’’ and ‘‘of
course’’ disclaim the assumption that the speaker’s intention is to inform the
audience. In reality, of course, there is also a great deal of competition in sci-
entific circles, and, as shown by Myers in written texts (1989), certain features
may be directed at insiders and others at peripheral members of the association.
The use of epistemic I think and also the vagueness noted in some of the data
mitigate any impression of over-confidence, out of place among peers, especially
when the presenter is unsure of the exact significance of the phenomena de-
scribed. The distinction between what Skelton (1997) refers to as interpreted truth
on the one hand, (in particular speculation about findings or about the process of
research) and interactional requirements of politeness on the other hand is fuzzy,
but obviously attitudes of certainty/uncertainty about facts permeate both written
and oral presentations of medical research. Because speech is ephemeral, con-
ference speakers may nevertheless express feelings of uncertainty more openly
than is acceptable in written articles. In general, the style used in platform
speaking is often deliberately rather less polished than that of the published
article. Speakers present themselves not only as scientists but also as persons.
The markers contribute to the global structuring of the text. These include the
marker well, considered by several authors to be typical of conversation. Markers
can create the impression that the speakers are narrating the stages in their work. As
authors such as Bazerman (1988) and Latour and Woolgar (1979) have noted,
narration entirely disappears from the finished written article. Whereas written
articles make no mention of the doubts and setbacks encountered during the re-
search, oral presentations do. Thus, the speaker in talk 7 gives an account of the
difficulties the team came across in their fight against rejection:
‘‘We tried to treat his rejection but were unsuccessful . . .’’
Narration of this kind contrasts strongly with the final written article, where all
that survives is a highly selective account of the experiment or clinical trials inves-
tigated.
An interesting feature is the use of now as a structuring device in the talks.
Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992) claim it would be out of place in casual con-
versation because it implies the speaker knows more about the topic than the
listener. It is used more in transactional rather than social discourse because it is
speaker-focused and indexes a unit in the upcoming text. In fact, it occurs often
when a speaker is entitled to a long turn and invites the listener to follow the
speaker’s reasoning in a cumulative series of stages. It is thus particularly suited
to lectures and conferences. Swales and Malczewski (1995) include both now and
well among the semantically empty markers used in academic lectures. Admit-
tedly, Schiffrin (1987) found several instances of now in her conversational data.
We must consider that her subjects were invited to offer explanations to an in-
vestigator, however, and knew that they were providing information for some
kind of research. Thus, the conversations described by Schiffrin were not drawn
from naturally occurring situations.
There are various reasons for the use of imprecise quantifiers. They decrease the
cognitive load of precise figures and findings. Too much precision at times would be
inappropriate (Channell, 1994). In fact, when the exact figures are shown on the
slides, it is more interesting to interpret and comment on the data than just read them
out. At times, imprecise features are used to give an impression of detachment of the
speaker from the absolute truth of a proposition and are therefore a hedging device,
used also to tone down claims so as to give an impression of modesty. As markers of
uncertainty, they serve to realise the status of equals. They are also used to highlight
major themes in the data, with more precision applied for reporting important
findings and more vagueness for those which the speaker considers unimportant or
disagrees with.
5. Conclusion
Participants try to create an atmosphere of co-operative interaction and con-

sensus because the purpose here is negotiation of information. The instances of
shifts from formal academic language to the more conversational style found are
thus important for teaching, because they may be unfamiliar to learners, partic-
ularly those who have been exposed to an idealised form of written English.
These features may impede understanding, not only of the details but also of the
macrostructure of the talk.
A platform speech is, of course, in many ways quite different from sponta-
neous conversation. Turns are allocated, and although the speaker may appar-
ently appeal to the audience in the course of the talk in the ways described
above, the listeners are not permitted to intervene until the talk is over and the
chairperson invites questions from the floor. Conversations are joint productions
and rarely involve lengthy chunks of factual information, but lectures do, and so
they contain clearer and more explicit patterns of co-ordinate and subordinate
levels of content. Lectures, however, are not entirely transactional. Aspects of the
basic dialogic character of speech, perhaps underlying language in general, are
extant in public address. Hence, although there is no overt participation of the
audience during the talk, there may be engagement, and some speakers know
there will be questions at the end. This discourse thus brings ‘‘objective, im-
personal, scientific fact’’ closer to the ‘‘ordinary, personal world of human un-
certainties, judgements, values and interests’’ (Lemke, 1990, pp. 129–130). The
tenor may be that of expert-to-expert, but when the speakers go onto the plat-
form,they dominate the floor and so may attempt to reduce the distance inherent
in public speaking (especially before a large audience) and to re-establish
proximity.
The differences between talks given by native and non-native speakers of English
were beyond the scope of this study. This is an interesting area of further research,
particularly as regards pronunciation and intonation. These appear to be problem-
atic for speakers of languages other than English and may impede understanding or
render the talk less well acceptable to the audience. Although it was not possible in
this corpus to differentiate between features favoured by native and those by non-
native speakers, what predominantly seemed to influence the kind of language used
was confidence and spontaneity. Novices and less confident speakers, whether native
English speakers or not, appeared to prefer texts written to be read. Again, this
impression needs to be verified.
Another question warranting further research is the differences between sub-
genres, including the plenary, paper and symposium talk as well as panel dis-
cussions and poster sessions. Plenary speakers are invited and are allotted more
time for their lecture. Probably for these reasons they feel free to include
digressions, anecdotes and humour and may possibly use more organising clues
(see examples in AppendixA). They speak in their own name and use the first
person singular more frequently, whereas paper presenters, speaking on behalf of
a team, use we more often.
The language of these presentations distinctly differs from the written articles
published on the same topics. It also differs in some ways from the conference
language of other disciplines. The personal references to patients and expressions
of common concern for their welfare are characteristic of medical discourse and
bring it closer to the everyday world than, for example, the discourse of chemistry
or physics. These features reflect the two faces of medicine as both science and
clinical practice. The frequent use of the inclusive we and of the impersonal you
referring to colleagues reflects the sense of a common endeavour. There is a strong
sense of alignment and of belonging to a professional tradition. Moreover, in
contrast to other disciplines the proceedings of large medical conferences do not

get published. Thus the talks are particularly ephemeral and the presence of the
participants during the sessions to see the slides and listen to the speaker’s com-
mentary on the data is particularly important.
If the problem of transcribing spoken data more rapidly can be solved, large
scale studies will eventually contribute more to the analysis of oral presentations.
Meanwhile, it is hoped that even a small sample corpus of this kind may help to
promote some understanding of the differences between spoken and written sci-
entific discourse.
Teaching materials are badly needed in this area because at present very few are
available. In this situation, teachers have to prepare their own materials or improvise
in some way. With government health authorities setting up credit systems for
continuing medical education in many European countries, such as the UK and
Italy, it will become increasingly necessary for medical practitioners not only to read
but also to understand spoken scientific communication both for purposes of re-
search and general practice. This genre needs investigating further so that ESP
materials on conference listening skills can be prepared to complement those con-
cerned with reading skills.
Notes
Transcription conventions
1:2 stands for different speakers

(.) untimed pause
? undecipherable speech
at ABOUT the same time
emphasis given by speaker
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the reviewers and editor of English for Specific Purposes and
my friend Alice Crossman for their helpful suggestions in improving this text.
Appendix A
Excerpts from conference talks.

Speaker No. 3
‘‘So that’s what we’re looking for. We’re not going to be looking at muscle
and fat for this particular gene as expressed ?? and what does this tell us
about the defects of beta cell function? er. . . I will finish by making some
predictions and this is sticking my neck out a bit but I suppose that’s sort
of why you invited me here, and I think that in 4 or 5 years we’ll see. . .
and I would like to quote what the great hockey player J.B. said, he
said ‘don’t go where the puck is, go where the puck is going to be’ Thank
you’’.
Speaker No. 5
(words in French-laughter)
‘‘I would like to leave you with 2 messages: first corticosteroids play an im-
portant role in regional fat distribution in Cushing’s disease and second that
it plays an important role in total body fat accumulation and storage, at
least in all experimental animals and probably in man – witness Addison’s
disease, described now nearly 150 years ago. I’ll say first a few words about
Cushing’s disease and corticosteroids in that context and then a bit about
the importance of corticosteroids in experimental obesity using 2 animal
models (slide).
. . .Let me turn from this first, I think straightforward message, to the experi-
mental work, and (slide) the next slide will introduce that with the picture of
some animals that we’ve been particularly interested in for years. It’s clear that
the animal on your left is obese. . . ’’
. . .em I hope you see the multidisciplinary approach we’re taking to this prob-
lem. If this doesn’t work the only guy who’s going to be out of a job is me. I
hope you enjoyed my presentation’’.
Speaker No. 6
Now the suggestion that this phenomenon might have some genetic basis
came from certain families. (slide) This shows the family history of the
lady I showed you just now who is there. Diabetes was discovered when
she was forty. She’s now over seventy and she’s still on dietary treat-
ment. She has a son who developed diabetes at the age of 25 but after
10 years is still taking insulin, and the daughter, whom I have seen, had
glycosuria in both pregnancies and her GT now is impaired but not ab-
normal.
Speaker No. 8
‘‘So I would like to summarise these results (slide): that using an ELISA
assay for the measurement of these antibodies you can find a high specific-
ity but a low sensitivity and these antibodies are still predictive. . . and I
think we can now see by the in vitro translation test we can identify a
much higher number of these antibodies, so I think for the future develop-
ment of these assays we have to develop these sensitive in vitro translation
assays.’’
Speaker No. 9
‘‘Mr Chairman, dear colleagues. I am presenting today on behalf of the
N group, which is a network in France interested in insulin independent
diabetes in offspring of diabetic parent. It’s been known for year that the
risk of disease conferred to the offspring by a diabetic father is not sim-
ilar to the risk conferred by a diabetic mother. In the most recent paper
by the Boston group it’s been calculated that the cumulative risk of
IDDM up to the age of 20 years of age has been. . . was 3 times as
high in offspring of diabetic father as in offspring of diabetic mother.’’
(slide)
Appendix B
Synoptic profile of I, showing THINK as the most frequent word on the right
and 40 and * 62 think 27 that
of 20 that * 23 want 27 to
the 13 but * 19 m 14 just
and 9 all * 18 ll 13 not
that 8 as * 14 I 13 show
I 7 here * 14 have 12 the
this 6 What * 13 would 8 like
acids 6 now * 10 will 8 t
developed 5 then * 8 am 7 going
diabetes 5 what * 8 can 7 it
in 4 IDDM * 8 do 6 see
issues 4 Now * 8 don’t 5 been
other 4 So * 7 thought 5 think
populations 4 diabetes * 7 ve 5 you
antibodies 4 if * 6 d 4 I
at 4 studies * 6 mentioned 4 about
on 3 because * 6 wanna 4 earlier
Sample from concordance of SHOW

testing and this is the last project I’m show
going to
measures forward. What I’m going to show you
results of this study. All I want to show
will behave like ace inhibitors I will show
decisions about and all I want to show is
receptor antagonist and all I want to show is
development and one of them I’ll show
this, I’m going to show some situations which are

a viable preparation I’ll show you the data on perfuse
now amply demonstrated. I’ll show you the work of
nice if I could show you a picture of
back to that, I’ll just show you a few slides
grafts. Let me just show you two examples: there
One patient I shall show you – an acute rejection
insulin resistance Now here I’ll show you a scheme of
developed diabetes, and I’ll show you a couple
am going to show you one example
Sample from concordance of NOW

not effective in lowering Now what about the patient
these effects remain unproven. Now as I mentioned earlier
in urinary albumin excretion. Now this was a population
be so clear cut. Now this is all based
we call as microalbuminuria. Now what about ace inhibitors
as an ace inhibitor Now we know that M.
require a longer study. Now what about the issue
seen with ace inhibitors Now where are we today
that are particularly relevant. Now, no one is probably
non diabetic insulin resistant. Now we knew that some
you go in vitro Now that’s all I’m
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Further reading
Source texts:
The Lancet: Vol. 349: pp. 747–751, Vol. 351: pp. 173–177, pp. 356–361 & pp. 737–
742, Vol. 352: pp. 9–11.
BMJ: Vol. 317: pp. 390–396, Vol. 323: pp. 970–975, pp. 1487–1491 & 1409–1412.*
Diabetologia: Vol. 42: pp. 3–14.
Diabetes: Vol. 37: pp. 1484–1488, Vol. 50: pp. 444–454.
*N.B. In BMJ metanalysis reviews are included among the research articles.
Pauline Webber holds an MSc in TESP from Aston University, Birmingham (UK) and is currently
Associate Professor of Medical English at ‘‘La Sapienza’’ University, Rome. She has published several
papers on medical discourse in AsP GERAS, IRAL and English for Specific Purposes and in collections
published by Peter Lang and L’Harmattan.

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Interactive features in medical

E-mail address: pauline.webber@uniroma1.it (P. Webber).

1.2. Choice of features included in the study

This study focuses on personal deictics, markers (referred to here simply as

2.1. Data and procedure

Fourteen spoken communications were analyzed, totalling 34,692 tokens and

2.2. Context of the spoken corpus

2.3. The written component

For purposes of comparison, a written corpus was used, consisting of 38,409

3. Results (summarised in Table 4)

3.1.1. Second person pronouns

3.1.2. First person pronouns

‘‘Now, I want to talk about. . .’’ (12)

The interpretation depends mainly on intonation and whether or not there

corpus contained 23 instances of well used as a marker, always in clause-initial place.

‘‘it’s crucial to the whole thing’’ (3)

3.3. Imprecise quantiﬁers

3.4. Comparison with a corpus of written articles

time constraints, audience expectations and aﬃliation conventions than in written

Participants try to create an atmosphere of co-operative interaction and con-

contrast to other disciplines the proceedings of large medical conferences do not

1:2 stands for diﬀerent speakers

Excerpts from conference talks.

Sample from concordance of SHOW

this, I’m going to show some situations which are

Sample from concordance of NOW

Webber, P. (1996). Varieties in medical English. Milan: Argo.

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