Linguistic structures and functions of thesis and dissertation titles in Dentistry
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- dc.contributor.author Morales, Oscar Alberto
- dc.contributor.author Perdomo, Bexi
- dc.contributor.author Cassany, Daniel
- dc.contributor.author Tovar, Rosa María
- dc.contributor.author Izarra, Élix
- dc.date.accessioned 2021-03-11T09:09:58Z
- dc.date.issued 2020
- dc.description.abstract Titles play an important role in genre analysis. Cross-genre studies show that research paper and thesis titles have distinctive features. However, thesis and dissertation titles in the field of dentistry have thus far received little attention. Objective: To analyze the syntactic structures and their functions in English-language thesis and dissertation titles in dentistry. Methodology: We randomly chose 413 titles of English-language dentistry theses or dissertations presented at universities in 12 countries between January 2000 and June 2019. The resulting corpus of 5,540 running words was then analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively, the two complementary focuses being grammatical structures and their functions. Results: The average title length was 13.4 words. Over half of the titles did not include any punctuation marks. For compound titles, we found that colons, dashes, commas, and question marks were used to separate the different components, colons being the most frequent. Four syntactic structures (nominal phrase, gerund phrase, full-sentence, and prepositional phrase) were identified for single-unit titles. Single-unit nominal phrase titles constituted the most frequent structure in the corpus, followed by compound titles. Four particular rhetorical combinations of compound title components were found to be present throughout the corpus. Conclusions: Titles of dentistry theses and dissertation in English echo the content of the text body and make an important contribution to fulfilling the text’s communicative purposes. Thus, teaching research students about the linguistic features of thesis titles would be beneficial to help them write effective titles and also facilitate assessment by teachers.en
- dc.description.sponsorship This research project received funding from the Scientific, Humanistic, Technological and Arts Development Council of the Universidad de Los Andes (ULA), in Mérida, Venezuela, code O-307-15-06-A, and from the Carolina Foundation, with a postdoctoral fellowship at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, 2017–2018.
- dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
- dc.identifier.citation Morales OA, Perdomo B, Cassany D, Tovar RM, Izarra E. Linguistic structures and functions of thesis and dissertation titles in dentistry. Lebende Sprachen. 2020;65(1):49-73. DOI: 10.1515/les-2020-0003
- dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/les-2020-0003
- dc.identifier.issn 0023-9909
- dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/46726
- dc.language.iso eng
- dc.publisher De Gruyter
- dc.relation.ispartof Lebende Sprachen. 2020;65(1):49-73
- dc.rights © De Gruyter Published version available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/les-2020-0003
- dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
- dc.subject.keyword Dentistryen
- dc.subject.keyword Dissertation titlesen
- dc.subject.keyword Lexico-grammatical analysisen
- dc.subject.keyword Linguistic structureen
- dc.subject.keyword Thesis titlesen
- dc.title Linguistic structures and functions of thesis and dissertation titles in Dentistryen
- dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
- dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion