A functional-pragmatic approach to the analysis of internet scientific articles.

Abstract

Recent years have seen a huge expansion in the use of electronic communication. The differences between the forms of English used in the electronics forms for interpersonal communication –electronic mail, computer bulletin boards etc- and in more regular kinds of written language are still under scrutiny. Such is the case of the scientific articles which are published in the internet webpages. Drawing on genre theory and with the purpose of studying how research papers are accommodating to this new medium, this paper holds a comparative approach between the generic schematic structure followed by these texts and those sustaining others which address more restrictively to the scientific communities. The structural analysis reveals that the internet scientific genre crosses the border towards the conventions of mass media discourse in order to attract the common audience.