CC BY
2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/jvolsu2.2023.1.14
UDC 81'23:001.92 LBC 81.006
Submitted: 30.09.2022 Accepted: 05.12.2022
EMOTIVE PRAGMATICS OF POPULARISATION DISCOURSE: THE IMPACT OF CONTEXTUALISATION ON READER'S INTEREST1
Pavel N. Trushchelev
Herzen University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Abstract. The paper adheres to the pragmatic approach to emotion processes and focuses on emotion-evocative communication. Its goal is to investigate the impact of contextualisation techniques, which employed by popularisation discourse to induce readers' interest. The research is carried out in two ways, discourse-pragmatic and experimental. First, by adopting the sociopragmatic view of emotions and using methods of discourse analysis, the paper fleshes out a model of emotion-evocative communication, outlines contextualisation techniques, and introduces text materials. Second, by representing the experimental study, the paper assesses the interest-evoking effect of contextualisation. The experimental study involved 400 undergraduate students. We employed the scaling method (7-point bipolar scales) to measure participants' attitude to generalised and contextualised text passages. The data analysis applied the Wilcoxon test, the Kolmogorov - Smirnov test, Spearman's correlation coefficient, the linear regression, and the explanatory factor analysis. The comparing tests reveal that contextualisation promotes reader's interest in the popularisation text. The findings suggest that contextualisation techniques make the text content more relevant to the reader. Personal relevance - as a kind of mediator - causes interest responses. Beyond that, it was found that that reader's expectations about text strategies to presents knowledge construct interest-evocative communication. The findings demonstrate how communicative variables combine into the model of emotion-evocative communication.
Key words: emotive pragmatics, emotion-evocative communication, interest, popularisation, contextualisation.
Citation. Trushchelev P.N. Emotive Pragmatics of Popularisation Discourse: The Impact of Contextualisation on Reader's Interest. Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Seriya 2. Yazykoznanie [Science Journal of Volgograd State University. Linguistics], 2023, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 173-185. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/ jvolsu2.2023.1.14
Российский государственный педагогический университет им. А.И. Герцена, г. Санкт-Петербург, Россия
Аннотация. В статье обсуждается один из аспектов эмоциогенной коммуникации - эмоциональное воздействие, или эмотивная прагматика. С опорой на положения социопрагматической концепции эмоций т описана четырехчастная модель эмоциогенной коммуникации. Выделены языковые приемы контекстуали-зации, которые используют авторы научно-популярных текстов для пробуждения читательского интереса. к/ Для определения эмоциогенного потенциала приемов проведена серия экспериментов с участием 400 сту-Р-1 дентов бакалавриата. Материалом экспериментального исследования послужили тексты из двух книг по ^ культуре речи - справочной и научно-популярной. Испытуемые читали два текста из разных книг и с помощью биполярных шкал обозначали уровень своего устойчивого интереса к чтению и предмету, а также "и выражали свое субъективное отношение к содержанию текстов (эмоциональный интерес, новизна, сложеН ность, понятность, оригинальность). В результате статистического анализа полученных данных доказан эмо-© циогенный потенциал контекстуализации. Установлено, что приемы контекстуализации положительно воз-
УДК 81'23:001.92 ББК 81.006
Дата поступления статьи: 30.09.2022 Дата принятия статьи: 05.12.2022
ЭМОТИВНАЯ ПРАГМАТИКА ПОПУЛЯРИЗАЦИИ: КОНТЕКСТУАЛИЗАЦИЯ И ЧИТАТЕЛЬСКИЙ ИНТЕРЕС1
Павел Николаевич Трущелёв
действуют на читательский интерес, увеличивая личную значимость (релевантность) содержания текста и нарушая ожидания читателя относительно формы текста (способов представления знаний). Результаты исследования свидетельствуют об адекватности прагматической модели эмоциогенной коммуникации, разработанной в рамках лингвистической теории эмоций.
Ключевые слова: эмотивная прагматика, эмоциогенная коммуникация, интерес, популяризация, кон-текстуализация.
Цитирование. Трущелёв П. Н. Эмотивная прагматика популяризации: контекстуализация и читательский интерес // Вестник Волгоградского государственного университета. Серия 2, Языкознание. - 2023. -Т. 22, №№ 1. - С. 173-185. - (На англ. яз.). - DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/^0^.2023.1.14
Introduction
Popularisation communicates "lay versions" of scientific knowledge among the general public by presenting academic content in a straightforward and fascinating way [Calsamiglia, 2003; Calsamiglia, Van Dijk, 2004; Hyland, 2009, pp. 152-173; Gotti, 2014; Metcalfe, Riedlinger, 2019]. To encourage and facilitate the formation of new knowledge, popularisation seeks to promote audience's interest (see: [Markey, Loewenstein, 2014; Renninger, Hidi, 2016; Renninger, Bachrach, Hidi, 2019; Silvia, 2017]). This is why popularisation discourse employs a variety of techniques to induce reader's interest.
A lot of research into interest, most significant of it is taken place in educational domains, conceptualises multiple interest-evoking strategies, such as seductive details, problem solving, concrete elaboration, personalisation, narrativisation, contextualisation, positive ratings, figurative representation [Bakhtawer, Ghulam, Dur, 2021; Hidi, Baird, 1988; Lepper, Stang, McElvany, 2021; Markey, Loewenstein, 2014; Mikk, 2000, pp. 247-256; Pham, Tin, 2022; Pinoliad, 2021; Renninger, Bachrach, Hidi, 2019; Renninger, Hidi, 2022; Sadoski, Paivio, 2013; Shin, Chang, Kim, 2016; Wade, 2001]. What is very characteristic for such studies is that they put the analysis of discourse structures to one side and much more concern with discourse processing.
This paper proposes a shift toward exploring text-based sources of interest. Its aim is to investigate how contextualisation techniques, which employed by written popularisation discourse, affect reader's interest. For the rest of the paper, we will (1) map interest onto contextualisation, (2) present a design of the experimental study, (3) report outcomes of the data analysis, and (4) interpret them.
Interest and contextualisation
Emotion-evocative communication
Discourse-pragmatic studies regard interest as an emotional arousal that motivates and manages recipient's processing [De Beaugrande, 1982; Scott, 2021; Van Dijk, 2014, pp. 76-77; Wharton et al., 2021]. Recently, Piotrovskaya and Trushchelev [2021; 2022] have taken a view on interest from the perspective of emotion-evocative communication (or "affective communication" in [Hayakawa, 1977], "talk evoking emotions" in [Burdelski, 2020]). Shakhovsky seems to be one of the first linguists who outlined a versatile pragmatic model of emotion-evocative interaction [Shakhovsky, 2008, p. 218]. Applying some generalisations (see: [Bohn-Gettler, Kaakinen, 2022; Greenaway, Kalokerinos, Williams, 2018]), his model can be represented as follows (Fig. 1).
I
linguistic input
1
II
communication settings (cultural and situational features) ■b
III
characteristics of the recipient
IV
emotional responses
1 2 3
n...
Fig. 1. The model of emotion-evocative interaction
Emotion-evocative communication falls into four broad areas, three of which - components I-III - construct an emotional impact, which in turn produces emotional responses. That is, recipient's emotions - including interest - result from overlapping communicative variables taking place in discourse processes.
Let us go throw the way the model works by taking the Jenninger's case (see: [De Saussure, Wharton, 2020; Wharton, De Saussure, 2022]). In 1988, Philipp Jenninger, President ofthe Bundestag, made the Kristallnacht 50th anniversary speech about Germany's Nazi past. In his speech, he tried to represent the reasons for which many Germans were enthusiastic for National-Socialism. In particular, reproducing what many Germans said in the 1930s, Jenninger adopted indirect speech:
Didn't Hitler make true what Kaiser Wilhelm II had only promised, namely, to lead the Germans toward glorious times? Had he not truly been selected by Providence, a Führer, as Providence grants to a people only once in a thousand years? And as for the Jews, had they not, in the past, presumptuously assumed a role which they did not deserve? Shouldn't they finally, for once, have to put up with some restrictions? (transl. by L. de Saussure, T. Wharton [2020, p. 188]).
Richard Cohen, the Washington Post columnist, put audience's reactions: "The speech left some of his audience angry, some bitter, some sorrowful and some downright shocked"2. While Jenninger was speaking more than 50 members of the Bundestag walked out. Cohen highlighted some of the reasons for the audience's reactions:
He chose the wrong date (the Kristallnacht anniversary) to deliver a stern history lesson. What was expected, a German diplomat said, was a glance at the past, an apology and then some chirpy words about the future. Jenninger then compounded that mistake by delivering his speech in such a way that listeners could not tell where he was giving the Nazi point of view and where he was giving his own.
Here, Cohen sheds light on three variables:
(1) the points of view (or discourse perspectives),
(2) the political event, (3) the audience's expectations about Jenninger's speech. These variables pertain to linguistic input, communication settings, and characteristics of the recipients respectively. Surely, these communicative variables can be supplemented by many others (e.g., audience's political beliefs).
Eventually, the intricate patterns of variables resulted in negative emotional responses.
Perhaps, if Jenninger had predicted the effect of his speech, he would have developed other speech strategies. Nowadays, a wide range of scholars view emotions as social and intersubjective constructions; and this view implies that emotion processes have socio-cognitive scenarios, which could be typified [Alba-Juez, 2021; Moisander, Hirsto, Fahy, 2016; Shakhovsky, 2008; Wetherell, 2012]. Therefore, on a basis of knowledge about emotional scenarios, the speaker is able to manage the emotional impact by using language in a suitable manner. Richards [2001, p. 250] has labelled such way of using language as emotive use. In this line of thinking, Shakhovsky [2008] has conceptualised the notion of emotive pragmatics - that is, to paraphrase the definition of pragmatics, the emotive use of language within emotion-evocative communication.
Contextualisation
In its widest sense, context is the something 'given' external to the discourse unit. It can be roughly divided into two parts, discoursal and situational [Auer, 2009; Bowcher, 2019; Connolly, 2014; Van Dijk, 2015]. Discoursal context supplies information of a sign nature and refers to co-discourse/text. Situational context gives material from the situation in which a communication occurs. Firth [1957, p. 9] proposed the following extralinguistic constituents of situational context: the relevant objects and events, the participants, the effect of the verbal action. Therefore, with regard to the model of emotion-evocative communication, its components II-IV fit into situational context.
Contextualisation entails the explicit import of contextual materials into discourse. More specifically, contextualisation provides the use of signs to signal, invoke, actualise, model, and ultimately make relevant to participants diverse contextual constituents. To that end, contextualisation yields units that cue the reader what the contextual constituent is and when it is changing ("indexical contextualisation cues" in Gumperz's terms [1992]). It is reasonable to conjecture that contextualisation applied to linguistic input - the first component of the emotion-evocative model - could modify the following contextual components of the model and contribute to the emotional impact.
Contextualisation in popularisation discourse
By its nature, popularisation integrates scientific knowledge with audience's existing knowledge [Calsamiglia, Van Dijk, 2004; Gotti, 2014]. Therefore, popularisation discourse contextualises academic content in relation to projected readers. The main path of such integration is to build interactional engagement with readers [Hyland, 2009, pp. 161-173].
Popularisation discourse employs dialogicity units, which organise internal dialogue between the participants [Bondi, 2018; Hyland, 2014; 2019; Makkonen-Craig, 2014; Mur-Duenas, 2021; Qin, Uccelli, 2019]. Authors interact with readers by using personal pronouns, personal verb forms, evaluative and emotive units, pragmatic markers (discourse and modality words), discursive verbs, questions, directives, progressive tense markers, vocatives, colloquial language units, and so forth. In text passages, dialogicity units might appear as separate insertions3:
(1) a. В последующих разделах книги мы обратим внимание на точность словоупотребления... In the following sections of the book we will draw attention to the accuracy of word usage...
b. Подобные предложения, к сожалению, встречаются в речи довольно часто...
Such sentences, unfortunately, occur quite often in speech...
c. Теперь рассмотрим перечисление слов отдельных частей речи...
Consider now the enumeration of words of separate speech parts...
The examples (a) and (c) show that dialogicity units tend to display ongoing reading activities. First, the sentences give reference to projected readers via a personal pronoun, personal verb forms (обратим [draw-PRS.1PL]), and a hortative (рассмотрим [consider-PRS.1PL]). Second, they include discursive verbs given in bold, which refer to readers' actions. In addition, (c) contains a progressive tense marker (теперь [now]), which captures the moment of reading; and (a), the noun phrase последующие разделы книги [the following sections of the book], which refers to the object of the reading practice.
Dialogicity units might combine into dialogic patterns, such as question - answer sequence (see: [Makkonen-Craig, 2014]):
(2) a. Что может интересовать нас в области произ-
ношения? В первую очередь те случаи, которые подчиняются литературной норме. What might be of interest to us in the field of pronunciation? First of all, {we may be interested in} the cases that are in line with the literary norms.
b. Всё это так, скажете вы, но при чем здесь мы, учащиеся? Разве мы пользуемся канцеляризмами в нашей речи? К сожалению, да, особенно в сочинениях... That's all true, you might say, but what does that have to do with us, students? Do we use officialeses in our speech? Unfortunately, yes, {you use officialeses in your speech} especially in your essays...
This case employs questions, personal pronouns and verb form (скажете [say-PRS.2SG], пользуемся [use-PRS.1PL]), pragmatic markers, emotive markers, and colloquial constructions, specifically ellipsis (the omitted spans are presented in curly brackets), which occurs as a response marker (see: [Wiltschko, 2021, pp. 153-156]). Moreover, (b) is the part of the problem - solution pattern that comprises question in order to present a problem associated with readers' knowledge gaps (see: [Makkonen-Craig, 2014, pp. 108-109; Mikk, 2000, p. 254; Trushchelev, 2022a]).
Apart from writer-reader dialogue, popularisation discourse might refer to readers' experience and personally/culturally relevant situations:
(3) a. Вспомните, как вы разговариваете у себя
дома, с родными и знакомыми, а теперь сравните вашу «неофициальную» речь с ответом на уроке, с выступлением перед какой-либо аудиторией.
Remember how you talk at home - with your family and friends - and compare now your "informal" speech with your answer in a class, with your speaking in front of an audience.
b. . ..Вернувшись с работы домой, муж спрашивает у жены, навестил ли врач... их заболевшего ребенка.
...On returning home from his work, a husband asks his wife if a doctor has visited... their sick child.
c. Поговорка гласит: «На ошибках учатся».
A proverb says: "Learn from your mistake".
The example (a) illuminates two types of contextualisation cues that shape personally relevant
content. First, it employs units that give reference to projected readers and mark their experience: personal pronouns (вы [you], ваш [your]), a personal verb form разговариваете [talk-PRS.2PL], and imperative verb forms (вспомните [remember-IMPER.2PL], сравните [compare-IMPER.2PL]). Second, (a) also contains words (given in bold) that identify some entities and actions. Within discourse, such words give reference to personally relevant constituents of the situation and, to a certain extent, model specific readers' experience. By employing such cues, some contextualisation techniques give only indirect reference to readers' experience. So, (b) represents an everyday situation by giving reference only to its characteristic constituents. At last, (c) employs an idiom to actualise the culturally relevant phenomena.
Thus, popularisation discourse applies contextualisation to linguistic input in order to model, actualise or invoke dialogic settings of communication, on the one hand, and readers' experience and actions, on the other.
The impact of contextualisation techniques
The work by Shin, Chang, Kim seems to be the only study that investigates the impact of a certain contextualisation technique on readers' interest. On their account, contextualising induces interest "by making the text more relevant" to readers [Shin, Chang, Kim, 2016, p. 42]. Previously, Schank opined that personal relatedness "can make things much more interesting than they inherently are" [Schank, 1979, p. 281]. In this view, specialists have long noted that emotions - including interest - heavily depend on personal appraisals of the relevance of a stimulus [Bayer, Ruthmann, Schacht, 2017; Connelly, 2011; Griner, Smith, 2000; Wharton et al., 2021]. Recently, Renninger, Bachrach, Hidi [2019] have conceptualised personal relevance as a potential trigger of interest (see also: [Pinoliad, 2021]).
Experimental study design Materials
The text materials were drawn from two books on language culture by D.E. Rosenthal, a handbook of the Russian language (Rosenthal, 2016b) and a
popular science book (Rosenthal, 2016a). The materials consisted of eight paired passages: passages 1.1 and 1.2; passages 2.1 and 2.2; passages 3.1 and 3.2; passages 4.1 and 4.2. Each of the pairs included (1) a generalised passage taken from the guidebook and (2) a contextualised passage taken from the popular science book. The generalised-and-contextualised passages conveyed information about the same grammar rule. The composition of the materials is given in Table 1.
Participants
The participants were 400 full-time undergraduate students in the first year of bachelor's degree at the Herzen University (St. Petersburg, Russia). Students' average age was 18 years; and 289 of them (72.3%) were female. They were randomly divided into four groups. Each group read generalised-and-contextualised passages on diverse topics: (1) 100 students read Passage 1.1 and Passage 2.2; (2) 100 students, Passage 1.2 and Passage 2.1; (3) 100 students, Passage 3.1 and Passage 4.2; (4) 100 students, Passage 3.2 and Passage 4.1.
Methods
To gather the data, the scaling techniques were utilised (see: [Piotrovskaya, Trushchelev, 2022; Sadoski, Goetz, Rodriguez, 2000; Trushchelev, 2022b]). A 7-point bipolar scale was used to assessed the following qualities: (a) interestingness, 1 (uninteresting) to 7 (interesting); (b) novelty, 1 (familiar) to 7 (novel); (c) complexity, 1 (easy) to 7 (complex); (d) comprehensibility, 1 (incomprehensible) to 7 (comprehensible); (e) originality, 1 (common) to 7 (original). Also, a 7-point emoticon scale given in Figure 2 was used to assess individual interests, reading interest and interest in language culture.
I©
©I©
2 3
©
©
©I
©
7
Fig. 2. An emoticon scale
The scale (a) measured participants' interest in a passage; the other scales, the well-established
Table 1. Text materials
Passage Topic Size (tokens) Contextualisation techniques
Passage 1.1 128 no techniques
Passage 1.2 Use of (Russian) Prepositions PO and O 138 an abstract reference to everyday speech experience (Мы говорим... [We say...]); a question - answer sequence; a personal pronoun мы (we); personal verb form говорим (say-PRS.1PL); four pragmatic markers (e.g., казалось бы [it would seem]); an emotive marker (an exclamatory sentence), three colloquial markers (two colloquial words, an elliptical construction, and a sentence featuring emphatic word order)
Passage 2.1 142 no techniques
an abstract reference to everyday speech experience (Мы с вами говорим... [I and you say. ]); a reference to specific everyday speech experience
(в обувном магазине... можно услышать [in a shoe store... one can hear]); a reference to readers' school experience:
Это можно показать при помощи несложной «алгебраической» задачи:
земля - род. п., мн. ч. земель;
Passage 2.2 Use of gender of (Russian) nouns 175 х - (?)(?) туфель. Чему равен х? [This can be shown by a simple "algebraic" exercise: zemlia {land-NOM} - genitive, plural zemel'{lands-GEN}; x - (?)(?) tufel' {shoes-GEN}. To what is x equal?]; two question - answer sequence; two personal pronoun мы (we); two personal verb form говорим (say-PRS. 1PL) and получим (get-PRS. 1PL); eight pragmatic markers (e.g., очевидно [obviously]), three evaluative markers (e.g., простой [simple]), six colloquial markers (a colloquial word, three elliptical constructions, and two sentences featuring emphatic word order), a discursive verb показать [show]
Passage 3.1 185 no techniques
Passage 3.2 Use of genitive plural forms of (Russian) nouns 206 a reference to specific everyday speech experience (я сказал соседям [Isaid to my neighbors.]); three personal pronouns я (I); a question -answer sequence; four colloquial markers (two elliptical constructions and two sentences featuring emphatic word order); two pragmatic markers (e.g., действительно [indeed])
Passage 4.1 138 no techniques
Passage 4.2 Use of (Russian) singular nouns in plural function 159 an indirect reference to specific everyday speech experience (Пересказывая содержание кинофильма, Вася задумался над фразой... [While retelling the content of the movie, Vasya stopped to think about the phrase...]); a reference to culturally relevant phenomenon (an idiom сколько голов, столько умов [many men, many minds]); a question; an imperative verb form; a discursive verb запомнить [remember]; six pragmatic markers (e.g., все-таки [after all]); an emotive marker (an emotive particle), two colloquial markers (two sentences featuring emphatic word order)
predictors of text-based interest (see: [Renninger, Hidi, 2016; Schiefele et al., 2012; Silvia, 2006]).
Procedure
The Google Forms platform was utilised for conducting the experiment. The procedure consisted of four steps: (1) a participant stated his/er age and gender; (2) a participant rated his/ er individual interests; (3) a participant read a first passage and rated it for the qualities (a)-(e); (4) a participant read a second passage and rated it for the same qualities. The time to work was not limited.
Data processing
The data analysis was carried out by using SPSS and RStudio. The rating reliabilities were assessed first. Reliability coefficients omega ranged from .82 to .97. The descriptive statistics for the ratings is presented in Table 2. The further analysis employs the following tests: the Wilcoxon matched pairs signed rank test (W), the Kolmogorov - Smirnov test (D), Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (rs), the backward stepwise linear regression, and the explanatory factor analysis. The level of significance was set at .05.
P.N. Trushchelev. Emotive Pragmatics of Popularisation Discourse Table 2. Medians, means, standard deviations, and correlations with interestingness
Variables Med M SD rs Med M SD rs
Passa ge 1.1 Passa ge 1.2
Interestingness 5 4.77 1.66 - 5 5.13 1.69 -
Reading interest 4.5 4.39 1.41 .36 * 5 5.03 1.21 .17
Interest in language culture 5 5.15 1.39 -.03 6 5.58 1.22 -.08
Novelty 3 3.68 1.87 -.22 * 4 3.75 2.06 .21 *
Complexity 2 2.36 1.20 -.16 2 2.47 1.38 -.06
Comprehensibility 7 5.99 1.62 .20 7 5.98 1.46 .21 *
Originality 3 3.10 1.51 .27 * 4 3.52 1.82 .32 *
Passage 2.1 Passage 2.2
Interestingness 4 4.32 1.61 - 6 5.56 1.52 -
Reading interest 5 5.03 1.21 .28 * 4.5 4.39 1.41 .26 *
Interest in language culture 6 5.58 1.22 .28 * 5 5.15 1.39 .17
Novelty 3 3.28 2.01 .12 4 4.47 1.88 .12
Complexity 2 2.42 1.31 -.32 * 2 1.96 1.19 -.01
Comprehensibility 6.5 5.82 1.56 .34 * 7 6.07 1.54 .26 *
Originality 2 2.79 1.75 .27 * 4 4.35 1.59 .45 *
Passage 3.1 Passage 3.2
Interestingness 5 4.90 1.51 - 5 5.20 1.56 -
Reading interest 5 4.85 1.08 .23 * 5 4.63 1.36 .32 *
Interest in language culture 6 5.81 1.06 .05 5 5.16 1.24 .13
Novelty 2 2.52 1.67 -.21 * 4 3.96 1.71 .15
Complexity 3 2.90 1.48 -.33 * 2 2.31 1.36 -.28 *
Comprehensibility 6 5.71 1.66 .26 * 7 5.95 1.44 .24 *
Originality 3 2.91 1.47 .33 * 4 4.18 1.78 .43 *
Passa ge 4.1 Passa ge 4.2
Interestingness 4.5 4.55 1.55 - 6 5.89 1.35 -
Reading interest 5 4.63 1.36 .14 5 4.85 1.08 .34 *
Interest in language culture 5 5.16 1.24 -.04 6 5.81 1.06 .05
Novelty 4 4.25 1.72 .24 * 4 4.36 1.93 .24 *
Complexity 2 2.46 1.40 -.18 2 2.46 1.43 -.40 *
Comprehensibility 6 5.89 1.49 .11 7 6.04 1.35 .22 *
Originality 4 3.67 1.72 .31 * 5 4.91 1.62 .33 *
Note. Med - median; M - mean; SD - standard deviation; rs - Spearman's rank correlation (with interestingness); * -p < 0,05.
Results
Interestingness
The central tendency of the interestingness ratings was represented by median and mean. The central values given in Table 2 above suggest that the participants rated the contextualised passages as more interesting.
To verify this assumption in regard to the participant groups, the intra-sample Wilcoxon test was applied. The test values given in Table 3 below support the central tendency: each of the values is significant and shows a positive shift for a contextualised passage.
To establish differences between ratings for the paired passages (which were rated by different
participant groups), the inter-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was applied. The test values are presented in Table 4. They revealed that the ratings for Passage 2.1 and Passage 4.1 differed significantly from the ratings for Passage 2.2 and Passage 4.2. However, the values for the other paired passages - Passage 1.1 vs. Passage 1.2, and Passage 3.1 vs. Passage 3.2 - were insignificant.
Interestingness and predictor ratings
To assess the dependence of interestingness on the predictor ratings - to wit: individual interests, novelty, complexity, comprehensibility, and originality - Spearman's correlation coefficient and the backward stepwise regression were applied.
ДИСКУРСИВНЫЕ АСПЕКТЫ ИЗУЧЕНИЯ ЭМОЦИЙ Table 3. Intra-sample comparing
Text materials W
Passage 1.1 Passage 2.2 3511.5 *pos
Passage 2.1 Passage 1.2 3538 *pos
Passage 3.1 Passage 4.2 3023.5 *pos
Passage 4.1 Passage 3.2 3751.5 *pos
Note. W- the Wilcoxon matched pairs signed rank test; pos - positive ranks are greater; * -p < .05. Table 4. Inter-sample comparing
Text materials D
Passage 1.1 Passage 1.2 .13
Passage 2.1 Passage 2.2 .37 *
Passage 3.1 Passage 3.2 .13
Passage 4.1 Passage 4.2 .41 *
Note. D - the Kolmogorov - Smirnov test; * -p < .05.
First, the correlation test for each passage was calculated. The significant correlation values given in Table 2 above identify predictors that had an impact on interestingness. It should be noted that none of the significant values exceed the indicator of moderate correlation (to wit: the value of .60 and more).
Second, the impact shared between the significant predictors was ascertained by regression models. For each passage, the regression model estimated the relationship between interestingness as a target (dependent) variable and significant predictor ratings as a set of predictor (independent) variables. Table 5 represents regression models.
Table 5. Regression models
The regression models include significant coefficients of determination (R2), acceptable values of the Durbin - Watson statistic (d), and patterns of weighting predictors (pn). Each of the R2-values explains less than one-third of the variation in a target variable. That is, all of the regression models establish only a weak dependence of interestingness on the predictor ratings. Moreover, the regression models include low coefficient values (of weighting predictors) among which only one exceeds the value of .400.
The low impact of predictor ratings was evidenced by the explanatory factor analysis applied on the interestingness ratings with the varimax rotation. Correlations between the ratings
Passage R F d Pi P2 P3 P4 P5 P6
Passage 1.1 .231 9.597 * 2.366 .402 -.160 .250
t = 3.68 * t = -1.93 t = 2.54 *
Passage 1.2 .172 6.649 * 1.910 .164 .188 .239
t = 2.03 * t = 1.74 t = 2.60 *
Passage 2.1 .325 11.449 * 1.842 .380 -.333 .205 .303
t = 3.36 * t =-2.71 * t = 1.98 t = 3.87 *
Passage 2.2 .213 13.148 * 2.204 .294 .341
t = 3.02 * t = 3.96 *
Passage 3.1 .276 12.228 * 2.084 .339 -.317 .329
t = 2.71 * t = -3.50 * t = 3.64 *
Passage 3.2 .295 13.420 * 1.985 .327 -.239 .312
t = 3.29 * t = -2.40 * t = 4.14 *
Passage 4.1 .129 7.203 * 1.928 .181 * .233
t = 2.08 * t = 2.67 *
Passage 4.2 .279 12.407 * 2.236 .289 -.277 .282
t = 2.65 * t = -3.39 * t = 3.90 *
Note. R2 - the coefficient of determination; F- F-test; d- the Durbin - Watson statistic;px -p6 - weighting predictors: px - reading interest, p2 - interest in language culture, p3 - novelty, p4 - complexity, p5 - comprehensibility, p6 - originality; t- tvalue; * -p < .05.
were suitable for analysis: the Kaiser - Meyer -Olkin value was 0.545 and x2-value for Bartlett's test was 152.13 (28); p < .001. The eigenvalue, scree plot, and explaining variance suggested four extracting factors. The first factor explained 26.75% of the variance; the second, 20.17%; the third, 16.22%; and the fourth, 13.68%. Table 6 presents the factor matrix, which includes values exceeding .333.
It appears from the table that the patterns of factors are in accordance with the participant groups. That is, the variation in the interestingness variables is primarily explained by participant factors, rather than by predictor factors.
Discussion
The results demonstrate that contextualisation techniques promote reader's interest in the popularisation text. The central tendency and intra-sample comparing attest that the participant groups rated each contextualised passage as more interesting than a generalised passage.
As for inter-group comparing, there are no significant differences between interestingness ratings for two passage pairs, each of which were divided between diverse groups: Passage 2.1 vs Passage 2.2, and Passage 4.1 vs Passage 4.2. This seems to be because the participants rated the generalised and contextualised passages primarily in relation to each other. This assumption is explicitly supported by the factor matrix. Thus, the inter-sample values probably are not indicative in respect of emotive pragmatics. On the other hand, Passage 1.2 and Passage 3.2 included fewer contextualisation means than Passage 2.2 and Passage 4.2. In particular, Passage 2.2 and Passage 4.2 employed more specific techniques that gave reference to personally and culturally
Table 6. The pattern matrix
relevant situations (see Table 1 above). Probably, the inter-sample test captured the effect of quantitative characteristics - a number and variety of techniques (see: [Piotrovskaya, Trushchelev, 2022]).
As for the outcomes of the dependency analysis, the most recurring predictor is originality. All of the regression models attest that originality ratings have a significant influence on interestingness. It follows that reader's expectations about discourse strategies to present knowledge are communicative variables that construct interest-evocative communication (see: [Piotrovskaya, Trushchelev, 2022, p. 69]). Discourse strategies in turn could disconfirm such expectations to increase text-based interest. Beyond that, originality appears as a more weighting predictor than novelty. This result suggests that, within knowledge communication, the text content is expectedly novel for readers, so that the interest-evoking effect of novelty decreases (see: [Piotrovskaya, Trushchelev, 2022, p. 69]).
The second important predictor is reading interest. Only two regression and two correlation tests resulted in insignificant values. These outcomes reinforce the finding that reading interest and text-based (situational) interest are linked dimensions of reading motivation [Schiefele et al., 2012].
In contrast to reading interest, another type of individual interest - interest in language culture - is the least significant predictor. Hence, participants' interest could depend on more specific type of individual interest, such as interest in the area of disciplinary knowledge or in the text topic.
The effect of complexity should also be noted. It appears from the dependency analysis that the higher complexity of the passages is, the lower is interestingness. However, it is wellknown that a stimulus complexity induces interest [Silvia,
Materials Factors
1 2 3 4
The first participant group Passage 1.1 .416
Passage 2.2 .996
The second participant group Passage 1.2 .995
Passage 2.1 .652
The third participant group Passage 3.1 .865
Passage 4.2 .592
The fourth participant group Passage 3.2 .774
Passage 4.1 .631
Note. Extraction method: maximum likelihood; rotation method: varimax.
2006, pp. 33-34]. The point could be that the study measured personal attitude to text content, but it did not explore the linguistic level of text complexity. In this way, the complexity ratings rather presented the influence of "ease of comprehension" predictor (see: [Silvia, 2006, p. 79]).
In general, only a weak dependence of interestingness on the predictor ratings has been established. Therefore, participants' interest also depended on predictors the study did not measure, most likely on predictors pertaining to the situational context. In particular, the factor matrix seems to be indicative of the impact of participants' personal features.
And yet, there is the fact that the contextualised passages were rated as more interesting by the participants. Based on the factor matrix, it is reasonable to assume that contextualisation techniques promoted participants' interest by increasing personal relevance of the contextualised passages. That is, participants' interest was driven not so much by the textual factors as by the contextual factors. Contextualisation techniques made the content more relevant to the participants; and personal relevance - as a kind of mediator - promoted their interest. Thus, the findings support the view that popularisation discourse constructs the interest-evoking impact by modelling contextual components via contextualisation techniques. In this sense, the findings demonstrate how interest-evoking variables combine into the model of emotion-evocative communication.
Conclusion
The paper augments current research into emotive pragmatics by delivering findings on strategies for increasing text-based interest. Varying text passages with respect to contextualisation has resulted in the findings on the interest-evoking impact of contextualisation techniques, which employed by popularisation discourse. The findings attest to the adequacy of the pragmatic model of emotion-evocative communication.
NOTES
1 The study was funded by Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), project no. 20-012-00284.
2 Cohen R. Don't Blame Jenninger. The Washington Post. 1988. Nov. URL: https://www. washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/11/20/ dont-blame-jenninger/e86ba63e-fce0-4bf4-9435-277eefba7a8f/.
3 By way of examples, (Russian) passages taken from a popular science book on language culture were used (Rosenthal, 2016a).
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Information About the Author
Pavel N. Trushchelev, Candidate for a Degree, Assistant, Department of the Russian Language, Herzen University, Reki Moyki Emb., 48, 191186 Saint Petersburg, Russia, paveltrue2007@rambler.ru, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0810-2434
Информация об авторе
Павел Николаевич Трущелёв, соискатель, ассистент кафедры русского языка, Российский государственный педагогический университет им. А.И. Герцена, наб. реки Мойки, 48, 191186 г. Санкт-Петербург, Россия, paveltrue2007@rambler.ru, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0810-2434
