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In:Science Communication on the Internet: Old genres meet new genres
Edited by María José Luzón and Carmen Pérez-Llantada
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 308] 2019
► pp. 195–218

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Chapter 10
The representation of science and technology in genres of Vatican discourse

Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ as a case study

Published online: 4 December 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.308.10sma
Abstract
The study presented in this chapter focuses on the discursive representations of science and technology embedded in Laudato Si’, an instance of a traditional print genre in the process of becoming digitalized. The study describes the epistemic discursive activity organized by two genre sets, with Laudato Si’ occupying a place in both. The first genre set, which we have labelled the “science/technology genre set,” has functioned for almost a century as a discursive vehicle supporting an intertextual chain of uptake and recontextualization used in developing an evolving body of institutional knowledge and collective argumentation regarding science and technology, knowledge and argumentation that eventually emerged in Laudato Si’. The second digital genre set, which we refer to as the “launch-day genre set” was employed to rapidly disseminate Laudato Si’ around the world. As well, we characterize Laudato Si’ as an instance of a “hybrid genre,” a genre combining certain affordances of digital communication with valued residual features of an antecedent genre and its traditional print text.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1The genre of the papal encyclical
    • 2.2Laudato Si’ and the plea for an integral ecology
    • 2.3Pontifical academy of sciences
  • 3.Theoretical perspectives
    • 3.1Rhetoric: A contemporary view
    • 3.2A social conception of genre
      • 3.2.1Digital genres
      • 3.2.2Uptake and recontextualization
    • 3.3Representations of science/technology
  • 4.Method
  • 5.Findings
    • 5.1The representation of science/technology in Laudato Si’: A genealogy
    • 5.2Laudato Si’: The encyclical genre as part of two genre sets
      • 5.2.1The launch-day genre set
      • 5.2.2Internet-posted textual responses to Laudato Si’
      • 5.2.3Laudato Si’: An instance of a hybrid genre
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix: Corpus of analysis
References (39)
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Appendix: Corpus of analysis
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Falconer, Matthew A.
2023. Transforming Data on the Boundaries of Science and Policy: The Council of Canadian Academies’ Rhetorical Repertoire. In Applied Data Science [Studies in Big Data, 125], ► pp. 147 ff. DOI logo

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