Kairós in science blogging: immediacy, self-expression and audience engagement

Abstract

The present paper explores the rhetorical concept of «kairós» as a decisive factor of the argumentative success of scientific communications to highlight the linguistic shape it takes in science blogs. Science blogs are a discourse genre increasingly used by scientists and international research groups to engage publics of experts and non-experts in the modern scientific enterprise. The approach is both rhetorical and linguistic. It draws from studies of popular science genres by Carolyn Miller and fellow rhetoricians and bases its linguistic analysis on frequency observations in a corpus of blogs maintained by scientists in different areas.