Calls for abstracts: an academic genre shaping professional practices

This paper examines the pragmatic value and structural organization of 100 Calls for Conference Abstracts (CfCAs) in Biology, Computing, History and Linguistics. These goal-oriented communicative acts comprise a crucial, but textually marginal, move (‘Invitation’), which is supported by various textually prominent auxiliary ones: informative, regulatory and persuasive-argumentative (announcements, offers, orders and requests). Collectively, the moves qualify the CfCAs as representative, directive and commissive texts, which focus academics’ attention on shared disciplinary values and goals. The CfCAs are structurally similar – all share moves with one another, and their moves appear in typical sequences. Yet, they do not instantiate an identical text type – no functional component is common to all texts – which makes it impossible to determine a shared structure potential. This suggests that different CfCAs exemplify the genre to different degrees of prototypicality, which paves the way for generic innovation.