Abstract
This paper investigates the uses and scholarly impact of quoted/direct speech in research article titles (e.g., "I Know I'm Generalizing but…": How Teachers' Perceptions Influence ESL Learner Placement) across the 50 highest-listed linguistics journals according to Clarivate Analytics’ inCites Journal Citation Reports. The aims of the study were to: (1) uncover the prevalence of titles featuring quoted speech between 1980 and 2019, (2) describe how directly reported speech is utilised structurally in article titles, and (3) investigate the effects of various patterns of use of quotations on articles’ age-weighted citation rates. 640 linguistics articles with speech act titles were uncovered, occurring with an incidence of 1.8% in the dataset (n = 36,438), although their prevalence has risen significantly since 2004. Structural analysis revealed 90.9% of quotations were contained in the first segment of a compound title, serving to create an information gap (often for the purposes of provoking interest or intrigue), which is resolved in the second segment; the research article’s topic. Regression analysis showed that speech act titles were significant negative determinants of articles’ age-weighted citations, particularly the prevalent pattern of compound structures featuring a quotation phrased as a declarative. The length of the quotation was found to exert no significant effect, although quotations that were not marked by single or double quotation marks were found to have an especially suppressed scholarly impact.
Highlights
As the first point of contact between the author and readers, the title of a research article plays an important role in whether a paper gets retrieved and read (Hartley 2007; Li and Xu 2019; Nagano 2015; Nair and Gibbert 2016; Sahragard and Meihami 2016)
Direct speech was found to be a rare phenomenon in the 36,438 linguistics research article titles. 640 instances were identified, accounting for just 1.8% of the dataset
The most recent time period 2015–2019 accounts for a substantial 35.3% of all incidences of speech act titles. This suggests that titles featuring quoted speech are growing in acceptance in linguistics, paralleling the trend of diversification in the structuring of research article titles exhibited over recent decades (Li and Xu 2019; Sahragard and Meihami 2016; Xiang and Li 2019)
Summary
As the first point of contact between the author and readers, the title of a research article plays an important role in whether a paper gets retrieved and read (Hartley 2007; Li and Xu 2019; Nagano 2015; Nair and Gibbert 2016; Sahragard and Meihami 2016). It has been found that relatively inconsequential title writing practices, such as the inclusion of non-alphanumeric characters, can impact on an article’s citations (Buter and van Raan 2011; Gnewuch and Wohlrabe 2017; Keating et al 2019; Nair and Gibbert 2016; van Wesel et al 2014). For these reasons, research article titles must be written carefully, with authors meticulously choosing appropriate syntactic forms that convey the unique knowledge contribution of the manuscript (Aleixandre-Benavent et al 2014). Given that many journals place restrictions on the number of words (Haggan 2004; Wang and Bai 2007), writing a ‘good’ title is considered a challenging prospect by many authors of research publications (Gesuato 2008)
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