Los títulos de las “cartas” en astrofísica. El discurso inmediato de la ciencia

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to compare length, lexical density and types of titles in letters, research papers and popular science articles published in the most prestigious journals of astrophysics written in English in order to find the differences and/or similarities between them. Our results may be summarized as follows: 1) average length, lexical density and frequency of appearance of compound groups are similar in titles of letters and research papers, which confirms that both genres are aimed at a very specialized audience; 2) the greater presence of adverbs, pronouns and possessives in letter and popular science article titles are used to give them a journalistic tone in order to reach a wider audience; 3) simple and nominal titles prevail over compound and verbal titles in the three genres, although the higher incidence of verbal constructions in letter and popular science article titles may lead to a certain generalization of the ideas presented which, however, would be somewhat reduced in letter titles thanks to a higher presence of interrogative structures. These results reveal that the titles of letters are situated halfway between those of research papers and popular science articles since they contain characteristics of both genres.