Globe: A Journal of Language, Culture and Communication, 13: 30-46 (2021) ISSN: 2246-8838 Research article A cross-cultural study of semantic ties in the abstracts of conference proceedings Benjamin Amoakohene, University of Health and Allied Sciences Joseph Benjamin Archibald Afful, University of Cape Coast Abstract: Connectedness in research article abstracts plays a vital role for them to be able to attract a broader readership. It also enhances abstracts’ potential for acceptance at local and international conferences. In view of this, the study investigates variations in the strategies that writers from Anglophone and Francophone settings use to create connectedness in their conference paper abstracts. The data for this study comprise 50 abstracts submitted by these two groups of writers to the 30 th West African Languages Congress and the 10 th Linguistics Association of Ghana (LAG) Conference. For analytical methodology, it employs Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) Cohesive Theory, which is complemented by Kaplan’s (1966) Contrastive Rhetoric Theory. The findings reveal that the writers from the two cultural backgrounds employ similar strategies such as references, conjunctions, substitution, ellipsis, synonyms and repetition in maintaining connectedness in their abstracts. The differences between these two categories of writers are linked to the frequency with which these connectives are deployed in their respective abstracts. The study has implications for Contrastive Rhetoric Theory, by proving that people who belong to the same discourse community to a large extent demonstrate similar writing styles irrespective of their different cultural backgrounds. Keywords: Abstracts, conference proceedings, contrastive rhetoric, cohesion, texture. 1. Introduction The research article is one genre within the academic discourse community that has received a lot of attention in linguistic research, being considered a premier academic genre within the academic discourse community (Flowerdew & Wang 2015). After the pioneering work of Swales’ (1990) genre analysis of research article introductions, many researchers have taken an interest in analyzing various aspects of the research article. Prominent among these studies are the introduction sections (Samraj 2002, 2005; Swales 2004), the methods section (Lim 2006), the results section (Taylor & Tingguang 1991; Yang & Allison 2003; Brett 1994) and discussion sections (Holmes 1997; Fallahi & Erzi 2003). More recently, the abstract has received considerable attention mainly because of the particular role it plays as the first component of the research article. Most scholars point to the research article abstract as one of the most important research process genres within the academic discourse community (Salager-Meyer 1990). The abstract is considered one of the essential sections of the research article in the sense that it can determine the acceptance or rejection of an article for conferences, and its selection by readers (Marefat & Mohammadzadeh 2013). Gillaerts & Van de Velde (2010) stress that the research article abstract acquired a significant position in the academic discourse community as a well-established genre “since Ventola’s (1994) plea for a linguistic approach to the genre that was capable of combining a global structure view of the genre with a prescriptive local view of the linguistic realization of the abstract” (128). Its significance dates back to the 1970s, where it became a standard element in article publication. Many scholars point out the problems with achieving a clear-cut function for research article abstracts. This issue has led to a serious debate within the applied linguistics literature on whether the abstract functions as a condensed reproduction of the text, an expansion of the title of a text or as an informative summary of the entire article (Ayers 2008; Hyland 2000; Stotesbury 2003; Yakhontova 2002). However, the abstract has been considered by some researchers as the readers’ doorway to an article, journals’ selection of contributions, and for conferences to accept or reject articles (Lores 2004). Abstracts have become a gateway into the research literature (Hartley & Benjamin 1998) and