Academic “click bait”: A diachronic investigation into the use of rhetorical part in pragmatics research article titles

This study reports on a diachronic investigation into the under-explored practice of using a rhetorical part – an unconventional, informationally non-compulsory part involving the use of rhetorical device(s) – in compound titles of published pragmatics research articles (RAs). By analyzing 2263 compound RA titles drawn from two high-profile international journals in pragmatics published during three periods of time (i.e., 1993–2002, 2003–2012, 2013–2022), we show that (a) the overall distribution of compound RA titles involving a rhetorical part has shown a statistically significant increase across the periods concerned, and that (b) rhetorical devices used in the rhetorical part mainly include quotations, rhetorical questions, metaphors, parodies, alliterations, and repetition, with quotations being the only type whose occurrence frequency has been steadily increasing across the three periods studied. The increasing use of a rhetorical part is attributed to the competitive context of international academic publication and the inherent characteristic of the pragmatics discipline. Hopefully, this study could provide new evidence for the transition to post-academic writing style as well as the documented rhetorical marketization of the academic genres, and inform academic title writing in practice.