Dialogic markers in <i>Ask an Expert</i> webpages on environmental discourse

Abstract Scholars and scientists increasingly promote collaboration, accessibility and information sharing through digital media. One such communicative scenario for scientific dissemination is Ask an Expert practices, where specialised knowledge of societal relevance is exchanged between expert and non-expert users. Focusing on the discourse of climate change and environmental sustainability, this paper analyses a corpus of 80 texts from the Ask an Expert webpage of the MIT Climate Portal by looking into dialogic mechanisms shaping the interaction among users. Insights are gained into interactional metadiscourse categories, specifically attitude and engagement markers, which characterise experts’ knowledge construction and scientific dissemination in Ask an Expert texts to cater for the needs and expectations of the general public in the field of environmental sciences.