Genre variation in medical discourse: the case of medical posters

It is the aim of this chapter to investigate processes of variation in medical discourse with regard to poster presentation. My research questions were: 1) how can posters be devised in terms of macrostructure and how closely this macrostructure reflects the typical Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion (IMRD) pattern of research articles? 2) what is the relationship between poster text and images and what relevance do images have in relation to text? Presenting a poster allows authors to more personally interact with the people interested in the presentation of the research; yet posters should stand alone with regard to content. As posters are viewed in context along with dozens of other posters, it is imperative to capture the audience with a title, introduction and graphics. The result seems to suggest that medical discourse in poster presentations will be biased by promotional traits.