Linguistic economy and functions of on-screen text in educational videos on movement expression
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47197/retos.v85.119976Keywords:
YouTube, multimodal communication, content analysis, communivative competence, on-screen textsAbstract
Introduction: In the educational field, YouTube has become a widely used resource; however, few studies have examined the written discourse conveyed through the on-screen text accompanying motor demonstrations.
Objective: To quantitatively analyze the written discourse contained in the on-screen text displayed in an educational YouTube channel specializing in Physical Education.
Methodology: An observational, descriptive, and cross-sectional study was conducted using quantitative content analysis. A total of 120 videos were reviewed, of which 69 met the inclusion criteria. The corpus consisted of 587 didactic on-screen messages, each coded individually. Indicators of linguistic economy, temporal distribution, lexical richness, and didactic function were analyzed.
Results: The messages had a mean length of 2.41 words, and 82% consisted of three words or fewer. The average frequency was 3.08 messages per minute, with a mean interval of 18.9 seconds between consecutive messages. The corpus comprised 1409 words and 492 different word types (Type-Token Ratio = 0.349). Overall, 89.6% of the on-screen messages served to identify the motor activity being performed.
Discussion: The findings reveal a communicative model based on linguistic economy and the complementary relationship between text and image. The written discourse primarily supports motor demonstrations while promoting the use of Physical Education-specific terminology.
Conclusions: On-screen text constitutes a didactic resource characterized by brevity, lexical specialization, and an identificatory function. It therefore shows potential to contribute to disciplinary literacy and to the development of subject-specific vocabulary in Physical Education.
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