Popular science sphere of communication: on the boarder of two worldviews

Abstract

The article describes characteristics of popular science sphere of communication: aim and content of communication, communicative environment of the author and the reader, worldviews, circumstances of the communication. Comparison with adjacent spheres of communication is made. It is demonstrated that the content of the popular science sphere is derived from science sphere and placed into the reader’s non-professional environment; and all that determines existence of two views on the subject matter of the text. The first view is based on scientific knowledge, the second sight – on common sense. The author’s aim is to reconstruct the “naïve” worldview of the reader, to dispose it and to convince the addressee that the scientific view is real life. The more complete expression of these actions of the author is a framework which sets two semantic structures. Each of them consists of reference to the channel of information, predicate of “feeling-thinking-speaking”, and thesis. The first (left-hand) structure belongs to the reader’s “naïve” worldview, the second (right-hand) – to the author’s scientific sight. Language expression of the elements of this construction can be text fragments or zero. The latter is available due to standard meanings of qualificative categories of the modality of sentence – authorization and epistemic modality