English Scientific Research Articles

“... but be sure you let it settle”: Late Modern Authors’ Presence in English Scientific Texts

The use of pronouns shows the author’s intention to address the reading public or the presence of the target readership in texts. This paper focuses on second-person pronouns, which are especially revealing of the author`s desire to engage the reader by endowing on them an active role in the negotiation and construction of knowledge. For the same reason, we will also analyse the use of the word reader. Science writing is thus understood as a dialogue between the two groups of participants involved in knowledge creation. Two usages of you have been detected in previous works using the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing (CC): general and dialogic. The former might be interpreted as a generic “one,” “everybody;” the latter, considered as an in-group strategy that embraces both the writer and the reader. The detailed analysis of the pragmatics of the second person pronouns and reader in Corpus of English Chemistry Texts (CEChET) and Late Modern English Medical Texts (LMEMT) will hopefully shed some light on the object-centred nature of scientific writing.

A semantic approach for the analysis of verbs in life sciences texts

ABSTRACT This paper presents a corpusbased study of a group of lexical verbs in eighteenth and nineteenth century scientific texts. The study has a twofold aim. Firstly, it aims to select four types of verb classes (verbs of communication, desire, aspectuals and perception) identified by Levin and Noonan and explore their use in the Corpus of English Life Sciences Texts, a subcorpus of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing. Secondly, it aims to determine if the frequency of these verbs varies based on the gender of the authors. Further, the study seeks to ascertain if a shifting pattern could be attested in the use of these verbs throughout the two centuries examined in the corpus, at a time when the scientific register was already becoming established. The findings of the study obtained from the greater or lesser occurrence of the verbs in question over the two centuries indicate which ones were more frequent in Life Sciences texts, whether they were more commonly used either by men or women and whether there was a pattern of continued usage of these verbs in Late Modern English scientific language rather than a shift towards nominalisation in this type of discourse.

A Comparative Study of Hedges in English Scientific Research Papers

A Comparative Study of Hedges in English Scientific Research Papers

Challenges in the application of the Tshivenda scientific register in the teaching and learning of state of matter and the kinetic molecular theory in grade 10 physical sciences classrooms.

Background: This paper investigated some of the challenges in the application of Tshivenda scientific register (TSR) during classroom practices of some physical sciences teachers in some of the public secondary schools in the Vhembe West District, South Africa. Methods: It was an interpretative qualitative case study wherein three physical sciences teachers and 40 learners took part in the study. The study conducted at schools of Vhuronga 2 circuit in Vhembe West District between January 2022 to November 2022. Semi-structured interviews and classroom observations were used for data collections. Researchers analyzed their data through Data Analysis Scheme (DAS) which comprised of themes, categories, and characteristics in this qualitative study. Texts that belong to a particular theme were highlighted using same colour and track changes was also used to codify categories and characteristics of a theme. Results: The research findings had shown numerous challenges in the teaching and learning of physical sciences including teachers and learners not used to physical sciences being taught and learnt through TSR, not familiar with some scientific words in TSR, difficulties in understanding scientific term in TSR as well as absence of Tshivenda physical sciences resources beside TSR. Consequently, this has impacts on teacher and learner's ability to implement TSR in the teaching and learning of Physical Sciences. Moreover, the findings also show that teachers and learners participated in the study sometimes switch from Tshivenda Scientific words to English Scientific words during Physical Sciences lessons. Conclusions: Therefore, it is suggested that the above-mentioned challenges in the development and application of TSR for Physical Sciences teaching need to be addressed so that teachers can teach learners Physical Sciences through language they know best. Hence, physical sciences teachers must be developed, trained, and furnished with essential language skills for them to develop Tshivenda scientific language registers on other sciences topics.

Challenges in the application of the Tshivenda scientific register for physical sciences classrooms

Background: This paper investigated some of the challenges in the application of Tshivenda scientific register (TSR) during classroom practices of some physical sciences teachers in some of the public secondary schools in the Vhembe West District, South Africa. Methods: It was an interpretative qualitative case study wherein three physical sciences teachers and 40 learners took part in the study. The study conducted at schools of Vhuronga 2 circuit in Vhembe West District between January 2022 to November 2022. Interviews and classroom observations were used for data collections. Researchers analyzed their data through Data Analysis Scheme (DAS) which comprised of themes, categories, and characteristics in this qualitative study. Texts that belong to a particular theme were highlighted using same colour and track changes was also used to codify categories and characteristics of a theme. Results: The research findings had shown numerous challenges in the teaching and learning of physical sciences including teachers and learners not used to physical sciences being taught and learnt through TSR, not familiar with some scientific words in TSR, difficulties in understanding scientific term in TSR as well as absence of Tshivenda physical sciences resources beside TSR. Consequently, this has impacts on teacher and learner’s ability to implement TSR in the teaching and learning of Physical Sciences. Moreover, the findings also show that teachers and learners participated in the study sometimes switch from Tshivenda Scientific words to English Scientific words during Physical Sciences lessons. Conclusions: Therefore, it is suggested that the above-mentioned challenges in the development and application of TSR for Physical Sciences teaching need to be addressed so that teachers can teach learners Physical Sciences through language they know best. Hence, physical sciences teachers must be developed, trained, and furnished with essential language skills for them to develop Tshivenda scientific language registers on other sciences topics.

Stance in CELiST: A vindication of text - reading

Stance in academic writing has been discussed extensively within the fields of discourse analysis andpragmatics (Alonso-Almeida, 2015; Hyland,2005; White, 2003). Thus, Hyland and Jiang (2016) identify certain linguistic elements that are said to be indexical of stance: hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions. While that model aims at a macroscopic analysis, the present study is a microscopic one, and compares two scientific texts written by a male and a female author to detect possible differences in the way that these authors present themselves or give their opinions in their writings. To this end, we have sought to apply Hyland and Jiang’s (2016) three-aspects modelbutusing Cesiri’s inventory (2012) as a starting point. We have applied this adapted model to two samples from the Corpus of English Life Sciences Texts (CELiST), one of the subcorpus of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing. Both texts belong to the same genre, are dated at an almost identical time, and deal with similar subjects. The only difference is that one was written by a woman, Emily Gregory, and theother by a man, Alpheus Packard. Although these texts are part of an electronic corpus, on this occasion we will avoid the automatic analytical techniques of corpus linguistics asfaras possible. Rather, we will conduct a microscopic-level study by means of close reading, although some quantification of data will precede the qualitative analysis where this is useful. It is hoped that the qualitative focus presented in theanalysis might open up new paths in the study of stance.

Conditionals as interpersonal devices in Late Modern English women’s scientific writing

It is widely recognised that attaining best possible reception of one’s writing within the scientific community is among the main factors that contribute to the rhetorical profile of scientific prose. Authors not only have to negotiate meaning but also to persuade their peers (Allen, Qin & Lancaster, 1994; Atkinson 1996, 1999; Bazerman, 1988; Hyland, 1998, 2000). This is perhaps most remarkable when the position within the scientific community is disadvantageous, as in the case of female scientists during the Late Modern English period. (Crespo, 2012; Schiebinger, 1989, 2003).
 Conditionals present an array of functions of an interpersonal nature, these used to negotiate meaning or to achieve a better reader response. Whether they are used to state shared assumptions, to narrow the scope or mitigate the force of a claim, to show humility by rhetorically doubting one’s own wording or underlining one’s uncertainty, or to directly express politeness, conditionals can be characterised as “rhetorical device[s] for gaining acceptance for one’s claims” (Warchal, 2010, p. 141).
 The aim of this article is to analyse the use of conditionals as interpersonal, negotiating devices in the work of female scientists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To this end, texts written by women included in the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing (Moskowich, 2011) will be searched for conditional markers, and the results will be analysed from a functional point of view, highlighting the particular ways in which female scientists used these devices across disciplines and through the period.

Analysing the Coruña Corpus: Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity Markers

This paper aims to analyse the concepts of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in scientific writing through the use of stance adverbs perhaps and possibly. These adverbs act as markers of the authors’ presence expressing their views, and a covert relationship between these authors and their corresponding readership. The material used for this study includes four sub-corpora of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing: CETA (Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy), CEPhiT (Corpus of English Philosophy Texts), CHET (Corpus of English History Texts), and CELiST (Corpus of English Life Sciences Texts). Two of these represent the so-called soft sciences, and the other two the hard sciences, which will allow for comparison. The results might argue against the generally-assumed tendency in the history of scientific writing that this discourse has moved from being author-centred to object-centred. Perhaps it is simply impossible for writers of science to disappear completely from their texts.

Cohesive Devices Used in English Scientific Articles: Comparative Study Across Groups of Indonesian, Malaysian, and Native English Writers

In every piece of writing, cohesive devices play an important role in interconnecting the writer's ideas in such a way so that they are logically unified and coherent. However, employing cohesive devices in scientific articles is not always easy for authors who learn English as a foreign language, like Indonesians as well as their Asian counterparts. This current study attempts to look into the compared uses of cohesive devices in English scientific articles written by three different groups, namely Indonesian, Malaysian, and Native English speakers. The data on cohesive devices were collected from articles written in English by different Indonesian writers and from articles written by different Native English authors published in several international journals. The data analysis was carried out quantitatively by identifying and classifying them based on the taxonomy proposed by Halliday and Matthiessen. Descriptive statistics and One-Way ANOVA were also employed in this study. This study revealed that native and non-native writers employed different patterns of cohesive devices. Although Indonesian and Malaysian represent similar distribution patterns at the relatively equivalent level of English proficiency, it does not determine a completely general pattern of cohesive distribution in the reality of writing practice.

A Systemic Functional Grammar Approach to the Study of Emphatic Constructions in English and Arabic Scientific Texts

The study deals with emphatic constructions in English and Arabic scientific texts. To the researcher’s best knowledge, this topic received little attention from linguistic researchers, exceptionally in functional grammar analysis. The importance of this study arises from the fact that some syntactic forms are effective linguistic choices for conveying the meaning of emphasis to the readers. The study aims to identify and analyze different types of linguistic constructions in English and Arabic scientific texts and show the similarities and differences between the two types of scientific texts under investigation. The study intends to analyze the structure of complex clauses by adopting Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2004) modal of ‘Systemic Functional Grammar’ of syntax and Prince’s (1978) modal of ‘Given-New’ information of discourse analysis. These models analyze-samples of English ‘Spaceport’ magazine and pieces of Arabic ‘Sadeem Bulletin’ magazine. Moreover, the study depends on a qualitative approach to answer the research questions and confirm its hypothesis. The results show that both languages use some syntactic forms, but Arabic is rich in its constructions. This difference is due to the nature and flexibility of both languages. The findings will be helpful for researchers concerned with syntax and scientific issues because it provides a rigorous analysis of complex clauses into simple parts and shows the focus of information in its suitable.

‘A very pleasant, safe, and effectual medicine’: The serial comma in the history of English

ABSTRACT The present paper traces the historical development of the serial comma in the history of English until its eventual decline over the course of the twentieth century. The serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma) refers to the existence of a pause immediately before the conjunctions and/or (and sometimes nor) in a series of three or more elements in a clause. Although the use of this mark of punctuation is no longer a desideratum in Present-day British English, it was a disseminated practice among seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers. In light of this, this work has been conceived with the following objectives: (a) to study the use and distribution of the serial comma in the period 1500–1999; (b) to evaluate its distribution in the two types of writing, i.e. handwriting and printing, and the level of variation across text types; and (c) to ascertain whether the number of elements in the series participates in its deployment. The source of evidence comes from The Málaga Corpus of Early English Scientific Prose (MCEESP), the corpus of Early English Medical Writing (CEEM) and A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers (ARCHER 3.2).

The representativeness threshold for the CETA subcorpus of the Coruña Corpus

The concept of representativeness is the main distinguishing characteristic of specialised corpora in comparison to other sets of texts. The Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing currently comprises four published subcorpora (astronomy, life sciences, history, and philosophy) plus three others under compilation (physics, chemistry and linguistics). In this paper we aim to assess the lexical density of the text samples in CETA, the Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy, by means of the ReCor tool, a posteriori. The study is motivated by the following question: does quantitative representativeness analysis using ReCor provide, in the form of a cross-check, further validation of previous research on the representativeness of CETA? Previous work (Crespo and Moskowich, 2010) has indicated that the CETA corpus is well designed and valid for the purposes for which it was intended. We will here suggest metrics to measure these findings. The most important contribution of this study is to offer quantitative data collection results using the ReCor tool, which allows data triangulation and consequently ensures overall data quality. Results show that data analysis with the ReCor tool supports previous findings, and thus we are able to verify that CETA is indeed representative of the language of its time and register.

The Application of English Scientific Text Translation in English Teaching

The Application of English Scientific Text Translation in English Teaching

Means of Semantic Compression in Modern English Scientific Discourse (Based on Abstracts to the Articles From International Scientific Citation Databases)

The article explores the phenomenon of semantic compression in small format metatexts within the contemporary English scientific discourse. Abstracts to scientific articles from international citation databases, in particular those of Scopus and Web of Science, are analysed with the aim of eliciting ways of semantic compression. The latter is viewed as a key parameter of a scientific abstract, whose semantic quality is the main factor responsible for further integration of the research results into the global knowledge pool. It is presumed that an abstract, being a secondary small-format text, represents an exact semantic copy of the original scientific article, hence compression is viewed as a mechanism of redistributing the functional load of the eliminated units of the original by means of increasing the informative potential of the remaining elements within the secondary small-format text. In the process of pragma-semantic and discourse analysis, a specific complex of semantic compression methods is revealed on every level of scientific abstract organization; in particular, compression means are elicited on the structural and semantic textual levels, as well as on the morphological, lexical, syntactic and graphical ones. The revealed patterns, on the one hand, expand our understanding of compression mechanisms typical of small-format texts in general; on the other hand, the practical data obtained as a result of the analysis can be used by a wide range of researchers while writing abstracts in English for publications in high-ranking international scientific journals.

Text Cohesion in English Scientific Texts Written by Saudi Undergraduate Dentistry Students: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Textual and Logical Relations in Oral Biology Texts

This qualitative study examined multimodal cohesive devices in English oral biology texts by eight high-achieving Saudi English-as-a-foreign-language students enrolled in a Bachelor of Science Dentistry program. A Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) of the textual and logical cohesive devices in oral biology texts was conducted, employing Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion analysis scheme. The findings showed that students used varied cohesive devices: lexical cohesion, followed by reference and conjunctions. Although ellipsis was minimally employed in the oral biology texts, its discipline-specific uses emerged: the use of bullet points and numbered lists that facilitate recall. The SF-MDA of cohesion in multimodal semiotic resources highlighted the processes underlying construction of conceptual and linguistic knowledge of cohesive devices in oral biology texts. The results indicate that oral biology discourse is interdisciplinary, including a number of subfields in biology. The SF-MDA of pictorial oral biology representations indicates that they include instances of cohesive devices that illustrate and complement verbal texts. The results indicate that undergraduate students need to be provided with a variety of multimodal high-cohesion texts so that they can successfully extend underlying conceptual and logical meaning-making relations.

Examining Dentistry College Students' Recognition of the Semantic/Pragmatic Function of Hedges in English Scientific Writing

One of the most importantcharacteristics of English scientific writing is the use of cautious language, known as “hedging”. A proper awareness of their use and function is crucial to scientific precision, scientific integrity, and author-reader relationship. However, EFL college students face difficulties in recognizing hedging devices in academic writing. The present study aimed at examining the recognition of a scientific college final year students of the semantic/ pragmatic function of hedges in scientific English writing to answer the research question of whether they are able to perform satisfactorily in such a sensitive area as that of science, bearing in mind that they are supposed to be advanced students who have been instructed in scientific English for five years.For that purpose, final year students of the academic year 2020-2021, from the College of Dentistry were chosen. The total number of participants was 71 students. The study followed the quantitative method for its design, used as its instrument a close-ended questionnaire, and employed the SPSS for data analysis.The study showed that the students did not perform satisfactorily; a finding which calls for concern and implies that an explicit instruction in English scientific writing is needed. The study concluded that more attention should be directed towards teaching this aspect in scientific English in order to prepare the students to better deal with the requirements of academic/ scientific writing.

A corpus-based study of abbreviations in early English medical writing

The Early Middle English period witnessed the massive borrowing and adoption of the Latin system of abbreviations in England. Mediaeval writers appropriated those symbols that were directly transferable from Latin exemplars, especially suspensions and brevigraphs, while contractions and superior letters were incorporated somewhat later. The existing accounts of abbreviations in handwritten documents are fragmentary as they offer the picture of the literary compositions of the period, which have been traditionally taken as the source of evidence for handbooks on palaeography. In addition to this, most of these accounts are limited to the description of their use and typology in independent witnesses, being in many cases impossible to extrapolate the results beyond the practice of individual scribes. The present paper takes that step beyond individuality and pursues the study of abbreviations from a variationist perspective with the following objectives: a) to analyse the use and distribution of abbreviations in Late Middle English and Early Modern English (1350–1700), and b) to evaluate the relevance of these abbreviations across different text types of medical writing. The data used as source of evidence come from The Málaga Corpus of Early English Scientific Prose, both the Late Middle English and the Early Modern English components (1350–1500 and 1500–1700, respectively).

Linguistic Complexity across Two Early Modern English Scientific Text Types

In linguistics the concept of complexity has been analysed from various perspectives, among them language typology and the speech/writing distinction. Within intralinguistic studies, certain key linguistic features associated with reduced or increased complexity have been identified. These features occur in different patterns across various registers and their frequency is an indicator of the level of complexity of different kinds of texts. The concept of complexity has not, to date, been evaluated in early English medical writing, especiallyin terms of different text types. Thus, the present article analyses linguistic complexity in two Early Modern English medical texts, a surgical treatise (ff. 34r-73v) and a collection of medical recipes (ff. 74r-121v) housed as MS Hunter 135 in Glasgow University Library. Since they represent two different types of medical text, they can be productively compared in terms of linguistic complexity. The results obtained confirm that the surgical treatise is more complex than the collection of medical recipes owing to the higher presence of linguistic features denoting increased complexity in the former and of those indicating reduced linguistic complexity in the latter.

Punctuation Practice in Early Modern English Scientific Writing: The Case of MS 3009 at the Wellcome Library, London

The study of punctuation has traditionally been overlooked by some scholars for being considered haphazard and unpredictable. In medieval manuscripts, every scribe was free to use their own repertory of symbols. However, the establishment of the printing press along with the proliferation of professional scriveners resulted in a process of standardization of the system in such a way that by the end of the 16th century a repertory of punctuation symbols was fully developed (Salmon 1999: 15; Calle-Martín 2019: 179-200). The present study seeks to examine the punctuation system of a 17th-century recipe book housed in the Wellcome Library in London, MS Wellcome 3009. This paper has therefore been conceived with a twofold objective: a) to assess the inventory of punctuation marks in the text; and b) to analyze the use and pragmatic functions of these symbols.

Linguistic Variation and Change in 250 Years of English Scientific Writing: A Data-Driven Approach.

We trace the evolution of Scientific English through the Late Modern period to modern time on the basis of a comprehensive corpus composed of the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, the first and longest-running English scientific journal established in 1665. Specifically, we explore the linguistic imprints of specialization and diversification in the science domain which accumulate in the formation of “scientific language” and field-specific sublanguages/registers (chemistry, biology etc.). We pursue an exploratory, data-driven approach using state-of-the-art computational language models and combine them with selected information-theoretic measures (entropy, relative entropy) for comparing models along relevant dimensions of variation (time, register). Focusing on selected linguistic variables (lexis, grammar), we show how we deploy computational language models for capturing linguistic variation and change and discuss benefits and limitations.