scientific writing

[Gail Brendel Viechnicki]

I'll use this query about modals and passives in scientific discourse as
an opportunity to introduce myself to this list.  I'm working on
evidentiality in scientific discourse for my dissertation in the
linguistics department at the University of Chicago.  I hypothesize that
though English does not grammaticalize evidential concepts (source of
information), such concepts are expressed in regular, grammatical and
textual ways in the highly conventionalized genre of scientific writing.
In my research I have had occasion to read quite a bit about the
grammatical and rhetorical characteristics of scientific discourse, and I
am happy to share some of them here.  I have found this list to be quite
helpful, so I am glad to have the chance to post.

Here are some references:

*  Butler, Christopher 1990. Qualifications in science: Modal meanings in
scientific texts. In W. Nash (ed.) _The Writing Scholar: Studies in
Academic Discourse_

*  Hyland, Ken. 1996. Talking to the academy: Forms of hedging in science
research articles. _Written Communication_ 13(2)

*  Lackstrom, John, Selinker, Larry, and Louis Trimble. 1973.  Technical
rhetorical principles and grammatical choice. _TESOL Quarterly_ 7.

* Markkanen, Raija and Hartmut Schroder, eds. 1997. _Hedging and
Discourse: Approaches to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in
Academic Texts_

* Myers, Greg. 1996. Strategic vagueness in academic writing. In E.
Ventola and A. Mauranen, eds, _Academic Writing: Intercultural and Textual
Issues_.

* Tarone, Elaine, Dwyer, Sharon, Gillette, Susan, and Vincent Icke. 1981.
On the use of the passive in two astrophysics journal papers. _The ESP
Journal_ 1(2)

I am also aware of a wide literature on (1) tense usage in scientific
discourse (Oster 1981; Een 1982; Heslot 1982; Malcolm 1987, e.g.), and (2)
noun phrases in science writing (Vande Kopple 1992; Bartolic 1977; West
1980; and a forthcoming paper of my own on this topic, to be presented at
the Midwest Modern Languages Association meeting in November).

There is also information to be found on this topic in the literature on
(1) politeness (Brown & Levinson, e.g.) (2) hedging (3) vagueness and
approximation (Wachtel 1980, Sadock 1977, Powell 1985) (4) social studies
of science (5) rhetoric of science. So you might try searching these
topics as well. I have complete citation information on most of these
references, as well as more related references, on my web page (address
below).

In the end, though, you'll probably have the most luck finding information
about passives and modals in science writing in the ESP or English for
Special Purposes literature.

Best of luck,

GBV
  ***************************************************************
  Gail Brendel Viechnicki		Department of Linguistics
  gmbrende at midway.uchicago.edu 		University of Chicago
  http://home.uchicago.edu/~gmbrende/ 	1010 East 59th Street
					Chicago, Illinois 60637
  ***************************************************************

On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, charles muirhead wrote:

> Dear all,
> could anyone point me in the right direction  re books or articles on
> scientific rhetoric or discourse? Specifically, the uses of modality
> and passives in such discourse.
> Thanks
> charles muirhead
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