scientific writing

[charles muirhead]

--- Gail Brendel Viechnicki <gmbrende at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU> wrote:
> 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
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com
> >
>

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