The historical shift of scientific academic prose in English towards less explicit styles of expression
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Douglas Biber
Abstract
The stereotypical view of professional academic writing is that it is grammatically complex, with elaborated structures, and with meaning relations expressed explicitly. In contrast, spoken registers, especially conversation, are believed to have the opposite characteristics. Our goal in the present paper is to challenge these stereotypes, based on results from large-scale corpus investigations. First, we argue that both conversation and professional academic writing are structurally complex, but their complexities are dramatically different: in some ways, conversation is more structurally elaborated than academic writing (e.g., finite dependent clauses are more common in conversation than in academic writing). In contrast, written academic discourse is actually much more ‘compressed’ than elaborated, with phrasal (non-clausal) modifiers embedded in noun phrases being the major type of structural complexity found in academic writing. Our historical analysis shows that academic writing has changed dramatically over the past century to prefer these compressed discourse styles. Second, we argue that a consideration of the meaning relations among structural elements illustrates that academic written texts are anything but explicit at the grammatical level. Rather, the ‘compressed’ discourse style of academic writing is much less explicit in meaning than alternative styles that employ elaborated structures. Again, our historical analysis shows that academic writing has changed dramatically over the past century to strongly prefer these less explicit styles of presentation.
Abstract
The stereotypical view of professional academic writing is that it is grammatically complex, with elaborated structures, and with meaning relations expressed explicitly. In contrast, spoken registers, especially conversation, are believed to have the opposite characteristics. Our goal in the present paper is to challenge these stereotypes, based on results from large-scale corpus investigations. First, we argue that both conversation and professional academic writing are structurally complex, but their complexities are dramatically different: in some ways, conversation is more structurally elaborated than academic writing (e.g., finite dependent clauses are more common in conversation than in academic writing). In contrast, written academic discourse is actually much more ‘compressed’ than elaborated, with phrasal (non-clausal) modifiers embedded in noun phrases being the major type of structural complexity found in academic writing. Our historical analysis shows that academic writing has changed dramatically over the past century to prefer these compressed discourse styles. Second, we argue that a consideration of the meaning relations among structural elements illustrates that academic written texts are anything but explicit at the grammatical level. Rather, the ‘compressed’ discourse style of academic writing is much less explicit in meaning than alternative styles that employ elaborated structures. Again, our historical analysis shows that academic writing has changed dramatically over the past century to strongly prefer these less explicit styles of presentation.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Specialized languages 1
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Section one. Research based on corpora
- The historical shift of scientific academic prose in English towards less explicit styles of expression 11
- Heteroglossic (dis)engagement and the construal of the ideal readership 25
- Structure, content and functions of calls for conference abstracts 47
- Summarizing findings 71
- The use of adverbial hedges in EAP students’ oral performance 95
- Integrating approaches to visual data commentary 115
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Section two. Research based on meta-analysis and applications in LSP
- Some dichotomies in genre analysis for Languages for Specific Purposes 139
- English for legal purposes and domain-specific cultural awareness 155
- The Talking Cure 175
- UrgentiAS, a lexical database for medical students in clinical placements 191
- Using natural language patterns for the development of ontologies 211
- Notes on contributors 231
- Index 237
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Specialized languages 1
-
Section one. Research based on corpora
- The historical shift of scientific academic prose in English towards less explicit styles of expression 11
- Heteroglossic (dis)engagement and the construal of the ideal readership 25
- Structure, content and functions of calls for conference abstracts 47
- Summarizing findings 71
- The use of adverbial hedges in EAP students’ oral performance 95
- Integrating approaches to visual data commentary 115
-
Section two. Research based on meta-analysis and applications in LSP
- Some dichotomies in genre analysis for Languages for Specific Purposes 139
- English for legal purposes and domain-specific cultural awareness 155
- The Talking Cure 175
- UrgentiAS, a lexical database for medical students in clinical placements 191
- Using natural language patterns for the development of ontologies 211
- Notes on contributors 231
- Index 237
