Scientific and Technical Prose

 

Talking about functional styles, we considered several classifications mostly by Ukrainian and Russian linguists. Most English and American researchers’ approach is much simpler: they divide writing into two categories: fiction and nonfiction. This elementary approach helps to identify what scientific / technical texts are. The novelists, short-story writers, poets, screenwriters, and playwrights who produce fiction manipulate words and lan­guage to create scenes, moods, and effects so that readers can feel as though they were unobserved, passive participants to the events described. Nonfiction writers present facts and data in a variety of formats, including magazine and newspaper articles, books (text­books, biographies, how-tos, self-help, travel guides, and more), booklets, reports, brochures, memoirs, manuals, journals, newsletters, advertising copy, and even the text inside the pages of the phone book. And all this can be referred to technical writing.

Technical writers write, edit, and prepare publications in many fields of technology, science, engineering, and medicine, including articles for technical and scientific journals, both in print and online. The publications may be technical reports, instruction man­uals, articles, papers, proposals, brochures, and booklets and even speeches for technical meetings and conferences.

Any writing that requires familiarity with (or willingness to learn about) a technical field would be considered technical writing. Writing about museum conservation is technical writing as much as writing user manuals for a software product or a troubleshoot­ing guide for a broken tractor. Technical writing is a useful com­munication tool whenever information of a technical nature must be transmitted.

According to a communicative aim, recipients and functions the following varieties of technical texts can be distinguished:

а) scientific proper (monographs, articles, theses (dissertations);

b) educational (text-books, manuals);

c) evaluating (reviews, references, comments);

d) informative reviewing (abstracts, annotations, resumes, theses, abstracts of theses);

e) encyclopedic references (encyclopedias, dictionaries, reference-books);

f) technical texts proper (certificates, forms, technical descriptions, instructions, patents, standards, delivery notes, invoices, projects, calculations, drawings, etc);

g) technical advertisements;

h) popular scientific texts (periodical and non-periodical editions which are not specially aimed at scientific and technical information exchange, but which can be used for this purpose).

So, the concept «scientific and technical texts» includes, as we can see, texts of different character: monographs, various text-books, journal articles, technical descriptions, reference-books, instructions, patents, etc. Texts of these kinds differ in language used for their writing. For instance, the language of monographs, scientific works and articles is, as a rule, more eloquent than the language of technical reference books, handbooks and instructions. Notwithstanding the fact, all types of scientific texts have many common features – both in the language and in the way of information rendering. In scientific works the way the material is presented is concise, exact and logical though convincing, complete and to the point. And it is vividly observed in the vocabulary use and in the grammatical structure of sentences. From this point of view all kinds of scientific texts have much in common which makes it possible to speak about common lexical and grammatical peculiarities of the scientific language.

 

The Sphere of Application and Purpose of Writing

 

The spheres in which scientific prose is applied are scientific activity, scientific and technical progress, education, etc. Thus, the speakers are mostly scientists, teachers, students, educators, researchers, in other words, people who specialize in certain professional spheres.

The purpose of writing may be either explicit or implicit. The explicit goals are:

a) to provide and record information, communicate the results of the research, justify hypotheses, validate theories (reports, literature reviews, specifications);

b) to give instructions (instructions);

c) to persuade the reader, get the reader interested in the text (proposals, recommendation reports, job application letters, résumés);

d) to enact (or prohibit) something (acceptance letters, regulations, patents, authorization memoranda).

In addition to explicit goals mentioned above, writers almost always write with other unstated but still extremely important implicit goals. The common ones are:

- to establish a relationship. Communication not only conveys information but also establishes a relationship between speaker and listener, or writer and reader. A well-written letter of inquiry, for example, can begin a professional connection that may last for years. Readers of research reports often initiate long and fruitful correspondences with the authors.

Even seemingly impersonal documentation and instructions can, if written carefully addressing a user's need, establish a positive relationship between the user and the producer of the product.

- to create trust and establish credibility. An underlying goal of all technical and scientific writing is to get the reader to trust the writer's credibility. Scientific and technical writing is based on precision. Accordingly, any technical or scientific document should justify the reader's confidence in the accuracy of its content, style, and organization.

So, one must carefully qualify statements that need to be qualified. Claims that are merely suppositions shouldn’t be made. If the reader begins to doubt the author’s ability or intent to analyze and shape data with a minimum of distortion, the document will not be effective.

- to document actions. Scientists, engineers, and managers often use writing to create permanent records of their thoughts and actions. One of the primary differences between most forms of written and spoken communication is that writing can be fairly permanent, whereas speech vanishes as soon as it is produced. Consequently, technical communication is often more effective when it is written down. Therefore important observations, suggestions, or objections are often in writing. Keeping precise records of experiments and procedures in notebooks is crucial to a project's overall accuracy and to establishing intellectual-property rights.

The purpose of writing is usually stated at the beginning of the document. Readers of technical writing are often busy people; such a statement will alert them that it is important to read further.

 

Lecture 2. Scientific Prose Characteristics

Extralinguistic Features

 

According to I. Galperin each style of the language distinguishes itself by one principle extralinguistic feature, and in case of scientific style this is coherent presentation. This feature is connected with the very nature of scientific communication, the purpose of which is influencing the mind of the reader, not his emotions.

Coherence is the quality of hanging together, of providing the reader an easily followed path. Writers promote coherence by making their material logically and stylistically consistent, and by organizing and expressing their ideas in specific patterns. Efforts to emphasize the relationships among the elements of a document strengthen its impact. Coherence can dramatically improve the reader's ability to understand your material by promoting its flow or readability. Coherence is especially valued in science and technology because of the inherent complexity of the subjects.

At the level of the whole document, coherence helps to provide the larger picture, in which the connections among the parts of the document are made clear by the writer. Coherence gives readers a road map to help them anticipate the content of the work. Abstracts, clear titles, introductions, and problem statements all promote coherence by linking various parts of a piece of writing.

The paragraph is one of the most powerful instruments of coherence. By organizing material into a topic sentence and supporting sentences, paragraphs pull together material and emphasize various forms of conceptual development. Paragraph development is achieved partly through the specific strategies of exemplification, analysis, comparison and contrast, definition, enumeration, and description, all of which furnish distinct approaches to developing ideas. Transitional devices also operate at the paragraph level to provide links between sentences and between paragraphs.