Universität zu Köln – Philosophische Fakultät – Englisches Seminar IWiSe 2014/15Hauptseminar: Textlinguistics: Synchronic and diachronic perspectivesDozent: Prof. Dr. Thomas KohnenReferent: Romina Erberich, Alexander Kals

Scientific Writing

1. Scientific Writing

a) General information

no set definition of scientific writing as a text-type or genre: definition depends on context.

divided into several fields (some are still true today): medicine, mathematics, astrology, anatomy, technology etc.

Classification of medieval medical material: academic treatises or specialised treatises, surgical texts, and remedybooks.

b) Historical developments

Periods of the scientific register: 1150-1350: spareness of vernacular texts, gradual struggle for the use of English, lack of written texts.1350-1500: first writings, re-emergence of English (as opposed to French), 2 cultural events which influended this evolution: pritning press 1476 (widespread of texts, new sources of knowledge), discovery of new world 1492, increase of translations, new vocabulary through spreading books/literacy.1500-1640 onwards: vocabulary enlargement and adoption (need for new vocabulary to name scientific terms and findings), until 18th dual situation Latin - English

1660: Royal Society is founded; 1665: The first exclusively scientific journal, the “Philosophical Transactions” are established. The Society undertook a programme to imporve the language and endorsed short, factual writing without prefaces, apologies, or rhetorical flourishes.

c) Relevant Concepts

Scientific writing has high prestige, thus it is likely to be imitated and is suitable for conscious modelling „from above“.

2. Vernacularisation

a) General information

Late fourteenth century: "vernacularisation boom", writing of all levels and genres were translated into or composed in English, mainly in the city of London. A similar vernacularisation process took place in various countries in Europe.

3. Standardisation

Scientific writing resisted standardization longer than other “registers”

Late Middle English: Standardisation was a selection process of variant forms towards which scribes tended.

“curial style” / English of the chancery / centered in London

Taavitsainen finds that many early scientific texts before the “national standard” are written in a distinct form similar to the Central Midland Standard which was also used by Lollard writings. She suspects this was a “consciously created language form for scientific writing”, created to ensure the highest comprehensibility. The spread of CMS reaches a peak at the turn of the 15th century, but wanes afterwards. Possible explanations include low prestige due its connection to Lollardy.

The English used and promoted by the Royal Society and in the Philosophical Transactions were highly influential on the standardisation of Modern English.

Publication of dictionaries from the 17th century onwards, culminating in Johnson's dictionary and the OED, were further steps in the standardisation of English.

4. Language of scientific writing

a) Discourse forms

Graeco-Roman writing provided a standard and influenced the macro- and micro structure of scientific writing

Most typical form in Late Mediaval and Early Modern scientific writing: discourse is structured by turntaking between questions and answers, the typical form of Scholasticism.

The more complicated pattern of questiones (lectio, meditatio, questio) was simplified in English.

The earliest texts in the corpus do not have a strict pattern. A fixed formula emerges in the sixteenth century (Guido's Questions, 1579)

Between the 16th and 17th century methodological concerns led to a shift from scholastic to dialectic methods.

b) Lexical developments

The increase of borrowed terms within medical writing, mainly from Latin, starts in the 14th century and drops sharply after 1500. This would be earlier than in other registers.

c) Syntactic and stylistic features

Features of scholasticism: reference to authorities, prescriptive phrases, information = absolute truth, high degree of (perceived) reliability.

Often direct address to involve the reader In academic medical writing and surgical treatises, phrases such as „it is to note“ or "it

is to wit" are transferred from Latin ("notandum est", "sciendum est"). Remedy books do not show these features.

The Royal Society established a certain style of expository writing: its features include first-person narration, subjective point of view and expressions of low modality.

5. Task

Robert Record, The Pathway to Knowledge, containing the First Principles of Geometry ... bothe for the use of Instrumentes Geometricall and Astronomicall, and also for Projection of Plattes (London, 1551)Here it is to be noted, that in a tria~gleal the angles bee called (^innera~gles^)except ani side bee drawenne forth in lengthe,for then is that fourthe corner caled an(^vtter corner^) , as in this exa~plebecause A, B, is drawen in length, therfore the a~gle C, is called an vtter a~gle And thus haue I done with tria~guledfigures, and nowe foloweth (^quadrangles^) ,which are figures of iiij. corners and of iiij. lines also, of whiche therebe diuers kindes, but chiefelyv. that is to say, a (^squarequadrate^) , whose sides beeall equall, and al the anglessquare, as you se here in this figure Q.

5. Literature

Crespo Garcia, Begona. 2004. "The scientific register in the History of English: a corpus-based study" In: Studia Neophilogica 76: 125-139.

Gramley, Stephan. 2012. The history of English: an Introduction. Oxon: Routledge.

Kohnen, Thmas. 2014. Textbooks in English Language and Linguistics. Introduction to the History of English. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH.

Taavitsainen, Irma. 2000. "Science". In: Brown, Peter (ed.). A companion to Chaucer. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 378-386.

Taavitsainen, Irma, Patha, Päivi. 2010. "Scientific discourse". In: Taavitsainen, Irma, Jucker, Andreas (eds.). Historical Pragmatics. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 549-572.

Taavitsainen, Irma. . "Language history and the scientific register". In: PPPPPPP

Taavitsainen, Irma. 2010. "Early English scientific writing: New Corpora, new approaches". In: Diaz Vera, Javier E., Caballero, Rosario (eds.). Textual Healing: Studies in Medieval English Medical, Scientific and Technical Texts. Bern: Peter Lang GmbH, 177-206.