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The Development of Scientific Writing
This book traces the development of the scientific journal article as a linguistic genre in terms of its linguistic features. It looks at Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe as the first technical text written in English. Texts by Boyle, Power and Hooke from the late seventeenth century are then con... Read more
Published: 2007
Pages: 230
eBook: 9781845533168
Cover | Cover | ||
---|---|---|---|
Contents | v | ||
Author’s note | vii | ||
Introduction | 1 | ||
Diachronic study of scientific text | 1 | ||
Systemic Functional Linguistics – a suitable framework | 4 | ||
Thematic structure | 10 | ||
Grammatical metaphor | 13 | ||
Michael Halliday | 15 | ||
This study | 19 | ||
Part 1 | 21 | ||
Chapter 1 | 23 | ||
Where it all began | 23 | ||
The passive | 25 | ||
Personal pronouns | 28 | ||
Nominalisation | 31 | ||
Chapter 2 | 37 | ||
A troubled period | 37 | ||
Francis Bacon | 39 | ||
Robert Boyle | 44 | ||
Henry Power and Robert Hooke | 49 | ||
Experimental and descriptive sciences | 51 | ||
Chapter 3 | 53 | ||
The place of the Royal Society and its Philosophical Transactions | 53 | ||
Newton | 56 | ||
Newton and the influence of Latin | 59 | ||
Newton and Huygens | 63 | ||
Part 2 | 77 | ||
Chapter 4 | 79 | ||
Two centuries of increasing nominalisation | 79 | ||
The corpus | 82 | ||
Chapter 5 | 99 | ||
Increasing use of passives | 99 | ||
Passives and process types | 101 | ||
Chapter 6 | 113 | ||
A rare phenomenon | 113 | ||
The eighteenth century situation | 114 | ||
Continuation in the nineteenth century | 117 | ||
The twentieth century: a radical change | 120 | ||
Chapter 7 | 123 | ||
Nominalising processes | 123 | ||
Experiment | 130 | ||
Nominalized processes as Modifiers | 132 | ||
Chapter 8 | 139 | ||
Motivation for the passive | 139 | ||
The grammatical functions of topical themes | 140 | ||
Textual Themes | 145 | ||
Interpersonal Themes | 147 | ||
Thematic progression | 152 | ||
Chapter 9 | 159 | ||
A typology of Themes | 159 | ||
Minor types of Theme | 162 | ||
Features of the experiment | 167 | ||
The human element | 170 | ||
Textual reference | 173 | ||
Mathematics | 175 | ||
An Interpersonal coda | 179 | ||
Ancients and Moderns | 179 | ||
Epistolary framing | 180 | ||
Praise | 181 | ||
Criticism | 182 | ||
Community | 185 | ||
Provenance | 187 | ||
Referencing | 189 | ||
Changing patterns of referring | 192 | ||
By way of conclusion | 195 | ||
The story so far | 195 | ||
Envoi | 198 | ||
Notes | 201 | ||
Appendix 1 | 203 | ||
Appendix 2 | 205 | ||
References | 207 | ||
Author Index | 215 | ||
Subject Index | 217 |