19. The Scientific Prose Style

The style of scientific prose has 3 subdivisions:1) the style of humanitarian sciences;2) the style of "exact" sciences;3) the style of popular scientific prose.

Its function is to work out and ground theoretically objective knowledge about reality

The aim of communication is to create new concepts, disclose the international laws of existence.

The peculiarities are: objectiveness; logical coherence, impersonality, unemotional character, exactness.

Vocabulary. The use of terms and words used to express a specialized concept in a given branch of science. Terms are not necessarily. They may be borrowed from ordinary language but are given a new meaning.

The scientific prose style consists mostly of ordinary words which tend to be used in their primary logical meaning. Emotiveness depends on the subject of investigation but mostly scientific prose style is unemotional.

Grammar: The logical presentation and cohesion of thought manifests itself in a developed feature of scientific syntax is the use of established patterns.- postulatory;- formulative;- argumentative;

The impersonal and objective character of scientific prose style is revealed in the frequent use of passive constructions, impersonal sentences. Personal sentences are more frequently used in exact sciences. In humanities we may come across constructions but few.

The parallel arrangement of sentences contributes to emphasizing certain points in the utterance.

Some features of the style in the text are:- use of quotations and references;- use of foot-notes helps to preserve the logical coherence of ideas.

Humanities in comparison with "exact" sciences employ more emotionally coloured words, fewer passive constructions.

Scientific popular style has the following peculiarities: emotive words, elements of colloquial style

Morphological features:

a) Terminological word building and word-derivation: neologism for­mation by affixation and conversion.

b) Restricted use of finite verb forms.

c) Use of the author's we instead of I.

d) Frequent use of impersonal constructions.

Syntactical features:

a) Complete and standard syntactical mode of expression.

b) Syntactical precision to ensure the logical sequence of thought and argumentation.

c) Direct word order.

d) Use of lengthy sentences with subordinate clauses.

e) Extensive use of participial, gerundial and infinitive complexes.

f) Extensive use of adverbial and prepositional phrases.

g) Frequent use of parenthesis introduced by a dash.

h) Abundance of attributive groups with a descriptive function.

i) Preferential use of prepositional attributive groups instead of the descriptive of-phrase.

j) Avoidance of ellipsis, even usually omitted conjunctions like 'that' and 'which'.

k) Prevalence of nominal constructions over the verbal ones to avoid time reference for the sake of generalization.

l) Frequent use of passive and non-finite verb forms to achieve objec­tivity and impersonality.

m) Use of impersonal forms and sentences such as mention should be made, it can be inferred, assuming that, etc.

Lexical features:

a) Extensive use of bookish words e. g. presume, infer, preconception, cognitive.

b) Abundance of scientific terminology and phraseology.

c) Use of words in their primary dictionary meaning, restricted use of connotative contextual meanings.

d) Use of numerous neologisms.

e) Abundance of proper names.

f) Restricted use of emotive colouring, interjections, expressive phrase­ology, phrasal verbs, colloquial vocabulary.

g) Seldom use of tropes, such as metaphor, hyperbole, simile, etc.

Compositional features:

a) Types of texts compositionally depend on the scientific genre: mono­graph, article, presentation, thesis, dissertation, etc.

b) In scientific proper and technical texts e.g. mathematics: highly formalized text with the prevalence of formulae, tables, diagrams supplied with concise commentary phrases.

c) In humanitarian texts (history, philosophy): descriptive narration, supplied with argumentation and interpretation.

d) Logical and consistent narration, sequential presentation of material and facts.

e) Extensive use of citation, references and foot-notes.

f) Restricted use of expressive means and stylistic devices.

g) Extensive use of conventional set phrases at certain points to emphasize the logical character of the narration, e. g. as we have seen, in conclusion, finally, as mentioned above.

h) Use of digressions to debate or support a certain point.

i) Definite structural arrangement in a hierarchical order: introduction, chapters, paragraphs, conclusion.

j) Special set of connective phrases and words to sustain coherence and logic, such as consequently, on the contrary, likewise.

k) Extensive use of double conjunctions like as... as, either... or, both... and, etc.

l) Compositionally arranged sentence patterns: postulatory (at the beginning), argumentative (in the central part), formulative (in the conclusion).