Discourse Structure

• There is a balance between abstract and concrete points. General discussion alternates with accounts of experiments.
• The problems are explained as they arose over time. The reader is told how the thinking developed.
• Most paragraphs begin with a general thematic point, and later sentences elaborate. The theme of the next paragraph then drives from the previous one’s elaboration.
• A new element at the end of one sentence is often picked up as a given element at the beginning of the next, e.g….one quantum. This quantum…
• The relations between the sentences and clauses are often made explicit through the use of connectives.
• The sentences usually have a cross-reference back to a preceding sentence or clause. This makes it clear that a given topic is still being discussed, and reduces the scope for vagueness.

composition of scientific text as an explication of the stages of cognition and productive thinking, the usual model is presented by the following scheme - a problem situation, idea, hypothesis, proof, conclusion, compositional speech forms of discussion, argumentation and description, conclusion, types of narration, wide-spread co-referential repetition as a specific method of text development.

Sentence Structure

• Sentences range from 7 to 52 words. This is typical of academic writing.
• Clauses have short subjects, with most of the information stated after the verb. Such sentences are much easier to understand than alternative.
• Points of contrast are rhetorically balanced, using such devices as the more…the less.
• The passive constructions are a helpful way of ensuring a smooth flow of ideas, and are important in allowing objects to receive prominence within clause structure.The syntax of scientific speech is characterized by the use of complete (non-elliptical) sentences, the use of extended complex and compound sentences without omission of conjunctions, as they enable the author to express the relations between the parts more precisely (as different from the asyndetic connection typical of colloquial speech), the use of bookish syntactic constructions with non-finite forms of the verb, the use of extended attributive phrases, often with a number of nouns as attributes to the head-noun, e.g. the germ plasma theory; the time and space relativity theory; the World Peace Conference; a high level consensus; the greenhouse effect; carbon dioxide emission; fossil fuel burning; deforestation problems.
A fourth observable feature of the style of modern scientific prose, and one that strikes the eye of the reader, is the use of quotations and references. These sometimes occupy as much as half a page. The references have a definite compositional pattern, namely, the name of the writer referred to, the title of the work quoted, the publishing house, the place and the year it was published, and the page of the excerpt quoted or referred to.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 1370