Inglese III - Schemi

Referring to present work present, past or present perfect

 

Meta-discourse present or future (to express conclusions)

 High use of non-finite tenses: infinite, -ing form and past participle

 Use of the passive: the passive is very used in specialized discourse. But in legal texts there’s

a lower proportion of passive forms

 Depersonalisation: the use of non-human subjects and the reduction of any direct reference

to the interlocutor

4) Textual features

 Anaphoric reference: to increase textual cohesion. But in legal discourse they repeats words

rather than use anaphoric reference, to avoid misunderstanding

 Use of conjunctions: to increase textual cohesion and for a pragmatic function. In legal

discourse: rather than using short forms, they use long forms, which contain a noun

 Thematic sequence: the theme is generally the subject of the sentence and occurs initially

 Standard thematic sequence: the rheme of a sentence becomes the theme of the

following sentence and so on

 Parallel thematic sequence: the same theme is repeated in several sequences

 Text genre: each community has its own genre, specialized genres have codified and

standardized forms. Subgenre: different categories of a genre

 Textual organisation: 2 main models of textual structure:

 CARS: three moves, divided in several steps (establishing a territory, establishing a

niche and occupying the niche)

 Model divided in macroacts (observation, analysis and problem deduction) and

microacts

 Speech acts: pragmatic aspect of a language . The most frequent in legal language is

performative speech acts (wills, statements of guilt…), there are specific formula

 Argumentative pattern: argumentation is when a specialist tries to convince their readers

that his thesis is the right one. Language is neutral and objective even if it has a persuasive

purpose.

5) The formation of the lexis of computer science: it is a new branch, so it has new concept

and new tools: it has developed its own terminology. How?

 Borrowings: both from general language and other specialized fields

 

Specialization (hardware, disk…) American spelling

 

Use of metaphors (memory, mouse, menu…) they became independent words

 Neology: new words created for the purpose (byte)

 Derivation: prefixes and suffixes (kilobyte, debug, processor…)

 Analogy: a new term is formed by being modelled on an existing one (software)

 The use of similes: to coin new expressions which refer to the aspect of an item

(banana plug)

 The process of compounding: the compression of various items, often omitting linking

function words (computer programmer, on-line…) or blending the various elements

into single words (bit, modem, pixel…)

 Colloquialism (pixel, bug…)

 Acronyms: because they are short (RAM), they suggest a certain meaning (EDIT), they

resemble real word , with the addition of extra letters (ALGOL)

 Abbreviation (FAQ)

 Recent developments: the first terms were created with these processes (external resources),

but now the new terms invented are created on the already existing terms in computer

language, by:

 Suffixes: -er, -ing , -ie (emailer, netwriting, nettie…)

 Prefixes: re- (reemailer)

 Analogy (offline from online)

 

Derivation (internaute, cybernaute…) cyber more productive than info

6) Keynes’s “General Theory” : it has different characteristics from the normal rules of economic

discourse:

 Subjectivity in the use of terminology: Keynes violates the principle of monorefentiality:

terms may refer to different concepts or two different terms for the same concept

 Authorial presence: he violates the principle of depersonalisation: presence of the first-

person pronoun

 Argumentative strategies: the text isn’t sequential:

 there are a lot of cross-references to other parts of the book

 He adds digressions

 For some argumentations he uses insights (following the principle of

depersonalization)

 Emotional involvement: figurative and emotive language is often employed (to cause a

conflict, a controversy)

 Irony (lexical items with strong emotional load, or taken from incongruous semantic

fields, or marked by the use of intensifying premodifiers)

 Reinforcement of a term by a synonym or a related term

 Contrasts

 Metaphors

 Reader involvement: the reader has an active role th

7) The development of specialized discourse in the 17 century

 Revolution of the approach of studies: from scholastic to empirical

 Revolution in the language used by science

 Bacon: he was the first who said that scientific language needed a change

 Direct link should be established between reality observed and verbal expression

 

Words are expressions of things priority must be given to reality over language

 Lots of terms used before had to be revised

 Critics towards the scientific language used before:

 language was detached from the physically reality to which it referred (Bacon)

 most words were polysemy and this made texts ambiguous (Boyle)

 the English language was “imperfect”, because it had a limited amount of



specialized vocabulary when they began to write in English and not in Latin, they

found a lot of difficulties

 Development in the lexis of scientific English:

 Specialization of already existing words (gravity(

 Borrowing of terms from other languages and their adaptation to the morphological



features of the English language (-atio -ation)

 Borrowing of affixes (-ology, -meter)

 

The opaqueness of language: new language was too difficult criticism of too many Latin

expressions

 The transparency of language: they adopt also other criteria: the creation of terms in a way

that their form reflected the concept to which they referred (saywhat, yeasay)

 Conciseness of the language: sentences had to be more concise as possible, without

unnecessary details: no connotation or indirect meaning (monoreferentiality), no



metaphors, no eloquence, no figurative speech and stylist embellishment they had a

negative influence on society

 The evolution of the syntax of scientific English: the syntactic features used today born in

this period: structure (noun phrase + verb + noun phrase), nominalization and

depersonalization

8) Specialized discourse in the “Philosophical Transaction”

 The Royal Society (founded in 1662)

 

Communal correspondence Henry Oldenburg

 The minutes of Royal Society

 Early scientific publication: born of scientific journals (“Les Journal des Savants” and “ The

Philosophical Transaction” in 1665)

 Features of the PT:

 Aims: spread of scientific news within the Royal Society and also other specialists,

not only British but of all Europe + to arouse the interest of new minds in specialized

matter

 Editorial role: Oldenburg collected the new, the letters of scientists, the articles…and

ordered them in the journal, sometimes with elimination of parts, short summaries,

introductions…he often translated the texts in Latin.

 Text types: there were a lot of text types, whose forms weren’t codified and

conventional. We can divide them in four groups:

- news items: informative documents which reported observation of facts, reports,

directions of practical use, descriptions of curious fact or beings … technical terms

were used and the style was very polite

- experimental accounts: specialists not only described an observation of facts (use

of the passive form), but they told what they had experimented and discovered (use



of the active form, I/we subjects) very detailed and ordered chronologically.

Sometimes there were disputes but they were very polite and civil.

- letters: they were critic exchanges between specialists. Sometimes only an extract

was printed, because they were too long. They had a salutation part and they used

st nd

1 and 2 person (≠ news items and experimental accounts).

- book reviews: they weren’t very frequent, they consisted in summary of the book

and a little evaluation of the reviewer

 Conclusions: also other types of journals were produced: discipline-related, publications

devoted to a specific genre, popular journals…

9) The origins of the Experimental Essay: it’s a result of the new approach of studies