Scientific Discourse In Sociohistorical Context

Describes changing language & rhetoric of English-speaking scientists across the 17th-20th centuries. Of interest to scholars of rhetoric, composition, communication, & applied linguistics, as well as historians, sociolinguists, and education researchers

Establishing Scientific Classroom Discourse Communities: Multiple Voices of Teaching and Learning Research is designed to encourage discussion of issues surrounding the reform of classroom science discourse among teachers, teacher educators, and researchers. The contributors--some of the top educational researchers, linguists, and science educators in the world--represent a variety of perspectives pertaining to teaching, assessment, research, learning, and reform. As a whole the book explores the variety, complexity, and interconnectivity of issues associated with changing classroom learning communities and transforming science classroom discourse to be more representative of the discourse of scientific communities. The intent is to expand debate among educators regarding what constitutes exemplary scientific speaking, thinking, and acting. This book is unparalleled in discussing current reform issues from sociolinguistic and sociocultural perspectives. The need for a revised perspective on enduring science teaching and learning issues is established and a theoretical framework and methodology for interpreting the critique of classroom and science discourses is presented. To model and scaffold this ongoing debate, each chapter is followed by a "metalogue" in which the chapter authors and volume editors critique the issues traversed in the chapter by opening up the neatly argued issues. These "metalogues" challenge, extend, and deepen the arguments made. Central questions addressed include: *Why is a sociolinguistic interpretation essential in examining science education reform? *What are key similarities and differences between classroom and scientific communities? *How can the utility of common knowledge and existing classroom discourse be balanced toward alternative outcomes? *What curricular issues are associated with transforming classroom talk? *What other perspectives can assist in creating multiple access to science through redefining classroom discourse? Whether this volume improves readers' science teaching, assists their research, or helps them to better prepare tomorrow's science teachers, the goal is to engage them in considering the challenges faced by educators as they navigate the seas of reform and strive to improve science education for all.

Designed to reform contemporary British society, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s The Tatler (1709-1711) and The Spectator (1711-1712, 1714) rely heavily on the representation of contemporary manners. In shaping such behavioural images, the authors made use of the satirical character sketch. Their character sketches (re)create social interactions between fictionalised representatives of moral types of men and women located in contemporary London. This study examines how Addison and Steele employed the character sketch to create a ‘cosmography’ of (wo)man by actively engaging with the observational approaches of contemporary naturalists. Addison and Steele adapted distinctly empirical methods (e.g. induction and deduction, note taking, repeated and collective observation) and appropriated the (medico-legal) case study to communicate and disseminate socio-moral knowledge. At the same time, the character sketch served them as a means to establish a taxonomic order of the socio-moral knowledge conveyed in the texts. The study sheds new light on the literary techniques and the methodological frameworks of two journals essentially associated with the British - and the European - Enlightenment.

The eighteenth century is an important period both in the history of science and in the history of languages. Interest in science, and especially in the useful sciences, exploded and a new, modern approach to scientific discovery and the accumulation of knowledge emerged. It was during this century, too, that ideas on language and language practice began to change. Latin had been more or less the only written language used for scientific purposes, but gradually the vernaculars became established as fully acceptable alternatives for scientific writing. The period is of interest, moreover, from a genre-historical point of view. Encyclopedias, dictionaries and also correspondence played a key role in the spread of scientific ideas. At the time, writing on scientific matters was not as distinct from fiction, poetry or religious texts as it is today, a fact which also gave a creative liberty to individual writers. In this volume, seventeen authors explore, from a variety of angles, the construction of a scientific language and discourse. The chapters are thematically organized into four sections, each contributing to our understanding of this dynamic period in the history of science: their themes are the forming of scientific communities, the emergence of new languages of science, the spread of scientific ideas, and the development of scientific writing. A particular focus is placed on the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778). From the point of view of the natural sciences, Linnaeus is renowned for his principles for defining genera and species of organisms and his creation of a uniform system for naming them. From the standpoint of this volume, however, he is also of interest as an example of a European scientist of the eighteenth century. This volume is unique both in its broad linguistic approach - including studies on textlinguistics, stylistics, sociolinguistics, lexicon and nomenclature - and in its combination of language studies, philosophy of language, history and sociology of science. The book covers writing in different European languages: Swedish, German, French, English, Latin, Portuguese, and Russian. With its focus on the history of scientific language and discourse during a dynamic period in Europe, the book promises to contribute to new insights both for readers interested in language history and those with an interest in the history of ideas and thought.

Despite the crucial role played by translation in the history of scientific ideas and the transmission of knowledge, historians of science have seldom been interested in the translation activity which enabled the spread of those ideas and exerted influence on structures and systems of knowledge. Translation scholars, too, have traditionally shown little interest in theorizing scientific translation. Recent conceptualizations of science as public culture, institution, narrative and rhetorical practice open the way for research on the translation of science to take conceptual and methodological inspiration from studies of discourse, rhetoric, the sociology of science, the history of science, the philosophy of science and other related fields. This special issue of The Translator foregrounds the work of researchers, within or on the periphery of translation studies, who have begun to interrogate the representation of scientific knowledge through translation. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and models, contributors engage with different perspectives and approaches to help promote the visibility of scientific translation and shed light on its complex relationship with power and the construction of knowledge. Contributors: Brecht Algoet, Karen Bennett, Lidia Camara, Eva Espasa, Lieve Jooken, Monika Krein-Kühle, Min-Hsiu Liao, Ruselle Meade, Guy Rooryck, Dolores Sánchez, Hala Sharkas, Mark Shuttleworth, Richard Somerset, Liselotte Vandenbussche , Sonia Vandepitte

In Scientists as Prophets, Lynda Walsh argues that our science advisors manufacture certainty for us in the face of the unknown. Through a series of cases reaching from the Delphic oracle to seventeenth-century London to Climategate, Walsh elucidates many of the problems with our current science-advising system.

The Handbook of Historical Pragmatics provides an authoritative and accessible overview of this versatile new field in pragmatics devoted to a diachronic study of language use and human interaction in context. It covers all areas of historical pragmatics from grammaticalization theory to pragmatic entities, such as discourse markers, speech acts and politeness to individual discourse domains from scientific writing to literary discourse. Each contribution, written by a leading specialist, gives a succinct, representative and up-to-date overview of research questions, theories, methods and recent developments in the field.

This volume examines the role of English in academic and research settings in Europe and provides recommendations on the challenges posed by the dominance of English over national languages as languages of science and research dissemination; the need for language support for academics that need to disseminate their research in English; and the effect of past and present language policies.