Scientific and Technical Texts: Characteristics and Structure
Scientific Texts
I. Features
In the transmission of cultural content, it is generally possible to distinguish between two kinds of discourse:
- Experimental science and art, whose main objective is to convey factual knowledge of reality.
- Humanities or social sciences, whose primary object of study is the human being.
They differ in their approach and their methods: the first served empirically verifiable data, while in the humanistic disciplines, content is not always verifiable, and logical reasoning prevails.
Scientific texts explain the fact that the recipient acquires knowledge about it; technical texts apply knowledge of science to act on reality. His goal is to teach the recipient to know how to do something.
Scientific and technical texts are of different kinds or genres: report, treatise, essay, dissertation, textbook, article, monograph, conference, etc.
II. Typology and Structure
In scientific and technical texts, exposition predominates, as well as argumentation when discussion topics are raised, very typical of scientific debate. The description may appear to complement the exposition, and the account when you make a historical or chronological approach. In technical texts, instruction is a property whose goal is to teach the recipient to do something.
The order in which information is developed depends on the method which uses science in particular:
a) Analysand Structure if the method used is deductive. It goes from general to specific: it is part of the thesis or hypothesis, and the development of the text provides the facts, evidence, or data to prove it.
b) Synthesizing Structure if the method used is inductive. It goes from the particular to the general: the first presents the facts, data, or evidence to get through to the conclusions that explain the meaning of data or events described.
c) Framed Structure (the previous structures occur at the same time): the text begins with an idea that reappears as a conclusion following the development of the explanation.
The overall structure of the texts follows the following scheme: a) Introduction. b) Development. c) Conclusion.
The Language of Scientific and Technical Texts
1. Universality
Disseminating knowledge is valid in every time and place.
This requires a language that goes beyond language barriers easily.
2. Objectivity
He presents the facts, and the circumstances in which they occur, obviating the presence of the sender and his personal assessment of the facts.
The functions of language: referential (denotative vocabulary) and metalinguistic (explanations).
The achievement of these goals requires a particular use of language.
1. Grammatical Features
1.1. Syntactic Features
Syntactic Structures, which ignore the subject agent or tend to hide it (impersonal, passive, to “be” or reflects, the plural of modesty, nominal constructions).
- A careful textual cohesion to get a clear syntax, unambiguous or assumptions (correct match, lexical repetitions, connectors that express logical relationships, conditional, causal, consecutive end-).
- Statements short and simple (simple and coordinated sentences, subordinate clauses bit complex and easily understandable, often express the logical relationships, the circumstances of time and space by adverbial constructions).
- SN expanded with appositions, subordinate adjective or other supplements (identify and clarify the extent of the noun).
1.2. Morphological Features
- Verbs in the indicative (objectivity exposure)
- This timeless (universal validity in time of scientific formulations).
2. Lexical Features
- Monosemous terms.
Terms of denotative meaning (no expressive or subjective elements): High precision and objectivity.
Words can be translated into other languages (full agreement on the meaning very similar and sometimes significant) universality.
2.2. Constant Creation of Technicalities
- Like other loans (classical, modern, xenismos, stickers).
- By derivation (creation of abstract nouns derived from loans and Greco-Roman).
- By composition syntagmatic and cultured.
- By acronyms.
- Normal language words that are used with a very precise sense.
2.3. Unstable Nature of the Lexicon
(Scientific and by differences in their use of words different schools).