Scientific-Technical Discourse: Structure, Language, & Genres
Understanding Scientific-Technical Discourse
Scientific-technical discourse involves the objective study of physical reality, encompassing both theoretical knowledge and its practical application.
Key Characteristics
- Produced in the field of cultural transmission of knowledge.
- Is verifiable.
- Uses jargon and neologisms.
- Recipients may be experts in the field or simply interested in it.
- Presents a clear logical structure, is precise, and clear.
Principles of Scientific Discourse
- Objectivity: Contents must present data, facts, and observations. They cannot contain contrasting opinions or expressions of feelings. All information must always be verifiable.
- Universality: Contents are of universal validity, normalized to facilitate comprehension in any country or language, and are reviewable.
- Accuracy and Clarity: Seeks to eliminate possible ambiguities and clarify all elements that may lead to difficulty, often using graphics and examples.
Genres of Scientific-Technical Texts
Written Genres: Journal articles, theses, manuals, reports.
Oral Genres: Speeches, communications, educational exhibits.
Certain texts may also relate to scientific and technical issues with an informative intention and specific language processing. The characteristics of journalistic genres are often present in informative scientific texts belonging to this area.
Textual Structure
Scientific-technical texts typically follow a clear structure:
- Introduction: Presents the thesis or introduces the topic.
- Body Text: Develops arguments and explanations.
- Conclusion: Summarizes information presented or validates the thesis.
Information can be organized according to the following organizational schemes:
- Synthetic or Inductive: Presents concrete, individual ideas, concluding with the most important information.
- Analytical or Deductive: Begins with the most important information, which is then analyzed.
- Framed: Combines both, presenting key information initially and reformulating it at the end of the text.
- Parallel: Presents a series of equally important ideas, none of which is subordinate to another.
Linguistic Features
Pragmatic-Textual Level
- Consistency: Subordination of all statements to the central theme and linear progression of information.
- Cohesion: Preference for repetition of the same words as a cohesive mechanism, rather than the substitution of synonyms or pronouns.
- Discourse Markers: Connectors expressing relations between ideas and the structuring of information, which assist in text organization. Discursive operators, expressing the issuer’s attitude and reinforcing arguments, are more frequent in informative texts.
- Intertextuality: The presence of other texts is common and is associated with the pursuit of objectivity and verifiability in these texts.
Morphosyntactic Level
To enhance objectivity:
- The indicative mood is used, along with the present tense (temporal or timeless), the conditional, and the future to express hypotheses.
- Uses the third person singular and first person plural (for modesty or generalization).
- Impersonal and reflexive passive forms. Use of subordinate clauses with non-personal verb forms.
- Nominal constructions with nouns.
To enhance clarity:
- Specific adjectives, adjectival phrases, and appositions.
- Juxtaposition and coordination.
- Declarative, interrogative, and attributive sentences.
Semantic Level
Technicalities are words peculiar to a science or technique, each with a single meaning to describe a specific concept. Scientific advances lead to the constant creation of neologisms using different procedures:
- Mechanisms of the language itself: suffixation, prefixation, composition, phrases. Compositional elements from Latin and Greek are common.
- Loans from modern languages: French, English, etc.
- Acronyms.
- Eponyms: words derived from an inventor’s name, country of origin, etc.
- Commonly used words acquire a precise meaning in a particular discipline.
- While synonyms, hypernyms, metaphors, and personifications may be used, lexical denotation and precision predominate.
- The use of specific codes contributes to the desire for universality in these texts.