Shirley CARTER-THOMAS
INT-Evry
shirley.thomas@int-evry.fr

 

Specialised Syntax for Specialised Texts?
An examination of the preferred syntactic patterns in 2 agnate scientific genres: Proceedings articles and conference presentations .

 

It is now widely acknowledged that different LSP domains should not be considered as forming any autonomous sub-system of a given so-called general language (Lerat 1995, Eggs 2002). The language patterns used for example in physics research articles in English are not specific to this discipline or text type but form part of the common core of the English language. However, certain syntactic and lexical features can also be considered to be highly appropriate, and indeed characteristic of a particular text, and isolating these features is an essential role of the LSP analyst.

In order to capture these distinctive features of specialised LSP text, a contrastive approach can often be particularly insightful. Such comparisons can either be made horizontally - comparing for example the functioning of research articles across different disciplines (e.g. medicine versus economics) - or vertically - comparing different types of specialised text that occur within a particular field or discipline (e.g. research articles versus popularised scientific accounts). In this paper I will focus on some specialised uses of syntax from the vertical perspective. Within the context of an international conference in physics, I will compare some of the specific syntactic patterns used in the oral presentations made at the conference with those employed in the corresponding proceedings articles.

The paper will be broadly situated within a genre perspective (Swales 1990), whereby certain syntactic features of the two specialised communicative events are examined in relation to certain discourse features of the precise communicative contexts. Conference proceedings articles and conference presentations are managed by the same discourse community; the text producers and receivers are disciplinary ‘experts' and their shared knowledge is extensive. There is also a certain shared content and intellectual tradition that is manifest in the high information load conveyed. However the particular contextual environment surrounding the two events and the mode of delivery – oral in the case of the conference presentations and written in the case of the proceedings papers – have an impact on the different language resources brought into play.

This study aims to evaluate the relative importance of the content-related features and of the specific contextual constraints on the syntactic choices observed on the textual surface. The syntactic features focussed upon in this study include: the active/passive voice distinction, personal pronoun distribution and the use of inversion and various cleft constructions.

 

References:

Eggs, E., 2002, “Langues spécialisées : théorie et pratiques ”, Actes du colloque GLAT 2002 , Evry 22-24 mai 2002
Lerat, P., 1995, Les langues spécialisées , Paris: PUF.
Swales, J., 1990, Genre Analysis. English in Academic and Research Settings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.