Unità 1 PDF - Language for Specific Purposes

LINGUA INGLESE III – UNIT 1 (Catenaccio) Worksheet 1 Read the following text and complete the task “Necrotising fasciitis is a rare but serious infection of the subcutaneous tissues and fascia of the skin. The condition has an average mortality rate of 20.6%1 and is a surgical emergency. It can oc...

LINGUA INGLESE III – UNIT 1 (Catenaccio) Worksheet 1 Read the following text and complete the task “Necrotising fasciitis is a rare but serious infection of the subcutaneous tissues and fascia of the skin. The condition has an average mortality rate of 20.6%1 and is a surgical emergency. It can occur anywhere on the body, but most commonly at the perineum (36%), lower extremities (15.2%), postoperative wounds (14.7%), as well as in the abdomen, oral cavity, and neck. 2 Necrotising fasciitis spreads rapidly with little muscle sparing 3 and often leads to sepsis. If not treated promptly, it has high morbidity and mortality.” What tells you that this text is highly specialized? The lexicon is highly specific. It’s a language used in the science field. As soon as you read this text you recognize that that text belongs to the medical field. The topic is medical. The words that are in there would not occur in another text; they are highly specialized. A lot of words have a Latin origin. Who is going to read the text? Medical students (if it is in a textbook), medical doctors and nurses (if it is in a scientific journal). Why is it meant for them? You need people that have some background knowledge. You must be able to assume that people that read you are going to understand you without further explanations. What is the purpose of this text? To inform. Is the purpose important? Yes. Students has to learn. Medical doctors need updates. Which ones of the following features of the text are classic features Language for Special Purposes? 1) It’s about an unpleasant topic → FALSE 2) It assumes the reader is familiar with anatomical terminology → TRUE. There is a very strong assumption that your readership is going to share your knowledge of the topic, or at least the knowledge of the general field so that they can understand the topic. 3) It includes percentages → FALSE. Do you need percentages? It is not a necessary feature. Anything that has figures or percentages comes across as something highly specialised. We tend to be impressed, but it is not a necessary feature. It is not the percentage that will make it scientific. 4) It is densely informative → TRUE. Densely means much information in a short text. Every single words mean something, every single words give a piece of information. You don’t have any words that are not highly significant, you don’t have unnecessary adjectives. Every word counts. It is not a text that uses a lot of words to provide little information. Every single word is informative. Who was this text written for? This is one of a series of occasional articles highlighting conditions that may be more common than many doctors realise or may be missed at first presentation. The series advisers are Anthony Harnden, professor of primary care, Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, and Dr Kevin Barraclough, School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol. To suggest a topic for this series, please email us at practice@. It is meant to provide information to medical practitioners, and it appears on a journal. Who is responsible for providing this information? In Scientific Discourse the authoritativeness of whoever provides the information is important. You don’t get the information from anybody. You have the names and the credentials of the professionals. Source? British medical journal. Sometimes medical doctors need updating or sometimes certain conditions are difficult to spot, and they cause particular problems. Is the following a LSP text? “Updated for 2021, the Vitus Vitesse EVO is a lightweight, disc-only race bike, and the ride of choice for the Vitus Pro Cycling p/b Brother UK UCI Continental team. The Vitesse EVO range starts at £1,999.99 / $2,599 for a bike with Shimano 105 and I’ve been testing a £3,699.99 / $4,499.99 model with Ultegra Di2. The new bike has a similar overall personality to its predecessor. It’s stiff, fast and fun, but best suited to performance-oriented riders – others may find it too firm and focused for the everyday.” What is it about? Cycling. What kind of text it is? It is a review. Is it qualified as a specialised text? In terms of transparency, it is more transparent than the previous one. It is not easier, but it can be fully comprehensible only by people who understand what we are talking about. Example: When you buy a computer, do you understand everything? If you are not into the topic, it is not transparent. You may understand, but you don’t really understand everything. You can have specialised language in a lot of different domains. How serious the domains are? It is not really relevant, as long as it is something which is very specialised in the sense that is not accessible to everybody in the same way, and you need a certain specific language competence to understand it. That is a specialised text. The domain is not relevant. We have specialised knowledge across all domains of human endeavour not just in hugely technical or scientific stuff. True or false? 1) You don’t need specialised knowledge to understand it → FALSE 2) It is too informal and personal → FALSE. It is still addressed to a community with specialised knowledge. 3) The language is too descriptive → FALSE. Some words might be descriptive, but they would be recognised as technical descriptions by knowledgeable readers. Both texts are specialised texts even though they have both similarities and differences. BMJ TEXT BIKERADAR REVIEW Lexis in not necessarily self-explanatory. It is not something that you understand straight Lexis that is not necessarily self-explanatory. away, you need to have a look at it to Addressed to a select readership with shared understand what it means. specialized knowledge. You expect to find a Addressed to a select readership with shared review of that kind on a blog/specialised specialized knowledge. It occurred in a journal magazine. that was addressed to those specialists. Terminologically dense. Terminologically dense. Different domains Addressed to a different community: fellow bike enthusiasts who are addressed more Different domain personally using the first person. The reason Addressed to a different community: doctors, why you got personal engagement is that if you professionals who are addressed more recommend something to someone, the formally. You don’t have any personal address. interpersonal component is stronger, and it is Specifies the scientific/medical credentials of likely to be very important because I’m going to the advisors to the series. follow someone’s advice only if I’m personally engaged. Makes it clear that there is an editorial/review teams, but that doesn’t specify their credentials. There are some similarities, but there are some differences which suggest to us that although there are some key features that are common across different Specialized Languages, there are also decrease of variation which depend on a number of variables. Variations in LSP LANGUAGE FOR SPECIAL PURPOSES Although both these texts are examples of LSP, they also illustrate two important axes along which variation can be charted: the horizontal axis of diaphasic variation (i.e., variation in topic and disciplinary fields) the vertical variation of the degree of specialization in the communication Horizontally you have different specialised languages depending on the number of disciplines, areas, topics that you are dealing with. You have the language of medicine; you have the language of the law, the language of business and so on. Each of these is a Specialised Language and you have variation horizontally. You have different domains. They are all specialized, but they are all different. They are all on the same line, there’s no hierarchy. Vertical variation means that I can have different degrees of specialisation. You can have a lower degree of specialization. A doctor talking to a doctor is intraspecialist communication. A doctor talking to patient will simplify the language. From more complex to less complex. It is hierarchical. Those are the two dimensions of variation. WARNING! In both cases, we would seem to be witnessing intraspecialist communication (experts talking to other experts) in the same field; one between medical practitioners, the other between cycling geeks. Note that LSP is not necessarily to be equated with ideas of “seriousness” or “importance”. The fact that a text is written for geeks, does not mean that it cannot be considered an example of LSP. The fact that you can’t understand indicates that it is necessary LSP. Specialised vs Generic texts Vertical vs Horizontal Variation Specialised texts are highly lexically dense. They are difficult to understand for people who are not into that kind of topic. Generic texts are meant for everybody. It is much easier to understand them without any specialized knowledge. The language that you find in generic texts can be understood typically without Specialized Language. From language to specialized language The Languages for Specific or Special Purposes (LSPs) were initially identified and researched as early as the 1960s, and even as early as Ferdinand de Saussure’s time. There are many languages for special purposes. What do we use language for? Communicate. We share information. We also use language to establish rapport. Some conversations are aimed at a purpose, some others have a different purpose which is not meant to achieve anything in particular. We do exchange information all the time, but in some cases, we have a purpose. The purpose element is much stronger in Language for Special Purposes. When you use Language for Special Purposes, you always have a purpose. You are trying to communicate something in order to achieve a certain result. You use that language in a situation which demands communication to obtain something. Transfer of information for the purpose of instructing somebody and so on. LSP is never chit- chat. You use specialised knowledge and language to achieve certain specific reasons. A LSP can be defined as a natural language as typically used in a specific technical or disciplinary field, for a functional or an operational purpose, commonly within a given professional setting. Natural language means it is not invented; it is not artificial. English takes the lion’s share in both practical usage of and theoretical studies on LSPs. Why is it relevant that English takes the lion’s share? English is used as a lingua franca. If you have an international community of doctors, they will communicate in English. Why is that? The United States have dominated scholarship. LSP = Language for Specific Purposes ESP = English for Specific Purposes It is a fact that the LSP is very closely linked with that of ESP. “Languages for specific (or special) purposes or domain-specific languages (also called ‘special languages’, ‘microlanguages’ or ‘technolets’) are contextual-functional varieties of the language”. Contextual-functional varieties it is a variety of the language that depends on context and on the function. “A LSP can be defined as a natural language as typically used in a specific technical or disciplinary field, for a functional or an operational purpose, commonly within a given professional setting”. LSP studies have been extremely popular. The major defining feature of LSPs is purpose! A specialized language’s purpose is defined, delimited, and set out by a community of practice exercising within a specific professional domain that can be technical, scientific, or disciplinary in nature. A community of practice is a group of people that share the same purpose, have the same knowledge and so on. Those people talk to each other, and they have an interest in keeping people who are not expert out. There is a community of practice of people that have the same interest! If I want to be part of that community, I need to work hard. Once you’ve learned the practice, you can be part of the community. You need to learn the patterns. A community of practice will act as a gatekeeper. LSPs’ purpose is the clear transfer of information among members but not to non-members, who should thus remain excluded. Dimensions of variation = different variables DIA -chronic (time) → English changes -topic (space) → Variations of English -stratic (social position) → from the way people speak you can tell how educated they are. -phasic/-typic (context/function) → language in a given context for a certain function. -mesic (medium) → spoken language is different from written language. -genic (gender) (see Garzone, 2020, pp17-18) LSPs’ Horizontal variation Different domains: Philosophy | Medicine | Sociology | Physics LSPs’ Vertical variation LEVELS Intraspecialistic level o From specialist to specialist in same disciplinary field o Medical drama – doctors speaking to doctors.  Interspecialistic level o From specialist to specialist across disciplinary fields o Crime – you have an interspecialistic level. The coroner speaking to the police. Didactic/pedagogical level o From specialist to non-specialist o Doctors teaching medical students. Popular level o Intended for the largest audience o The doctor needs to explain to you what is wrong with you. Register “There will be variations as a function of a number of elements in the situation where the communicative act is set, and in particularly the degree of formality, which in turn is strictly dependent on the relationship between speaker and addressee. All these factors determine the “register” of language chosen for a given situation.” Depending on the situation, you will have different degrees of formality which are a function of the relationship between the participants. Depending on the relationship between the participants, you will have a different degree of formality. English vs Scientific English ENGLISH SCIENTIFIC ENGLISH The language spoken daily in the UK, the The language used worldwide for official USA, etc. communication within scientific fields, A language over 1600 years old especially at the academic and the Origins: Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Norman diplomatic levels. French, etc. Origins: 17th century, with Scientific Significant literary production Revolution The language that used to be used to talk about science was Latin. English had no words for a lot of scientific notions. From English to specialised English Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 6-7) indicate, as the reasons for the rise of (specialized) English over other languages in the second half of the 20th century, 1) The un-precedented expansion in scientific, technical and economic activity on an international scale 2) the economic power of the United States 3) the Oil Crises of the early 1970s which resulted in a massive flow of funds and Western expertise into the oil-rich countries. Lexicon is the outstanding feature in specialized languages. Since ancient times it has been identified as their major and often as their only feature. However, this is not the case: recent research has established that also syntactic and textual features undergo variations in ESP, although in lesser proportions. What is Academic English? Academic English also called English for Academic Purposes (EAP) entails training students, usually in a higher education setting, to use language appropriately for study. It is one of the most common forms of English for specific purposes. Quantity of technical terms “The first impressions of the language of science are that its distinction lies in its lexicon. The sheer quantity of technical terms makes this unavoidable: scientific nomenclature comprises most of the English vocabulary and no one understands more than a fragment of it (!)” For each area of expertise, you’ve got a different vocabulary. What we know, even when you are expert in a field, it’s a fraction of the vocabulary that exists. The greatest majority of the language (core language) which is necessary to understand any kind of language you use, is small compared to the number of technical terms. We don’t use technical language every day. There are also certain ways that we can have to understand, at least partly, some of the language. Texts and tasks How many technical terms can you identify? (1) Trichotillomania is a body-focused repetitive behaviour classified as an impulse control disorder (along the lines of pyromania, kleptomania and pathological gambling) which involves pulling out one’s hair. Hair pulling may occur in any region of the body in which hair grows but the most common sites are the scalp, eyebrows, and eyelids. Occurring more frequently in females, it is estimated that 1%-2% of adults and adolescents suffer from trichotillomania. In general, trichotillomania is a chronic condition that will come and go through an individual’s life if the disorder is not treated. For some individual, the disorder may come and go for weeks, months, or years at a time. Technical terms = a term is a technical word, something that belongs to that domain specific discourse and has a specific meaning in that kind of discourse. If you think of the kind of terminology here, all these are technical terms. They are terms that are specific for medical condition, some of them are also used in everyday language but it’s a minority of them. This text is very dense (informative and full of technical terms). As you can see, “Texts of special purpose language consist of appositely labelled terms bound together by appropriate words from the general vocabulary stock”. Words occur in everyday language; term is the label you use to talk about words that are used specifically in a given domain. Term of art = words that are used specifically in a give domain. Term is different from a word. When you use a word as a term, that term in that specific domain only has one meaning. In each of the specialized domains, each word has different meaning. The characteristic of LSPs is the high ratio of terms to words from the general word stock (term density). In the previous text, there are a lot of terms. There are a lot of terms compared to the total amount of words and compared to the words that come from everyday language. This is not something that happen on a daily basis. The higher the density of terms, the more specialized the text will be and the more difficult to understand for the lay reader. The more terms you have, the less you understand. The words that you understand are the one that you use in an everyday language, but they are not enough. They basically connect everything else. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwmdf5m9khg&t=11s It sounds real because it uses the techniques that you typically use to invent new terms. The fact that you can easily imitate that type of language, means that there are rules to that language. In your head, you know what sounds like technical language. They are reproducing some of the characteristics of technical language in a completely meaningless way. They use a type of language that is plausible. There are rules that are used to produce technical terms. It is a parody of technospeak, or technobabble and it is meant to illustrate the concept of term density and the difficulty of understanding term dense texts. Back to the previous text, notice that besides the high number of terms, the text on slide 5 (text 1 in your handout) is characterised by overall noun density, i.e., a much higher number of information-carrying nouns than other parts of speech (verbs, adverbs, adjectives, for example). Additionally, not only is the text full of terms, but some of them are repeated. In specialized texts the content (the informative function) prevails over other considerations like style (the expressive or poetic function). If a term is the right one, then it will be used again (and again and again) in the interests of clarity and to avoid any ambiguity. That is why is it important to appreciate terminology’s centrality in such discourse Repetition is very common. In scientific language, you got mono-referentiality → when I’m talking about a concept or an item, I only have one word to talk about it, I don’t have synonyms. You have to use repetition; it is inevitable and desirable. It is the only possible way of talking about certain topics in scientific terms. If a term is the right one, then it will be used again and again because you want to avoid ambiguity. You want scientific text not to be ambiguous at all. Lexical feature of ESP “Everyday words are too vague for many scientific purposes, so new ones have to be invented. This novel vocabulary is largely based on borrowings from Greek and Latin, showing the influence of Classical languages during the period of discovery following the Renaissance.” Science and technology are in constant evolution. Latin was the common language for scientists. It is in the 1600 you start having the development of scientific language in the national languages. One of the first areas when they developed scientific language was medical language. Those Greeks and Latin words that you used to use; you start using them again. Everyday words are not good to identify something which is highly specialised, so you have to invent new ones, or you have to repurpose words from everyday language (take a word from everyday language and give it a new meaning). The scientists needed to develop the language. Other European words can also incorporate in various domains: triage from French. Whereas in languages other than English, like Italian, for instance, it is quite common to find an abundance of English loan words to express concepts or entities that were first expressed and defined in that language and are borrowed to fill in a semantic gap in the other language or to replace native words that are abandoned because they are regarded as obsolete or unwieldy. computer as opposed to ‘elaboratore’ Alternatively, loan words can be used as terms used in specialist-to-specialist discourse in various fields and are a mark of sharing in the specialised knowledge of a particular community. In contemporary times, there are other words that are part of today’s scientific and technical language. English has become THE language of technology, the language of science, the language of medicine. In languages such as Italian you’ve got a lot of words from English. We adapted few words; they are now part of our language. Especially in language of technology, people need to understand each other. Very often you use a certain type of specialised language that you borrow from another language because you need the word. The word identifies a concept and the most economical way of transferring to another language is to use the borrowing. It is not always like that. Do you recognise any terms in this advertisement that are commonly used as a loan word in Italian? This is a label that you might find with very few changes in an Italian store. Also, loan words (that belong to fiscal policies) can be used to increase the prestige of the speaker to communicate sophistication or suggest the speaker is part of a wider, international community, a good recent example is the world of politics: Spending review, jobs act, austerity Luxury long words = you don’t really need them for certain purpose except for increasing your prestige. The speaker is part of a wider, international community. TEST Repetition is quite likely to occur in specialised texts = TRUE, whenever you have a term, you can’t use an alternative. The greater part of lexis in the English language is comprised of non-technical languages = FALSE, the core vocabulary is small compared to the overall technical vocabulary. You think you know most of a language, but you don’t. All terms can only be understood by specialists who use them in their fields = FALSE Which of the following is NOT a consideration in forming terms from foreign words? o Aesthetic reasons o Convenience o To underline the speaker’s membership of an exclusive community In specialised texts there is likely to be a lower ratio of terms to core vocabulary (not many terms and a lot of core vocabulary) = FALSE, a lot of terms and not a lot of core vocabulary. Task 1 (2) Did you know? The word trichotillomania derives from the Greek trich (“hair”) and tillein (“to pull or pluck”), along with the suffix –mania (from mainesthai, meaning “to me mad”). People suffering from trichotillomania will routinely pluck hair from the scalp, eyebrows, eyelashes or other parts of the body, usually impulsively but sometimes with careful deliberation (such as by using tweezers). Some researchers believe that it may be a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The word for this  condition first appeared in English around the dawn of the 20th century (it’s generally thought to have been first coined in French by a French dermatologist). We have an explanation of the three components of that term. Those three parts suggest that it is not arbitrary, I not made up this term out of my creativity, I used parts of language that means something in that context. Terms “In theory, one term represents one concept and should be free of ambiguity. Sometimes a lexical item representing a term also exists in the general language but is considered to be a separate lexical unit.” “The same lexical item may appear in different fields, but will be fulfilling a different terminological job in each case” You can have the same term across different fields with different meanings. Lexical features of ESP - Non-arbitrariness, there are reasons why you choose that term. It enables you to understand the components of whatever you want to say. You take the term; you use it in a particular context, and it becomes a specialised term in that context. - Mono-referentialty (1 concept = 1 word), you don’t have alternatives. - Non-ambiguity, it can’t be ambiguous. - Productivity, you can use the same structure in the definition of what you are using. - Sharedness, everybody in that domain understands what you are talking about. - Artificiality, you deliberately invented, you gave a name to something - Highly technical, has a technical meaning in that specific area. TEST Can a word be a term in widely differing domains? = YES Do the two signifiers “Dermatillomania” and “fluff” have a logical relation to what they signify? = NO Do terms have negative or positive connotations? = NO, terms are purely referential. Which of the following is NOT a term? o SARS o Cork o AIDS o Aileron Is the word “wing” both a term and a word from the general word stock? YES Look at the term hirsutism. Which of the suffix meanings does it have? From your knowledge of the language what does this term mean? Answer: 2b. Additional feature of technical and scientific lexis - Lack of emotion - Transparency - Conciseness, the terminology tends to pack a lot of information in very few words. - Conservatism, once you decided a term, you don’t change it. Task (3) Read the text below about how apparently technical language can be used to convey unambiguous meanings and confuse and manipulate reader. Complete the notes to the text with the right definition [a] relating to farm animals that are not in cages [b] refers to products marketed in such a way that the small farmers who produce them get the profits rather than big multinationals [c] things produced from [d] the genes of a natural product have been altered in some way [e] made from artificial substances [f] ways of getting round regulations [g] good for you physically or morally [h] containing all the natural substances in the grain. Answer the following questions 1. Are food labels meant to provide information or to advertise the products? 2. Why do manufacturers try to hide the fact that foods contain synthetic ingredients? 3. In the phrase fresh egg pasta, does fresh refer to egg or pasta? 4. What do organic, wholemeal and vegetarian mean when describing food? 5. What does GM stand for? Explain what it means. 6. What is DNA? 7. Cereal bars, fish fingers and vegetable burgers are all types of fast food. Describe them. 8. This text is from a British magazine, so what does the word jelly mean? What would it mean in a US text? 9. How much fat would there be in low-fat cheese? And how much would there be in reduced fat cheese? Which do you think would be tastier and why? 1. Strawberry flavoured yoghurt or strawberry flavour yoghurt 2. Orange drink or orange juice 3. Raspberry jam or raspberry flavoured jam 4. Farmhouse chicken or free-range chicken As pointed out in the text, light is an ambiguous word, i.e. it can be understood in different ways. Explain these phrases. Where possible, suggest an opposite to light 1. light coloured hair 2. a light wind 3. a light comedy 4. a light sleeper 5. to light a fire 6. a light aircraft 7. the light of my life 8. Got a light? 9. to light on the solution 10. In the light of the reports… WORD FORMATION MECHANISM = the way in which we invent new terms/words. They are the same as you would normally find in everyday language. They are very common in everyday language; we invent new words all the time (ex: lockdown). We do have words that are created regularly. The techniques/ the strategies are the same as for everyday language except that because it’s scientific language, you have new inventions and you have to name new concepts and new items, you tend to create many more words and these words tend to be very stable. Once you create a new word, that word sticks. Once you use a word form common language and you transfer it into scientific language it got a specific meaning and that meaning stays the same and you can’t call that sort of thing in another way. Semantic redetermination Taking a word from the general vocabulary stock and using it as a specialized term in a specific domain. Ex: "flap" You take a word that already exists in everyday language, and you give it a new meaning which is very specific to that domain where you are using it in. Usually there is a link between the general meaning of that word in everyday language and the new meaning that you want to specify in the domain where you are using it. The meaning is linked to the general meaning, but you use it in a specific context, within that context it acquires a highly specific completely unambiguous meaning, and it cannot be replaced by anything else. Conversion A process that entails transforming a word into a different part of speech. Ex: verb → noun = lockdown (noun), to lock someone or something down (verb) noun → verb = access (noun) to access (verb) data adjective → verb = green (adjective), greening (verb) the petrochemical industry Conversion means that you take exactly the same word and you, sometimes you can change the stress, but the same form becomes a different word class, a word from a different world class. Greening = it is applied to somebody who wants to appear, but it is not. It is not real; it is only on the surface. Affixation Affixes are morphemes that only acquire meaning when attached to a base word. Prefixes like dis, a, im, do not stand alone as words with specific meanings and only form meaning when combined with bases, as shown below: o dissimilar, asymmetrical, impenetrable. Bound morpheme = is a morpheme that cannot stand alone. If I say the word “Play” that is a free morpheme, a morpheme that can stand alone. “Player”, it is a bound morpheme, -er does not meaning anything. A bound morpheme is a morpheme that can come before or after the free morpheme. Affixation has to do with adding a morpheme to a root. Typically, prefixes are class preserving. The word that you obtain by adding a prefix, belongs to the same class. Typically, suffixes are class changing. Affixation continued The remaining affixes are suffixes and infixes. The latter are inserted into the middle of a base word and are rather rare. Suffixes, on the other hand, are highly productive of scientific and technical terminology, e.g. Some make verbs, e.g., “ize”: galvanize; crystallize “ify”: liquify; solidify, Some form nouns: e.g., “ation”: homogenization, orientation → nouns which refer to a process. That is what those endings do to a given word. “ion”: compression, incision, depression Infixes are not productive in English; they are very rare. The suffixes are very productive, and they are especially productive in technical terminology. You can have suffixes that turn nouns or adjectives into verbs. Particularly productive suffixes in technical and scientific LSPs are a ‘agentive suffixes’, namely suffixes that are used to form terms that convey the meaning of making or doing: er, or, e.g., extractor, injector, defibrillator → you have words that refer to tools or machines that carry out the action that is highlighted in the root. “Toaster”, “player”, those are agentive suffixes. They are extremely common, and they come from Latin, and they are extremely productive. Task 1 Look at the following clip taken from the television series ‘The Big Bang Theory’. It presents a parody of scientific language. What word formation mechanisms does it use to create the parody? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4Z3i9OXAEA Other elements of word formation Other ‘building blocks’ used to form the lexis of science and technology are derived from Latin and/or ancient Greek. This is responsible for the quality of transparency attributed to LSPs (see lesson 2), because anyone familiar with classical languages (either directly or indirectly, namely because they are accustomed to seeing words derived from them and have learned to understand them) can be reasonably expected to understand their meaning: e.g., the prefixes: - “haemo”, having to do with blood = haemophilia; haemoglobin. - “hydro”: having to do with water = hydroelectric; hydrofoil; hydrophobia the suffix: - “itis” inflammatory disease = appendicitis, bronchitis, sinusitis We use affixes that come from Greek because classical languages are what scientists used to build new words in science and technology. Originally, the sort of common language among scientists were the classical languages and also by choosing words of prefixes and suffixes that come from those languages, you can be transparent. If you know the meaning of those morphemes in Greek than you can reconstruct the meaning of those words. The choice of using Greek morphemes was arbitrary. The purpose is to build something which is transparent for people to read it. Elements of word formation: affixoids There is a category of constituent parts of words that act like affixes but at the same time seems to have more independent meaning, or semantic force, than normal derivational affixes, which normally do not convey explicit independent meaning. These elements are called affixoids: Think of the difference between the affix de (as in decompose) and the affixoid pseudo. The latter has a much more explicit meaning (false) than the former, which needs to be bonded to a base to take on explicit meaning. Consider the difference between the suffix ify and the suffixoid graphy to see that without the base the suffix has less immediate meaning than the suffixoid. If you look at the word “pseudo”, it cannot be used as a word itself. It is not a free morpheme; it is a bound morpheme. When these prefixes or suffixes are semantically stronger than simply prefixes or suffixes, they are called prefixoid/suffixoid = they are not purely grammatical, they also have a semantic meaning. With affixoid I got a stronger semantic meaning, I can identify them because they mean something. They add a function to a word. That is the key distinction → the extent to which they are semantically stronger. Compounding Compounding is the combination of two (or more) base words into a term expressing a single meaning. Greenhouse = both green and house are free morphemes, they can stand by themselves. They are originally two free morphemes, independent from each other; then I put them together and it becomes something completely different. A greenhouse is one of those structures that produce tomatoes out of season. Greenhouse effect = the effect that certain substances in the atmosphere will have on the earth. It is only used in environmental science. Greenhouse gas = are those gases the increase the greenhouse effect because the damage they do to the atmosphere. It is very common in everyday language. In the compound word you only have one main stress. “Greenhouse effect” and “Greenhouse gas” are also compound words, even if they are separate words. They remain separate words, but it terms of terminology it is only one concept. If those two words cover a single concept, they still are considered a compound word. How do I recognize when two words are a single term? That is not so easy to distinguish sometimes. Sometimes it is a process when something becomes a compound word and it overlaps with another strategy which is very common in scientific English, which is the building of very long noun strings. Sometimes you have very long noun strings and these overlap with compound. Noun phrases or strings Compounding overlaps with another word formation mechanism known as noun phrases or strings. These are usually longer sequences of nouns or a combination of nouns (and adjective, conjunctions and determiners) that combine to condense complex meanings, as in the following: Kyoto environment pact = the pact signed at the Kyoto summit on the environment. You have three nouns. You would have to unpack this noun string; you would have to make it explicit. This is not always that easy. You may have a pre-modifier noun and sometimes it can become a single concept and it becomes a compound noun. These constructions can sometimes extend to longer sequences of nouns: Light-emitting zinc sulphide and copper material = a material composed of zinc sulphide and copper that emits light. If you are not familiar with the ways in which the elements of a phrase are linked together, you don’t know what you are talking about. Noun phrases, especially if they are formed of three or more nouns in a row, like the one below, can present comprehension difficulties. coronavirus antibody levels The phrase can be divided into a head noun, that is the word which would be the real subject of a verb and words that modify or provide extra information about it. These are called modifiers. Before the head noun they are known as pre-modifiers. If there are words that add extra information and come after the head noun, they are known as post- modifiers (very often they are easy to spot, because they are preceded by a preposition) Many of our successes in ancient bacterial retrieval Here we learn the precise kind of successes through post-modification, which tells us that the successes have been achieved in retrieving ancient bacteria for study. The text below is a technical description of the initial stages of glass production. Note the high density of compounds and noun strings. “Batch processing is one of the initial steps of the glass-making process. The batch house simply houses the raw materials in large silos (fed by truck or railcar) and holds anywhere from 1–5 days of material. Some batch systems include material processing such as raw material screening/sieving, drying, or pre-heating (i.e. cullet). Whether automated or manual, the batch house measures, assembles, mixes, and delivers the glass raw material recipe (batch) via an array of chutes, conveyors, and scales to the furnace. The batch enters the furnace at the 'dog house' or 'batch charger'. Different glass types, colors, desired quality, raw material purity / availability, and furnace design will affect the batch recipe.” There isn’t a very descriptive definition of compound nouns and long noun strings. Loans or borrowing Non-integrated: still pronounced (more or less and spelt as in the donor language o Lockdown o Test o Roadmap Integrated loans, adopted to the structure and pronunciation of the recipient language: o Robot (Czech) o Cliccare, flaggare, chattare Loan translations (calques) o High fidelity → alta fedeltà Luxury borrowings There is a class of loan words that are used primarily to increase the prestige of the speaker – not to fill a semantic gap in the recipient language. Consequently, they are not particularly frequent in scientific or technical language. “Tutor” in Italian, where does it come from? It comes from English. ESP Word Formation Non-transparent words o Acronyms: AIDS → it is pronounced as a single word. o Initialisms: HIV → you have to pronounce the initials. When you are translating an initialism, you have to check if it has been translated to the target language. Eponyms Watt, Netwon, Ampère Words that come from the names of the people that contributed that discovery. People invent things and they call them with their names. Task 2 The turboencabulator (in later incarnations the retroencabulator or Micro Encabulator) is a fictional machine whose technobabble description is an in-joke among engineers. A comment from one listener: "My husband says it sounds like a new motor; I say it sounds like a dictionary that has been struck by lightning." Read the transcript of this spoof of technical LSP. As you can see, it presents an exaggerated concentration of the kind of word formation techniques used often in science and technology. See if you can identify the word formation mechanisms that have been used to parody this kind of ‘technospeak’ or ‘technobabble’. Don’t worry if you cannot understand it; nobody can! Transcript Hello and welcome to this special edition of scishow breaking news. For many years research has been proceeding on a line of automotive products that establishes new standards for quality technological leadership and operating excellence. With the consumer market as an end goal, work has been proceeding on the crudely conceived idea of an instrument that would not only provide inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase [a] detractors (agentive suffix) but would also be capable of automatically synchronizing cardinal [b] grammeters (compound). That's right, it's finally here the [c] retroprototurboencabulator (affixoid). Basically the only new principle involved is that instead of power being generated by the relative motion of conductors and fluxes, it's produced by the modal interaction of [d] magneto-reluctance (affixoid) and capacitive reactance. The original machine had a base plate of pre-famulated amulite surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two spurving bearings ran in direct line with the [e] anametric (affix) fan. The lineup consisted simply of six hydrocoptic marzul vanes, so fitted to the [f] amperfasion lunar wane shaft (noun phrase with incorporated eponym) that side fumbling was effectively prevented. The main winding was of the normal lotus odeltoid type placed [g] in the panedermic semi-boloid slots of the stator (noun phrase with pre- and post- modification); every seventh conductor being connected by a [h] non- reversible (prefix) tremmy pipe to [i] the differential girdle spring of the up end of the grammeters (noun phrase with pre- and post- modification). Even cooler, whenever fluorescent square motion is required, it can also be employed in conjunction with the drawn [j] reciprocation dingle arm (noun phrase) to reduce sinusoidal diplineration. The retroprototurboentabulator has now reached a high level of development and is being successfully used in the operation [k] of Milford trunnions (post modification with prepositional phrase). Of course, more research must be done before the retroprototurboentabulator can be brought to market, but this is both very promising and very exciting research. TEST What word formation mechanism is at work in the term “hypothermia”? o semantic adaptation o affixation o creation of a new term (word formation mechanism) What word formation mechanism is at work in the term “ozone layer”? o conversion o compounding o creation of a new term  What word formation mechanism is at work in the term “travail” as in “travail childbirth”? o compounding o borrowing o semantic adaptation What word formation mechanism is at work in the term “xenotransplantation”? o affixoid What word formation mechanism is at work in the term in “joystick”, “gamepad”, “joypad”? o borrowing Academic writing tasks (instructions on slides) 1. Crash test dummies are really important for / an integral part of automotive crash tests. 2. In Hong Kong there is one cell phone for just about / approximately every two people. 3. There has been considerable/ a lot of interest in how background sounds such as music affect an individual’s ability to concentrate. 4. We got / obtained encouraging results by using structural bamboo rather than timber. 5. Consumer interest in electronic billing and payment is increasing/getting bigger and bigger. 1. The competition faced by U.S. growers from imports of Mexican fresh vegetables has got more intense. ___________________________________________________ 2. Many urban areas do not have enough land to build new public schools. ___________________________________________________ 3. Allergic reactions to local dental anaesthesia do not happen very often. ___________________________________________________ 4. The doors on these ferries were made bigger to make it easier to load and unload vehicles. ___________________________________________________ review, maintain, develop, cause, eliminate, reach, determine, investigate, decrease, constitute 1. The six leading causes of death in the U.S. – coronary heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, colon cancer, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – are mainly brought on by overeating, a lack of exercise, and cigarette smoking. 2. Scientists are looking into innovative ways to combat AIDS. 3. The purpose of this paper is to try to figure out what is lacking in our recurrent understanding of corrosion and corrosion protection in concrete. 4. Researchers have recently come up with hybrid vehicles that use a fuel-cell engine and battery- assisted power train. 5. Rice and aquatic products make up a major part of the diet of the people in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. 6. The use of touchscreen voting systems could get rid of many problems associated with traditional paper-based ballots. 7. Worldwide consumption of pesticides has gone up to 2.6 million metric tons. 8. Although labor unions in the U.S. have been able to keep up their membership numbers over the last two decades, they have been losing their political strength. 9. The number of mature female green turtles that return to their primary nesting beach has gone down from 1,280 ten years ago to 145 today. 10. The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency looks over nearly 25,000 export license applications to make sure that no equipment or materials are sent to places where they could be used to make advanced weapons. 1. Researchers have come up with a number of models to describe the effect of certain beverages on dental enamel erosion. 2. AIDS researchers have run into a variety of unexpected problems in their efforts to develop a vaccine. 3. Recent studies on car scrapping have brought up the important question as to whether CO2 emissions can be significantly reduced. 4. Problems with this policy showed up soon after its implementation. 5. In the past five years many studies have looked at the effect of different grassland management practices. SE syntactic features Nominalization is the tendency to an increase in noun forms compared to verbal forms, as well as the grammatical process of transforming words from other classes (verbs, mainly) or verbal phrases into nouns. It has a high occurrence in specialized written texts. Nominal style = there’s a lot of nouns and very few verbs. In scientific English we tend to transform words from other classes into nouns. A lot of nouns and these nouns derive from another words, mostly verbs. Quiet often we also have nouns that identify the action that is carried out by the verb. De-adjectival nouns (and other word formations) [A] “WHO highlights importance (noun that comes from an adjective) of good hand hygiene for patient safety (noun that comes from an adjective) Hand Hygiene Day - 5 May 4 May 2012 | Geneva - On Hand Hygiene Day (5 May), more than 15 000 health-care facilities from 156 countries are participating in the WHO Save Lives: Clean Your Hands Initiative by committing to improve patient safety by practicing better hand hygiene.” [B] “Every 40 seconds a person dies by suicide somewhere in the world. Over 800 000 people die by suicide every year. Yet suicides are preventable. “Preventing suicide: a global imperative” is the first WHO report of its kind. It aims to increase awareness of the public health significance of suicide and suicide attempts, to make suicide prevention a higher priority on the global public health agenda, and to encourage and support countries to develop or strengthen comprehensive suicide prevention strategies in a multisectoral public health approach.” Nominalisation Preference found in specialized texts worldwide. Specialized yet not necessarily technical Noun-forms preferred over verb-forms Various types of noun-forms Nomina actionis the most frequent type of noun-forms; a name whereby a verbal process is reduced to a noun. They referrer to the action that the verb from which they derive represents. Ex.: to isolate → isolation The strategy of nominalisation can be found everywhere. It is typical of any kind of specialized language worldwide. It corresponds to certain epistemic needs of scientific language. It is a typical feature of Italian bureaucratic language. There is a preference of noun forms over verb forms so very compact ways of describing or presenting a situation. The second sentence (the nominalized one) is the one you typically find in a scientific discourse. Do you know who did what? What kind of presence of the scientist do you have here? In the first sentence you got a subject (we), so they are taking responsibility. In the second sentence you don’t know who did what; it conveys a much higher develop objectivity, it is described as a fact, not as a process. You lose the process, and you have the fact. Facts can be more easily analyzed but they also reduce the subjectivity of the operation, and they are perceived as the more reliable. Second sentence → “revealed” is a logical verb that indicates a logical relation but doesn’t really describe any action. It indicates a logical relation between those two nominalized actions that you have there. This is also very significant because that is a typical verb that you normally find in these kinds of texts. Task 1 Supply the noun for each verb verb noun verb noun Analyse Analysis Hypothesise Hypothesy Approach Approach Identify Identification Assess Assessment Indicate Indication Assume Assumption (the ‘p’ is Interpret Interpretation introduced to be able to pronounce) Authorise Authorsization Investigate Investigation Conceptualise Conceptualisation Implicate Implication Consist of Consistence Legislate Legislation Contextualise Contextualisation Occur Occurence Create Creation Proceed Procedure Define Definition Require Requirement Distribute Distribution Respond Response Establish Establishment Signify Significance Emphasise Emphasis Specify Specification Approach = instance of conversion, you got the same form. Concept = word formation, new words are created. Task 2 Rewrite these sentences 1) We evaluated the results, and this explains the loss in revenue. An evaluation of the results provided an explanation to the loss in revenue. 2) We define a business strategy as a long-term plan of action to achieve a particular goal. The definition of business strategy is a long-term plan of action designed to reflect the achievement of a particular business goal. 3) When you predict the trend of retail sales you need information such as to analyse market demand and information about the company’s demand. The prediction of the trend of retail sales requires information such as an analysis of market demand and information about the company’s demand. 4) The one primary issue to create value in a business is profits. Value creation in a business is connected to one primary issue – profits. If I take away the verbs that indicate some kind of action or process or other kind of logical function in the text and have to replace them without the verbs, the verb that I replace them with tends to be semantically weaker, doesn’t have a lot of meaning, but it is very strong in terms of producing the logical connection between the two parts of the sentence. If the action Is actually codified in the nouns, those nouns are linked by logical connectors. Specialised vs non-specialised texts Some nouns are deliverable nouns that indicates some actions. Specialised text Descriptive/Informative text Before cereal, in mid-1800s America, breakfast was not all that different from other meals. Middle- Until the late 1950s, the market for ready-to-eat and upper-class Americans ate eggs, pastries, and breakfast cereal was relatively small, making its pancakes, but also oysters, boiled chickens, and subsequent rapid growth one of the most dramatic beefsteaks. The rise of cereal established success stories in modern advertising. By skilful breakfast as a meal with distinct foods and created product diversification and promotion, ready-to-eat the model of processed, ready-to-eat breakfast that products took over the breakfast market. still largely reigns. And it all depended on advertising that suggests that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. the two texts are not the same verbs in two different manners, they are two texts on the same topic. In one text you’ve got a very limited number of verbs, in the other one you’ve got plenty of verbs and those verbs indicate actions. Some of the nouns in the specialized text are also the verbal nouns that indicate some actions. For example, “growth” which indicates a process, “diversification” it’s a noun that indicates something that actually happened, something that was a process. Task 3 Study and compare the highly specialized text [A] and more informative text [B] on the same topic. What differences in nominalization do you notice? [A] Source water for desalination can be [B] The water we use for desalination may be marine or brackish surface water or highly seawater or the brackish waters in estuaries mineralized groundwater. By definition, this and other surface waters or groundwater water has a significant content of naturally containing high concentrations of minerals. occurring inorganic ions, and the objective of Waters like these contain a lot of mineral ions treatment is to reduce the concentration of, or that occur naturally, and desalination is used to remove, these substances. reduce or remove them. These naturally occurring substances include However, the naturally occurring substances in some that would be of potential concern if this water also include some that would cause present in sufficient concentrations after much concern, if they were present in treatment. sufficiently high concentrations, even after the Like all surface water sources and some water has been desalinated. groundwater sources, there can be These substances include pathogenic viruses, contamination by pathogenic viruses, bacteria bacteria, but also substances that do not occur and parasites and by a variety of chemical naturally, like chemical contaminants from contaminants from human activities. human activity. How is the concept in [B] codified in [A]? A B Source water for desalination The water we use for desalination By definition, this water has a significant content of Waters like these contain a lot of mineral ions that naturally occurring inorganic ions occur naturally That would be of potential concern That would cause much concern After treatment Even after the water has been desalinated There can be contamination by pathogenic viruses, These substances include pathogenic viruses, bacteria and parasites bacteria Action verbs as nouns The most frequent kind of nominalization is the nomen actionis (the noun of action), whereby an action (typically expressed by a verb) is presented as a noun. In the short text on the next slide note how a number of actions (that could have been rendered by verbs, as in other parts of the passage) are rendered as nouns: Task 4 Alcohol is a major contributor to global disease and a leading cause of preventable death, causing approximately 88,000 deaths annually in the United States alone. Alcohol use disorder is one of the most common psychiatric disorders, with nearly one-third of U.S. adults experiencing alcohol use disorder at some point during their lives. Alcohol use disorder also has economic consequences, costing the United States at least $249 billion annually. Current pharmaceutical and behavioral treatments may assist patients in reducing alcohol use or facilitating alcohol abstinence. Although recent research has expanded understanding of alcohol use disorder, more research is needed to identify the neurobiological, genetic and epigenetic, psychological, social, and environmental factors most critical in the treatment of this disease. Implementation of this knowledge in clinical practice and training of health care providers is also needed to ensure appropriate diagnosis and treatment of individuals suffering from alcohol use disorder. Nouns which are derived from verbs which are followed by a post-modification. Nomina agentis and nomina actionis Contribute (v) → contributor (nomen agentis) Cause (v) → cause (nomen actionis) Implement (v) → implementation (nomen actionis) In this kind of nominalisation, this noun is often post-modified by prepositional phrases: - contributor to global disease - cause of preventable death - implementation of this knowledge - diagnosis and treatment of individuals Try to nominalise these excerpts from the text on alcohol by using the prompt costing the United States at least $249 billion annually: with an annual cost of $249 billion. more research is needed to identify the neurobiological factors most critical in the treatment of these individuals There is a need for further research to identify the neurobiological factors most critical in the treatment of these individuals. Current pharmaceutical and behavioral treatments may assist patients in reducing alcohol use Current pharmaceutical and behavioral treatments may provide assistance to patients in reducing alcohol use. A need for + - ig form or a noun Verbs: reduced semantic load The text on desalination is a good example of the kinds of verbs we can expect to find in a reasonably technical LSP text. Source water for desalination can be marine or brackish surface water or highly mineralized groundwater. By definition, this water has a significant content of naturally occurring inorganic ions, and the objective of treatment is to reduce the concentration of, or remove, these substances. These naturally occurring substances include some that would be of potential concern if present in sufficient concentrations after treatment. Like all surface water sources and some groundwater sources, there can be contamination by pathogenic viruses, bacteria and parasites and by a variety of chemical contaminants from human activities. Only two verbs actually have a meaning which is not simply the one that indicate relationships. The majority of verbs have a reduced semantic load. The semantic load is carried by the nouns. Copular and “empty verbs” Note the proportion of nouns or noun phrases to verbs. In this text there are just eight verbs; five of them are the linking (or copular) verbs ‘have’ and ‘be’, which have no semantic meaning. Additionally, a verb like ‘include’ could be defined as semantically ‘empty’ because it could be effectively replaced by the verb ‘to be’ and among, as in: ‘among these substances are’, with no loss of meaning. LSPs tend to have a high number of such ‘empty’ verbs., like involve, occur, happen, represent. Verbs – logical meanings “Studies showing the adequacy or inadequacy of hand cleansing by microbiological proof are few. From these few studies, it can be assumed that hands remain contaminated with the risk of transmitting organisms via hands.” What kind of information do these verbs provide? When you carry out some research you want to proof/show/demonstrate, when you make a hypothesis, you assume something. These are verbs that can occur quite often, and they are logical verbs, they are verbs that indicate logical processes. Logical meanings of verbs are very important. In just one sentence we have two logical verbs: 'showing’ (a synonym for demonstrating/proving) and 'assumed'. Verbs – processes and procedures “In a laboratory-based study, Larson and colleagues found that using only 1 ml of liquid soap or alcohol- based handrub yielded lower log reductions (greater number of bacteria remaining on hands) than using 3 ml of product to clean hands. The findings have clinical relevance since some HCWs use as little as 0.4 ml of soap to clean their hands. Kac and colleagues conducted a comparative, cross-over study of microbiological efficacy of handrubbing with an alcohol-based solution and handwashing with an unmedicated soap. The study results were: 15% of HCWs’ hands were contaminated with transient pathogens beforehand hygiene; no transient pathogens were recovered after handrubbing, while two cases were found after handwashing. “ These verbs indicate a process. Verbs – other alternative grammatical functions: linking noun phrases Desalinated water is initially more corrosive than many other drinking-water sources, and it is important, as indicated above, that the water be stabilized to minimize its corrosive effect on pipes and fittings used in distribution and plumbing systems in buildings. Where tankers are used for distribution, the potential for corrosion of the water tanks must be considered. The requirement is that corrosion should not give rise to levels of metals that exceed the WHO guideline values or result in unacceptable appearance or taste or lead to physical damage to surfaces in contact with water. These can include metals from primary distribution and storage, particularly iron, and from plumbing and fittings in buildings, including lead, copper and sometimes nickel. We can also have verbs that show cause and consequences. They link noun phrases by indicating cause and consequences. Logical relationships between the different parts. Verbs used in specialized texts Copular and other ‘empty’ verbs (occur, happen) Verbs with logical meanings (show, discover, proof) Verbs indicating processes and procedures, and these depend on the kind of research that you are conducting Other verbs linking noun phrases highlighting their relationship (cause → effect) Effects of nominalisation on syntax Verbs’ semantic load reduced Verbs’ logical load increased They indicate a relationship between the different nouns that make the rest of the text; there is a lot of logical strength which is attributed to the verbs but not a lot of semantic meaning. On the other hand, if you have vey poor semantically speaking verbs, the semantic load is in the nouns. Lexically dense nouns alternate with logically dense verbs. You have a lot of nouns among which you establish connections through the verbs. Except when you are describing a procedure, you’ve got verbs that indicate also something that is semantically full. A lot of nouns, fewer verbs, these verbs typically indicate relationships or verbs that are related to a research process (logical verbs). Higher lexico-semantic load of nouns = Denser units of meaning = Nouns are building blocks/entities used to build structures Nominalisation 1. What are the reasons why coffee prices have fallen? What are the reasons for the fall in coffee prices? 2. You can see the differences between these two approaches to designing underground subway stations clearly. The differences in these two approaches to underground subway station design are clearly visible. 3 Recent research has shown we normally use our arms to protect us during a fall to the ground. Recent research has shown that our arms are extended for protection during a fall to the ground. 4 So far there has not been any comprehensive study looking into how smiling secures the initial trust of individuals Thus far there is an absence of studies into how smiling secures the initial trust of individuals. 5. Some studies that have concluded that bamboo could be used by builders more widely than it is now as a construction material. A number of studies have reached the conclusion that bamboo could serve as a construction material that it is at present. 6. They need to do more research on the effect of using palm shell as coarse aggregate to produce concrete. There is a need for further research into the effect of the use of palm shell as coarse aggregate in concrete production. Test What is the noun of the verb “respond”? Response. What is the noun of the verb “require”? Requirement. It is not “request” because that comes from the verb “request”, they are the same. What is the noun of the verb “proceed”? Process/procedure. What is the noun of the verb “assume”? Assumption. What is the noun of the verb “approach”? Approach. “Pigs have been…” Does the verb in this sentence have a high semantic load? No, it has a low semantic load. The verb “to be” simply establishes a relationship.  What kind of verbs feature in this technical description of an experiment? “Attached, observed”, processes and procedures. In the scientist’s summary of the result, which of the following kinds of verbs is absent? The verbs procedure, they don’t tell you what they did. SE syntactic features Depersonalization aims to make communication impersonal, for different purposes and through different strategies. For example, it can be obtained by using the passive voice without an agent. It can be employed to relieve authors from responsibility for the content of a text (hedging purposes). You are trying to hedge what you are saying. In Scientific English, if you make a very strong claim, then you are going to be held accountable for that claim. Emphasize the objective stance taken in presenting the topic. Already by turning processes into nouns we have a very strong depersonalization because we don’t have a subject, we don’t have an actor; we just use a noun in order to describe something which happens. Things do not really happen in reality, somebody does something; but in Scientific English it is easier to say that something happens because you want to objectify it. Nominalization is one of the depersonalization strategies. Syntactic features of ESP Voice (active vs passive) Mood (modality) The passive voice in scientific writing: to use or not to use? Passive voice may give you a sense of objectivity. o “Using the passive voice in scientific writing allows the researcher to stand at a distance from his or her work. By standing at a distance, an unbiased viewpoint is much more likely to be reached. An unbiased viewpoint encourages a world view and an open mind, surely prerequisites for good science.” Using the passive voice in Scientific writing allows the researcher to stand at a distance of his/her work. By standing at a distance and unbiased viewpoint, it is much more likely to be reached. If I present something I focus on the object of my study and not on what I did. I tend to present an unbiased view. BUT! o “Nature journals prefer authors to write in the active voice (‘we performed the experiment...’) as experience has shown that readers find concepts and results to be conveyed more clearly if written directly.” There is probably a slight change in what is considered good Science writing. The increase in communication to the general population has affected this. It is not very established yet. The general assumption is that Scientific text tend to be written in passive. People tend to maintain the status quo for a while so it is not going to change dramatically. When do we use the passive voice in everyday life? When you are more interested in the action than in the person or thing (agent) performing the action. In this case, it may be left out completely. You focus on the action, not on the agent. In Italian you use the impersonal or you use the third person plural. o Cells were treated with the drug, lysed, and stored at -20ºC. Use the passive form when the person who performs the action is: o Not important: “He had an accident and was taken to the hospital immediately”. o Unknown: “My bike was stolen last weekend”. o Implicit/obvious: “The bank robbers were arrested”. “An error has occurred”. ScEng: Limiting the illocutionary commitment Limiting the illocutionary commitment = you limit the degree of responsibility that you are taking for any given action. What does the passive voice do? The passive voice liquidates and buries the active individual, along with most of the awful truth. Our massed, scientific, and bureaucratic society is so addicted to it that you must constantly alert yourself against its drowsy, impersonal pomp. This is a strong critique of the use of the passive. The use of these strategies is not limited to Scientific English, but it is extremely common in bureaucracy, in legal language, in any kind of language that need to establish a sort of undisputed truth about a certain rule. It is common for passive and informal forms and nominalization to be used in describing procedures which you won’t people to complain with. They obfuscate the actors. “Overcrowding and understaffing are commonly observed in health-care settings and have been associated throughout the world, particularly in developing countries where limited personnel and facility resources contribute to the perpetuation of this problem. Overcrowding and understaffing were documented in the largest nosocomial outbreak attributable to Salmonella ever reported; in this outbreak in Brazil, there was a clear relationship between understaffing and the quality of health care, including hand hygiene.” What are we seeing here? In healthcare settings there are too many patients and not enough staff. You take the people out of the concept. “Overcrowding” and “understaffing” hide the people that actually are involved in those situations. We can usually see that there are too many patients and not enough staff. You don’t have any subject here. We are talking about people and patients, but they are not mentioned even once. Everything is extremely objective but also it makes it impossible to ignore the fact that people are involved. “Collateral damage” is people dying, it is something that should not happen, and it affects the civil population. You hide entirely both who did the collateral damage and the people that suffered from it. It is a typical strategy where something seems to just occur. You have the passive here and plus you’ve got those nominalizations. Advice to medical authors: passive-active transformations To “energize your scientific writing”; the active form will make your sentences “stronger and more reader-friendly”. Compare: The diagnosis of decubitus ulcer was made, and treatment with X (1.5 mg daily) was started. Diagnosis was made → to make a diagnosis (verbo-nominal construction) → to diagnose (single verb → stronger message) → we diagnosed (active voice) We diagnosed decubitus ulcer and started treatment with X (1.5 mg daily). ScEng: First-person plural is the norm ← multi-authorship In scientific English you typically use the first-person plural because scientific articles are published by teams. Animate vs. inanimate subjects “Insufficient or very low compliance rates have been reported from both developed and developing countries. Adherence of HCWs to recommended hand hygiene procedures has been reported as variable. Hand hygiene performance varies according to work intensity and several other factors; in observational studies conducted in hospitals, HCWs cleaned their hands on average from 5 to as many as 42 times per hour. In addition, the duration of hand cleansing episodes ranged on average from as short as 6.6 seconds to 30 seconds. The main factors that may determine poor hand hygiene include risk factors for non-adherence observed in epidemiological studies as well as reasons given by HCWs themselves for lack of adherence to hand hygiene recommendations.” “Hand hygiene performance”, you have people there doing this, but you hide people. You have an inanimate subject. Inanimate subjects are one of the strategies whereby you can depersonalize a text. Passive voice and process and procedure “REMOVEDEBRIS was developed by a consortium of companies and research organisations to design and build an experimental satellite that was deployed in June 2018. The spacecraft tested, in situ, three cost-effective key technologies for active debris removal. These included a net system to  capture and trap debris, a harpoon to capture a specific target, and a drag sail to be deployed at the end of the mission to de-orbit the satellite. The mission was also supported by a Vision Based Navigation system to validate debris-tracking techniques in orbit with cameras and LIDAR. Over the term of the project, the mission used two CubeSats as artificial debris targets, which were released from the main satellite then recaptured using the net and harpoon. The functioning of these devices was successful and carefully monitored throughout to provide input for further development and fine-tuning of the technology. What do we have here? Is there are a difference between the two parts? In the first part you’ve got some names, proper names, but also in the second one. In general, when you are describing processes and procedure you tend to focus on passives, but the mission also takes responsibility for something. In the first part you also have typical verbs that are used in Scientific English, but you have plenty of passives in general. In the second part the number of passive forms is higher because you are describing a process. In the second part, what is being described is a process and the use of passives is particularly relevant. More passives in embedded relative clauses “… in observational studies conducted in hospitals, HCWs cleaned their hands on average from 5 to as many as 42 times per …..” “The main factors that may determine poor hand hygiene include risk factors for non-adherence observed in epidemiological studies …. “ Sometimes you also have an additional number of passive forms which are determined by the use of past participle. Relative clauses are frequent in Scientific English, and they increase the number of passives that you have in texts typically through post-modification reduced to relative clauses. You take away the verb and therefore you use a participle. Since the beginning of the space age in 1957, tonnes of rockets, spacecraft and instruments have been launched to space. Initially, there was no plan for what to do with them at the end of their lives. Since then, numbers have continued to increase and explosions and collisions in space have created hundreds of thousands of shards of dangerous debris. “The biggest contributor to the current space debris problem is explosions in orbit, caused by left- over energy (the agent) – fuel and batteries – onboard spacecraft and rockets. Despite measures being in place for years to prevent this, we see no decline in the number of such events (here you start introducing the person, the scientists). Trends towards end-of-mission disposal are improving, but at a slow pace,” explains Holger Krag, Head of the Space Safety Programme. “In view of the constant increase in space-traffic, we need to develop and provide technologies to make debris prevention measures fail-safe, and ESA is doing just that through its Space Safety Programme. In parallel, regulators need to monitor the status of space systems as well as global adherence to debris mitigation under their jurisdiction more closely”. In the first part you have a lot of inanimate subjects and a lot of passives. In the last part I’ve got animate subjects and active verbs. First, you’ve got the description of the event. Quotation marks: when you speak in public you take responsibility for what you are saying. In the first part you are describing a situation and then you start describing what you are doing to solve the problem. This is a text that shifts from describing a problem (using objective structures) to telling people what you personally do or what need to be done. The shift from passive to active. From a depersonalization for the sake of objectivity to a personalization because it Is important to know who needs to do what. You are giving everybody each of them their tasks. ScEng: Actors spot problems; actors identify possible solutions ← active voice (policy dimension) The policy dimension in this text is reported by using the active form. “International travel can pose various risks to health, depending on the characteristics of both the traveller and the travel. Travellers may encounter sudden and significant changes in altitude, humidity, microbes, and temperature, which can result in ill-health. In addition, serious health risks  may arise in areas where accommodation is of poor quality, hygiene and sanitation are inadequate, medical services are not well developed and clean water is unavailable. International travel is on the rise, as millions of people travel for professional, social, recreational and humanitarian purposes each year. All travellers must prepare for the variety of health risks they can be exposed to in unfamiliar environments before, during and after they travel. People planning to travel should seek advice on the potential hazards in their chosen destinations and understand how best to protect their health and minimize the risk of acquiring disease. Forward planning, appropriate preventive measures and careful precautions can protect the health of travellers and minimize the risks of accident and of acquiring disease. What kind of subject do you have here? You have a lot of animate subjects here, why? Who is the addressee of this text? Travellers in general. This book is intended for the medical and public health professionals who advise travellers, but it is also a standard reference for travel agents, airlines and shipping companies – and for travellers themselves”. Intro WHO publication. A lot depends also on the kind of choices that you make in terms of using active or passive. There are aspects of your text where it is important to personalize the text and therefore you adapt your strategy to your communication purpose. Depersonalization t main strategy for Scientific Texts. Task (1) Identify the de-personalisation strategies used in these excerpts and use the prompts to make them less impersonal. Notice the changes that this entails. 1. Road traffic crashes result in the deaths of approximately 1.35 million people around the world each year and leave between 20 and 50 million people with non-fatal injuries. a. Each year 1.35 million people around the world die in road traffic crashes. b. Each year between 20 and 50 million people get/receive/experience non-fatal injuries. 2. More than half of all road traffic deaths and injuries involve vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists and their passengers. a. Vulnerable road users account for more than half of all people who die or are injured. 3. The young are particularly vulnerable on the world’s roads and road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 25-29. a. Young adults aged 25-29 die more as a result of road accidents than any other cause. 4. Young males under 25 years are more likely to be involved in road traffic crashes than females, with 73% of all road traffic deaths occurring among young males in that age. a. Nearly three times as many males under 25 die in car accidents compare to females. (2) Try and de-personalise the text by introducing the passive voice for the numbered sections. Make the necessary change to the syntax where necessary. Control of evaporation, and particularly transpiration of water through plants, is of crucial importance in all regions of the world where water is scarce. My fellow scientists are investigating this most thoroughly in connection with the use of seawater for agriculture. You can actually use seawater for watering certain plants on certain soils. But it seems unlikely that we can use it very widely for growing plants useful for food, and it is not at all certain how long we can carry it on before the accumulation of salt in the lower parts of the makes the soil unusable. Most attempts to use sea water for agriculture depend on first removing the excess salt. There are two basic methods of desalination. In one we utilize a membrane which will allow the water to pass but hold back the salts (reverse osmosis). The other is distillation, that is to say we actually boil the seawater to produce vapour or steam. Because this does not contain salt, it forms fresh water when we condense it. Both the membrane-filtering techniques and the boiling technique require large amounts of concentrated energy. They are essentially industrial processes of a very energy-consuming kind. The evaporation methods are much less demanding and I will discuss them first. Strategies that reduce the involvement of the author and try and make ethe text more objective. Scientific English: syntactic features Modality relates to the mood of verbs expressing o Possibility o Necessity Modal verbs tend to abound in specialized languages, e.g. they are especially linked to the uncertainty of results / developments in science (possibility), and to necessity in law (deontic use). In Scientific English you have a lot about uncertainty. Scientific English: hedging To avoid full responsibility or categorical statements. To express ambiguity, probability, caution, or indecisiveness about a finding, rather than full accuracy, certainty, confidence, or decisiveness. To deflect objections. You have a way to protect yourself if your prediction is not realised. Modality: “can” Epistemic modality expresses possibility and prediction Protecting satellites from space debris is expensive, beginning with design measures, the need for surveillance and tracking, moving operational satellites out of harm’s way and even replacing missions altogether. For satellites in geostationary orbit, the OECD reports that such costs amount to an estimated 5– 10% of the total mission costs, which could be hundreds of millions of dollars. In low Earth orbits, the relative costs per mission could be even higher than 5–10%. However, the cost of inaction would be far greater. Enough debris in orbit could ultimately lead to the ‘Kessler syndrome’ in which collisions cascade, leading to more and more self-generating collisions, and what the OECD describes as “an ecological tipping point that may render certain orbits unusable.” “Can” is very much used when you want to emphasize the possibility that something happens. Modals: “may” As more satellites are launched into orbit, current ‘manual’ methods for avoiding in-space collisions, and the creation of debris, will not be enough. As such, ESA, through the Agency's Space Safety Programme, is developing ‘automated collision avoidance’ technologies that will make the process of avoiding collisions more efficient. By assessing the risk and likelihood of in-space collisions, this software will improve the decision- making process on whether a manoeuvre is needed and may even send the orders to at-risk satellites to get out of the way. “Obviously, when HCWs fail to clean their hands between patient contact or during the sequence of patient care – in particular when hands move from a microbiologically contaminated body site to a cleaner site in the same patient – microbial transfer is likely to occur. To avoid prolonged hand contamination, it is not only important to perform hand hygiene when indicated, but also to use the appropriate technique and an adequate quantity of the product to cover all skin surfaces for the recommended length of time.” Using non-finite verbs is another way to produce hedging. They tend to give you an impression of what needs to be done. When you have non-finite verbs, you also tend to shift the certainty or the authenticity to another clause which precedes them. You can use them as a depersonalized technique as well. Modals: “must”, “cannot” “Imagine how dangerous sailing the high seas would be if all the ships ever lost in history were still drifting on top of the water,” says ESA Director General Jan Wörner. “That is the current situation in orbit, and it cannot be allowed to continue.” “We must think of the space environment as a shared and limited natural resource. Continued creation of space debris will lead to the Kessler syndrome, when the density of objects in low Earth orbit is high enough that collisions between objects and debris create a cascade effect, each crash generating debris that then increases the likelihood of further collisions. At this point, certain orbits around Earth will become entirely inhospitable.” Expressing recommendations or obligations. Semi modal: “need” “Even if all space launches were halted tomorrow, projections show that the overall orbital debris population will continue to grow, as collisions between items generate fresh debris in a cascade effect,” says Luisa Innocenti, heading ESA’s Clean Space initiative. “We need to develop technologies to avoid creating new debris and removing the debris already up there.” When you are urging somebody to do something. Other ways of hedging Although the epistemic modals (can, may) are the prototypical hedging devices, there are a variety of other ways in which this effect can be achieved in scientific writing. The goal is to produce less categorical and less personal utterances, which are perceived as “less negatable statements”. Hedging verbs: suggest, indicate, theorize, point to. You are not saying that these results are certain. Hedging verbs The Curiosity rover found that ancient Mars had the right chemistry to support living microbes. Curiosity found sulphur, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon-- key ingredients necessary for life--in the powder sample drilled from the "Sheepbed" mudstone in Yellowknife Bay. The sample also reveals clay minerals and not too much salt, which suggests fresh, possibly drinkable water once flowed there. The SAM instrument suite has found Mars' present atmosphere to be enriched in the heavier forms (isotopes) of hydrogen, carbon, and argon. These measurements indicate that Mars has lost much of its original atmosphere and inventory of water. This loss occurred to space through the top of the atmosphere, a process currently being observed by the MAVEN orbiter. Additional hedging techniques New estimates of when habitable conditions existed at Yellowknife Bay and how long they persisted come from details of rocks' composition and layering. It is thought that Mars had enough fresh water to generate clay minerals -- and possibly support life -- more than 4 billion years ago, but that the planet underwent drying that left any remaining liquid water acidic and briny. A key question was whether the clay minerals at Yellowknife Bay formed earlier, upstream on the rim of Gale Crater where the bits of rock originated, or later, downstream where the rock particles were carried by water and deposited. Scientific English syntactic features Effects of nominalisation on discourse De-personalisation Impersonality Objectivity Impartiality Universality → Acceptance! Test “Scientists used a tiny brain implant to help a blind teachers see letters again”. Does this article headline contain any depersonalizing elements? No. It is all active. "The test subject had the implant for six months and experienced no disruptions to her brain activity or other health complications, according to an abstract of the study that was published this week in The Journal of Clinical Investigation". Does the above text feature de-personalization techniques? o Yes extensively o Only limitedly "In the experiment, a neurosurgeon implanted a microelectrode array into the visual cortex of a former teacher who has been blind for more than 16 years. The implant was then paired with a video camera mounted in the centre of a pair of glasses”. Are depersonalization techniques used in both sentences above? o Yes o Only in the first one o Only in the second one “The microelectrode array was implanted through a 'minicraniotomy,' in a process that the researchers say 'is straightforward and follows the standard neurosurgical procedures.' It involves making a hole in the skull measuring 1.5-cm (a bit larger than half an inch)” A non-finite verbs is used to de-personalize the above text. o True o False “The researchers say previous studies have found around 700 electrodes could give a blind person enough visual information to boost their mobility to a useful extent”. Which of the o techniques is present in the above text? o Passive voice o Hedging o Inanimate subject "One goal of this research is to give a blind person more mobility,' said Richard Normann, a researcher at the John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah. 'It could allow them to identify a person, doorways, or cars easily. It could increase independence and safety. That's what we're working toward". How is hedging achieved in the above text? o Modality o Hedging verb o Adverbs  "A clinical trial related to the study is scheduled to continue through May of 2024. The research is being funded through several entities, including Spain's Ministry of Science and Innovation and Miguel Hernández University, as well as the Moran Eye Centre”. De-personalization in the above text is achieved by the use of non-animate subjects o True o False “The method of bypassing the eyes altogether will someday restore vision to roughly 148 million people worldwide" ___________ instead of ‘will’ would introduce a greater degree of hedging into the above text o Possibly o Could o Must “The study furthers what it calls a "long-held dream of scientists," to impart a rudimentary form of sight to blind people by sending information directly to the brain's visual cortex”. Can you identify the depersonalization technique in the text above? o Non-finite verbs. Thematization “Thematic structure is the way information is organized in into a message and contributes to the flow of discourse”. We can have a lot of repetition. Quiet often you have the same subject, and you maintain the same subject through, so that it is clear what you are talking about. Repetition of the same topic again and again, and this helps maintain cohesion. This is linked to the way English discourse is organized; typically, what is given is in the first part of the sentence and then whatever is new is in the second part of the sentence. Once you say something in the second part of the sentence, then that part of discourse becomes known, and it can be referred to in the next sentence. There are several structures that we can use. The idea is that if you maintain a topic very tight in the text, it is easier for people to understand what the topic is about. The information principle Text 1: Why is artificial light a concern? 1) Artificial light is composed of visible light as well as some ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) radiations, and there is a concern that the emission levels of some lamps could be harmful for the skin and the eyes. Both natural and artificial light can also disrupt the human body clock and the hormonal system, and this can cause health problems. The ultraviolet and the blue components of light have greatest potential to cause harm. The first sentence starts with “artificial light”, and it tells us something about artificial light. My starting point is artificial light. The topics are artificial light and concern and then ther