Stylistic Features of Scientific English: A Study of Scientific Research Articles

Abstract

This study intends to explore what stylistic features characterize scientific English and make it different from any other language used in any other discipline. What are certain areas of language that are used more frequently in science than in non-science oriented language texts? This paper deals with the linguistic features concerning the application of vocabulary, grammar, discourse and style used in scientific English. A comparative analysis of literary and scientific language has been undertaken to make the nature and discourse of scientific English clearer. It was found that scientific use of English is marked with accuracy, precision and objective interpretation of facts and findings whereas literary language is subjective interpretation of life. Literary language contains literary impulse and represents the artist's inner self and his spontaneous overflow of feeling whereas scientific language represents universal truth and verifiable research findings. Scientific research papers drawn from Medical and Natural sciences were analyzed and it was found that frequent occurrence of Passive Voice in Method Section of scientific research articles makes scientific research findings impersonal and universal. Scientists use Passive Voice most often in order to get rid of personal whims and fancies. Many other features of scientific English such as nominalization and 'interrogative gambit' which occur frequently as unique discourse features in scientific research journals have also been taken into account in this study.

A Contrastive Study of the Passive Voice in Journal Articles in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics

“…Heslot (1982) examines the main sections (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussions) of 16 research articles from the journal Phytopathology. The results show that the methodological part has the highest use of the passive among others, which is further confirmed in Ahmad's (2012) research on medical and natural sciences. Swales (1990) points out that cross-disciplinary variation is a factor which cannot be ignored when studying the features of research articles, and still he does not study such variation from the perspective of the voice.…”

“…Walpole (1979), in his defense of the passive voice, proposes that passivization is a crucial tool in modern prose for its clearness and brevity, and such a stylistic feature is embodied, for example, in scientific studies and historical writings. Others (Ahmad, 2012;Ding, 2002;Dorgeloh, 2004;Gilbert, 1976;Hyland, 1994;Kopple, 1994) credit impersonality and detachment to the use of passives, though this rhetorical device is condemned as "a form of naïve hypocrisy at best or intellectual dishonesty at worst" by Pruitt (1968). Some grammar books (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999;Sinclair, 1990) bear a more objective view in regard to its use, believing that passives are more frequently used in the academic field.…”

Active and Passive Voice Constructions by Indonesian Student Writers

“…The frequent occurrence of active voice construction has similarity with Ahmad (2012) method and result have higher passive voice construction. However, the difference is that in this corpus based study the total of active voice construction (64.8%) is higher than that of passive voice construction, while the active voice in Ahmad"s study covers only 30%, less than the passive voice construction.…”

“…Passive voice construction is mainly used in method section to get rid of personal whims and fancies, and thus obtain impersonality and universality of the research (Ahmad, 2012). Ahmad found that 70% of passive was implemented in method of Medical and Natural Science articles; however, the use of active voice construction was higher in other sections.…”

Cohesive Ties in Scientific Texts: An Analytical Approach

“…Scientific writing differs from other genres of writing in that scientific language is characterized as formal, informative, consistent, straightforward, concise, comprehensible and brief (Ahmad, 2012). A scientist message would be misunderstood if he / she uses complicated or ambiguous sentences, thus the language of scientific writing should not be complex, as Day (1979, p. 5) Medical texts are one of the scientific text types which are written either by and for physicians or for the public.…”