“... but be sure you let it settle”: Late Modern Authors’ Presence in English Scientific Texts

  • Begoña Crespo Universidade da Coruña
  • Isabel Moskowich Universidade da Coruña
DOI: https://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2024-46.1.09

Abstract

The use of pronouns shows the author’s intention to address the reading public or the presence of the target readership in texts. This paper focuses on second-person pronouns, which are especially revealing of the author`s desire to engage the reader by endowing on them an active role in the negotiation and construction of knowledge. For the same reason, we will also analyse the use of the word reader. Science writing is thus understood as a dialogue between the two groups of participants involved in knowledge creation. Two usages of you have been detected in previous works using the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing (CC): general and dialogic. The former might be interpreted as a generic “one,” “everybody;” the latter, considered as an in-group strategy that embraces both the writer and the reader. The detailed analysis of the pragmatics of the second person pronouns and reader in Corpus of English Chemistry Texts (CEChET) and Late Modern English Medical Texts (LMEMT) will hopefully shed some light on the object-centred nature of scientific writing.

Author Biographies

Begoña Crespo, Universidade da Coruña
Dr Begoña Crespo is a Full Professor at the University of A Coruña (Spain). She has published on lexicon enlargement in the History of English, genre/text-type taxonomy, the diachrony of English scientific writing and the discourse of female science authors. She is currently supervising some PhD dissertations on various aspects of the language of science (conditionals, nominalisations, passive voice). She has published in journals such as Studia Neophilologica, Nordic Journal of English Studies, Linguistica Pragensia, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, English Studies, Anglica, SAP and Literary and Linguistic Computing, among others, as well as book chapters in D.S. Brewer, Rodopi, Peter Lang, Lincom Europa or John Benjamins.
Isabel Moskowich, Universidade da Coruña
Professor Isabel Moskowich leads the MuStE group at the University of A Coruña. Her research covers different aspects of the History of English, mainly Scandinavian loanwords and sociolinguistic implications during the Middle Ages. Since 2003, she has directed the compilation of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing and the study of the origins of ESP from a socio-pragmatic approach. She has published in journals such as Folia Linguistica Historica, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, Studia Neophilologica, LLC, Australian Journal of Linguistics or English Studies, and has edited several volumes.  

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Published
2024-06-28
Issue
Vol. 46 No. 1 (2024)
Section
Articles

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