There are differences between scientific and non-scientific English indeed: a case study

There are differences between scientific and non-scientific English indeed: acase study Begoña Crespo (University of A Coruña) ABSTRACT This study considers the behaviour of one specific stance adverb, indeed. In aprevious analysis of scientific texts, indeed was found to be one of the most frequently used adverbs in the expression of emphatic standpoint evincing authorial presence (Moskowich and Crespo 2014). Also noted was its differing use by male and female writers, as well as differences according to genre and the geographical provenance of authors. My aim in the present study is to see whether such behaviour of indeed is also found in non-scientific texts, and if so to what extent. The analysis will include both scientific and non-scientific texts from the nineteenth century, aperiod in which the general fixation of English in its contemporary form had already taken place. The initial hypothesis is that authors of scientific texts tended to express themselves with more caution, even tentativeness, in comparison to authors writing less “impersonal” texts. External factors might also lead to identifiable variations in use in scientific writing, these including the sex of the speaker, plus his or her self-confidence as awriter. Such factors will be used as variables in the analysis. Data for scientific writing will be drawn from the Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy (CETA) and the Corpus of History English Texts (CHET); the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English (PPCMBE) will be used for non-scientific texts. KEYWORDS corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, Late Modern period, scientific English, stance DOI https://doi.org/10.14712/18059635.2020.2.5 1 INTRODUCTION In recent years stance-taking has been discussed widely in the literature, not only as areflection of narrative voice in literary analyses but also from alinguistic point of view. It has been understood in terms of hedging, authorial presence, and propositional attitude, among others, even in supposedly neutral and objective text types such as scientific writing (Hyland 1998, 2005; Seoane 2016). Stance may be expressed by means of different grammatical realisations, and stance adverbs are just one of these. The current study will explore the behaviour of one stance adverb in particular, indeed, in both scientific and non-scientific English writing. In the following section aworking hypothesis and the research questions will be given, as well as some socio-historical and theoretical background. Findings from previous works on scientific writing will also be noted. In Section 3 the corpus material and methodology are described, and the study itself, including results, is set out in Section 4. Finally, some conclusions will be offered in Section 5. 188 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2020 2 BACKGROUND AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS The term stance entered the English language in the sixteenth century to denote “astanding-place, station, position” (OED). However, the linguistic study of authorial stance in texts is quite arecent innovation (Chafe 1986). In linguistic or pragmatic terms, stance can be interpreted in different ways, although it is always related in some form to interaction. The interpretation taken here involves stance as acomponent in awriter’sattitude, that is, how the communicative intention of an author has an effect on his or her language, or how awriter uses language, perhaps unconsciously, to produce aspecific effect on the reader (Moskowich 2017). When communicating in the register of science, “authors inevitably adopt aposition, i.e. stance, both towards the information presented and the target audience” (Adams and Quintana-Toledo 2013: 13). Indeed, as Hyland (2005: 173) has noted, “over the past decade or so, academic writing has gradually lost its traditional tag as an objective, faceless and impersonal form of discourse and come to be seen as apersuasive endeavour involving interaction between writers and readers”. However, recent studies (Moskowich and Crespo 2014) suggest that stance had already become aproductive device in the nineteenth century. Among the mechanisms used to express stance we find adverbs, and evidence indicates that indeed was used with some frequency in this sense in nineteenth-century scientific writing. In terms of their semantics, stance adverbials have been classified as epistemic, attitudinal and style adverbials, depending on the communicative function they perform. The epistemic class includes meanings such as certainty, reliability, imprecision or the marking of perspective; attitudinal adverbials, as the name implies, express attitudes, feelings or value judgements; meanwhile, style adverbials describe how information is treated and presented (Conrad and Biber 1999). Thus, the word indeed as astance adverb can serve as an epistemic stance adverb or an attitudinal one, as we will see in some of the examples below. As is the case with (11) for instance, there is aclear intention on the author’spart to manifest his/her opinion by reinforcing an utterance. The semantic classification of adverbs as well as the pragmatic intention with which it is used is not completely objectifiable but more amenable to subjective interpretation. Markers of stance have also been classified according to the grammatical realisations they present, in this case that of the adverb. Placement in the clause is afurther parameter used to characterise adverbial stance markers (Biber and Finegan 1988; Conrad and Biber 1999) and Iwill use clause position as an additional criterion to identify the communicative purpose of indeed in the analysis here. The language of the nineteenth century, as the focus of the present study, is certainly close in most respects to Present-day English (PDE) (Millward and Hayes 2012), and thus it is not unreasonable to take our findings here as areflection of the beginning of the final shift away from the rigid objectivity in scientific discourse promoted by empiricism. Such ashift came after aperiod in which scientific writing, independent of other more popular communicative formats, had become well established, following the general acceptance of the empiricist scientific method and Boyle’sclaims regarding scientific style (Allen, Qin and Lancaster 1994). Conse- BEGOñA CRESPO 189 quently, scientific writing had come to be more and more standardised, both in style and intention. As one of the founders of the new science, in terms of both method and expression, Robert Boyle demanded asimple and clear style; others, such as Francis Bacon, claimed that only facts were to be presented. As areaction against medieval scholasticism, the new empirical science was to be based not on the interpretation of authoritative statements by classical scholars, but on the objective and simple description of experimental works, observable phenomena or other facts, all expressed in clear and concise terms. Such objectivity, which has exerted adominant influence on scientific writing from empiricism to the present day, has nevertheless shown itself to be flawed from our present-day perspective, with truthfulness and reliability being two of the key issues in modern scientific writing. In the final decade of the twentieth century the focus turned to the personal commitment of authors in writing science, to their presence, their attitudes towards the content of their work, and to the encoding of their implicit opinions (Hyland 2005). It is arguable that authors have never ceased to be perceptible through their writing, but some stylistic devices (presence of we instead of I, abundance of passive voice, etc.) certainly contributed to the sense of objectivity as it was originally intended. In the present study, which is historical in nature, Iwill seek to demonstrate that, although less frequent than in non-scientific texts, authorial presence in scientific texts is not limited to the use of personal pronouns as an overt linguistic mechanism, but that devices such as adverbs can also successfully encode the author’sview, seen as early as the nineteenth century, in that authorial intervention in science writing has been recognised as central in the construction of present-day scientific discourse (Hunston 1994; Hyland 1998, 2004; Hyland and Tse 2004, 2005). The adverb indeed has been apart of the English lexicon since the fifteenth century and persists to the present day, although it has been affected by some notable linguistic processes, among them lexicalisation. From the point of view of its function, it may modify aparticular word (noun, adjective, adverb) or the whole sentence, as the various examples in this paper will illustrate. In addition, from apragmatic perspective, indeed has been associated with orality. In previous studies (see Busse 2012: 286), indeed has been found to play the role of astance adverbial as asentence modifier, with sentential scope that is pragmatically meaningful in that it can be both speakerand hearer-oriented. Such use of indeed was found in Shakespeare’sOthello, for instance. At this point, it should be noted that these examples from non-scientific texts have been taken from extracts of adialogic nature, in other words, close to orality. The presence of stance adverbs across registers in the previous stages of the language has also been examined by Gray et al. (2011). My working hypothesis is that, given the nature and meaning of indeed as an adverb indicating stance, it should be more abundant in non-scientific writing, where opinions may be expressed more openly, but has nevertheless been used by authors of scientific works as early as the nineteenth century. Hence, Iwill look first at its distribution across texts, and second, at any constraints on its distribution therein. The data and methodology will be described in the following section. 190 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2020 3 CORPUS MATERIAL AND METHOD Since the main aim of this study is to compare the use of the stance adverb indeed in scientific and non-scientific writing from the nineteenth century, we have resorted to aspecialised corpus, the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing (CC), and to anonspecialised one, the diachronic part of the Penn-Helsinki Corpus. From the former we have chosen samples belonging to the Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy (CETA) and the Corpus of History English Texts (CHET), representing the natural and exact sciences and the humanities, respectively. From the latter we have used parts of the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English (PPCMBE), specifically those representing private letters, diaries, theatre, fiction, sermons and the law. The structure and principles of compilation of these two corpora are different. Whereas all samples in the CC contain approximately 10,000 words (Moskowich 2012), those in the PPCMBE range from 3,302 to 28,271 words. However, where possible Ihave tried to avoid any skewing of the results by selecting samples of asimilar size for each author. Hence, Ihave taken samples by 21 authors from CETA, 20 from CHET, and 25 from PPCMBE, yielding atotal of some 652,235 words, as set out in Table1 (for amore detailed account of the data, see the Appendix): Corpus Words TOTAL Non-scientific PPCMBE 247,919 247,919 Scientific CETA 201,830 404,316 CHET 202,486 TOTAL 652,235 Table 1.Word-counts for the data Given that the total number of words for scientific and non-scientific samples remains uneven, raw frequencies have been normalised to 10,000 words. Afurther difference between the two corpora led to the use of different tools for the extraction of data: whereas texts in the CC are packed in an index and can be visualised in xml format using Coruña Corpus Tool (the software accompanying the corpus), texts from PPCMBE are in plain text files and have been handled using AntConc (version 3.2.2). For the pragma-linguistic description of indeed the syntactic role played by this adverb and its position in the clause have also been considered. 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION From the 652,235 words in our data overall, there were 256 (3.92 normalised figures, hereafter nf) instances of indeed. However, the distribution is not homogeneous. Scientific texts account for 131 cases at anormalised frequency of 3.24 nf, with 68 instances in CETA and 63 in CHET; in the non-scientific samples, there are 125 cases, at 5.04 nf (see Figure 1): BEGOñA CRESPO 191 The frequency of use in scientific and non-scientific texts, then, does not differ wildly. We might take this as confirmation of the well-accepted use of indeed as amarker of authorial presence in scientific writing, at levels which, whilst lower than in non-scientific texts, are certainly significant, comparatively speaking, in this particular case. As stated by Simpson (2004: 38), academic writing is said to be rich in stance expressions, some of which overlap with other spoken and written registers. The following examples illustrate some of the uses of indeed in both scientific (astronomy and history) and non-scientific texts. As can be seen, they can have different syntactic scope, whether on the sentence level (examples (1) and (3) below) or on the phrase level (example (2)): (1) not so wise in my trade; which, indeed, is more difficult to manage wisely (Carlyle 1835: 55) (2) atransparent fluid when viewed perpendicularly from above so faithfully indeed that it is hardly possible not to be impressed with (Herschel 1833: 208) (3) for their distrust promising confidence and obedience in future and indeed they were now ready to worship him as one inspired (Callcott 1828: 247) Nevertheless, in all the three examples the pragmatic roles of the adverb consist of focusing on alinguistic segment (either asingle word or the whole sentence) and highlighting its meaning, thus offering the reader an authorial viewpoint: “Iknow for sure that…” so “you can take it for certain”. It is the sentence initial position that predominates in all hits of indeed found in the corpora. It is then mainly functioning as adisjunct, aperipheral adverbial manifesting the writer’sattitude towards aproposition. The general findings for indeed in both blocks of texts, whether scientific or not, have been further examined from the point of view of the sex of the writer, exploring the frequency of use of the adverb in each case, as well as the meanings with which it has been used. Additionally, Ihave considered the communicative formats in which Figure 1.Distribution of indeed in scientific and non-scientific texts 3.24; 39% 5.04; 61% Scientific discourse Non-scientific discourse 3.03 4.85 3.74 4.17 6.07 4.82 Scientific Non-scientific Total uses Male Female 6.55 8.02 6.5 0.3 Letters LawDramaSermon 2.86 3.48 2.63 4.6 11.43 2.97 0.99 Treatise BiographyEssayLetterArticleTextbookLecture 3.2 0.99 1.54 5.61 2.68 5.98 5.44 0.93 CETA CHET Treatise ArticleTextbookLecture 192 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2020 authors are more likely to use this stance adverb, and whether this use is related in some way to the oral nature of the sample, the closeness between the author and his/ her audience, and consequently to authorial involvement. The analysis of these two variables will result in more information on the use of indeed in both science and non-science writing. As Bazerman (1988: 295–296) observes, “one cannot understand language without looking at the contexts in which it is used to convey meanings” and that “in making statements we bring together many elements— cultural, social, psychological and material— to accomplish our activities and create cognition”. 4.1 SEX VARIABLE If we turn to possible variables affecting text production here, the analysis is more enlightening. One such variable is the extra-textual issue of the author’ssex. As set out in Figure 2 below, women are in general more likely than men to use indeed. As already noted, all authors use indeed more often in non-scientific than in scientific texts. Texts written by women represent 15.26% of the total number of words in nonscientific texts (37,850 words), and the adverb indeed occurs more frequently here than in texts written by men (6.07 vs. 4.85 uses/10,000 words): Figure 2.Male and female uses of indeed Illustrations of these uses in non-scientific texts by women can be found in (4) and (5) below: (4) Pray tell Lizzy that if Ihad imagined her Teeth to be really out, Ishould have said before what Isay now, that it was avery unlucky fall indeed, that Iam afraid it must have given her agreat deal of pain, & that Idare say her Mouth looks very comical. (Austen 180X, 183.522) (5) From the first avowal of Colonel Keith’sacquaintance with the Williamses, she had concluded him to be the nameless lover, and had been disappointed that 3.24; 39% 5.04; 61% Scientific discourse Non-scientific discourse 3.03 4.85 3.74 4.17 6.07 4.82 Scientific Non-scientific Total uses Male Female 6.55 8.02 6.5 0.3 Letters LawDramaSermon 2.86 3.48 2.63 4.6 11.43 2.97 0.99 Treatise BiographyEssayLetterArticleTextbookLecture 3.2 0.99 1.54 5.61 2.68 5.98 5.44 0.93 CETA CHET Treatise ArticleTextbookLecture BEGOñA CRESPO 193 Alison, so far from completing the confidence, had become more reserved than ever, leaving her to wonder whether he were indeed the same, or whether his constancy had survived the change of circumstances. (Yonge 1865, 177.472) In example 4, Austen resorts to indeed to indicate an intention to give apersonal opinion on Lizzy’stooth. The adverb here is used in ahighly interactive written format, one of the most effective ways of establishing verbal interaction between addresser and addressee. The intimate and personal tone of this communicative format is reinforced by the presence of first person singular pronouns and other expressions typical of the oral register (“am afraid”, “dare say”). Example (5) shows aless oral-like use of indeed, but one which nevertheless has apragmatic function, involving the confirmation of aprevious statement through reinforcement and emphasis (he = the same) in anarrative work of fiction. In scientific texts, female production represents 17.78% (71,908 words) of the total word count. Forms of indeed in texts written by women once more outnumber those used by men (4.17 vs. 3.03 nf), as is already shown in Figure 2 above. From all the samples of scientific texts written by women, some 23 instances are found. The distribution is unequal, with just one case in an astronomy text and the remaining 22 in history texts. Examples (6) and (7) illustrate such uses: (6) The inferred absence of an atmosphere is indeed scarcely reconcilable with some of the transit-phenomena just adverted to; but heights and hollows in abundance seem to exist. (Clerke 1893: 303) (7) And now, those who had murmured against the admiral, who had talked of putting him in chains, and forcing him to return to Spain, threw themselves at his feet, and entreated forgiveness for their distrust, promising confidence and obedience in future; and indeed they were now ready to worship him as one inspired by Heaven. (Callcott 1828: 247) Indeed is placed in different positions within the sentence, to enhance the subject complement of averbal group, as in (6), or as asentential adverb modifying the whole clause (7). The narrative character of the story and its similarity to fiction makes it possible for indeed to be used as areinforcement of authorial presence and interaction with the reader. Thus, the truthfulness and reliability of what Clerke is stating in (6) remains beyond doubt, and indeed can be considered an epistemic stance adverb here. The interaction between author and reader consolidates the position of authority that the author occupies within the epistemic community. And this is precisely what is most needed by women who dare to take on amasculine role, that of scientist, in nineteenth-century society. The reliability conveyed by Callcott’sindeed can be interpreted as an interaction with the readership in an even more intimate or personal tone, and might be classified as an attitudinal one. An analysis of the variable communicative format (Moskowich and Crespo 2016), most generally known as genre, will be presented in what follows. 194 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2020 4.2 COMMUNICATIVE FORMAT Another variable, that of the communicative format, is in some way inherent to atext, in that the function or intention of apiece of writing itself influences language choice, that is, the form and function of the language used. Biber et al. (1999) have claimed that oral registers exhibit the highest number of stance adverbs. This may be due to adirect interaction between addresser and addressee, in that they often occupy the same time and/or space. The oral orientation of acommunicative act determines the choice of format in the written medium. The use of indeed as astance adverb is an overt manifestation of the oral nature of awritten text in which interpersonal contact can be clearly appreciated. In order to represent non-scientific texts, the more oral-like texts in the data, Ihave grouped all the categories from the PPCBME (see Appendix) into the following communicative formats: letters, sermons, drama and law. The data in each case is set out in Table 2 below: Words Tokens Nf Letters 77,744 51 6.55 Sermons 27,414 22 8.02 Drama 76,813 50 6.50 Law 65,948 2 0.30 247,919 125 5.04 Table 2.Data for non-scientific formats In Figure 3, the normalised figures for uses of indeed in the various formats of nonscientific writing are shown: Figure 3.Indeed in non-scientific writing As Figure 3 illustrates, sermons and legal texts occupy the two extremes in terms of the frequency of occurrence of indeed here, with the highest levels (8.02 nf) found 3.24; 39% 5.04; 61% Scientific discourse Non-scientific discourse 3.03 4.85 3.74 4.17 6.07 4.82 Scientific Non-scientific Total uses Male Female 6.55 8.02 6.5 0.3 Letters LawDramaSermon 2.86 3.48 2.63 4.6 11.43 2.97 0.99 Treatise BiographyEssayLetterArticleTextbookLecture 3.2 0.99 1.54 5.61 2.68 5.98 5.44 0.93 CETA CHET Treatise ArticleTextbookLecture BEGOñA CRESPO 195 in sermons. Several reasons may account for this. Sermons pertain to the realm of speech as opposed to writing. They involve adirect address to the audience with the implicit pragmatic force of persuasion, and the use of indeed reinforces other pragmatic resources to this end. Such is the case in examples (8) and (9) below: (8) … and rather than mock God by praying to Him in word, when indeed their hearts were fixed on other things, they made Him their only consolation, by voluntarily foregoing every other. (Froude 1830, 2,11.122) (9) It is indeed undoubtedly true that many persons are so constituted that such habits come much easier to them than to others. Many indeed there are, who, without much pains or restraint, may go on very comfortably and respectably, by means of those habits which they have already acquired, and in consequence of the discipline which they have already undergone. (Froude 1830, 2,26.258) Indeed, as asentence adverbial with an epistemic meaning, is supporting the speaker in his intention to emotionally engage the audience. The speaker is inviting the listener to feel in acertain way about what is being said. It is away of seeking to shape the addressee’semotional and intellectual responses to an issue (Jensen 2015). On the other hand, legal texts, although they might reproduce oral interactions such as those taken directly from trials, contain the fewest instances of indeed. There are in fact just two uses of this adverb in the current data, both found within dialogues, and both given here, in examples (10) and (11): (10) indeed Iwas satisfied, from their declarations (Watson 1817, 1,150.1796) (11) “Did you give your note to Mr. Hone’spublication?” “No, indeed, Idid not.” (Watson 1817, 1,163.2112) Again, it is the feature of orality that is playing apart here in the legal format. However, when comparing it with sermons, adifferent communicative intention on the speaker’spart should also be noted. In this case, the speaker puts the emphasis on personal reaffirmation as ameans of achieving the persuasive effect on the listener that he seeks. In this sense, the adverb could be considered as pertaining to the attitudinal stance adverbs group. The other two formats analysed, letters and drama, display similar frequencies of use (6.55 and 6.5 nf), and are situated between the higher use in sermons and the markedly low use in legal texts. As for scientific discourse, Figure 4 shows the occurrences of indeed in the seven formats represented. Letters show aheavy reliance on these forms (11.43 nf), followed at some distance by another very dynamic form, articles (4.6 nf). Looking at the realm of scientific writing, we note that letters are perhaps the least formal of formats used. In the scientific domain these are not letters in the normal sense, but rather are often compositions of ahighly technical nature in epistolary form, including forms of ad- 202 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2020 Year Author Title of Work Words per sample 1802 Adolphus, John The history of England from the accession of King George the Third, to the conclusion of peace in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three. Vol. III 10,158 1805 Warren, Mercy Otis History of the rise, progress and termination of the American revolution. Interspersed with Biographical, Political and Moral Obſervations. In three volumes. Vol. I 10,214 1810 Bigland, John The history of Spain, from the earliest period to the year 1809. In two volumes. Vol.1 10,065 1814 Britton, John The history and antiquities of the cathedral church of Salisbury; illustrated with aseries of engravings, of views, elevations, plans, and details of that edifice: also etchings of the ancient monuments and sculpture: including biographical anecdotes of the bishops, and other eminent persons connected with the church 10,017 1820 Hardiman, James The history of the town and county of the town of Galway, from the earliest period to the present time. Embellished with several engravings. To which is added acopious appendix, containing the principal charters and other original documents 10,255 1828 Callcott, Maria AShort history of Spain. In two volumes. Vol. II 10,332 1833 Aikin, Lucy Memoirs of the Court of King Charles the First. In two volumes. Vol. I 10,022 1839 Petrie, George On the History and Antiquities of Tara Hill 10,117 1840 Smyth, William Lectures on Modern History, from the Irruption of the Northern Nations to the Close of the American Revolution. In two volumes. Vol. II 9,933 1844 D’Alton, John The history of Drogheda, with its environs; and an introductory memoir of the Dublin and Drogheda railway. In two volumes. Vol. I 10,008 1855 Masson, David Medieval history 10,166 1857 Sewell, Elizabeth Missing Afirst history of Greece 10,037 1860 Freer, Martha Walker History of the reign of Henry IV. King of France and Navarre. In two volumes. 10,043 1862 Bennett, George The History of Bandon 10,005 1872 Gray, John Hamilton Confederation; or, The Political and Parliamentary History of Canada, from the Conference at Quebec, in October, 1864, to the Admission of British Columbia, in July, 1871. In two volumes. First volume. 10,045 1875 Killen, William Dool The ecclesiastical history of Ireland. From the earliest period to the present times. Vol. II 10,083 BEGOñA CRESPO 203 Year Author Title of Work Words per sample 1884 Breese, Sidney The Early History of Illinois, from its Discovery by the French, in 1673, until its Cession to Great Britain in 1763. Including the Narrative of Marquette’sDiscovery of the Mississippi 10,057 1887 Kingsford, William The history of Canada. Vol. I. [1608–1682] 10,041 1893 Cooke, Alice M. The Settlement of the Cistercians in England. The English Historical Review, Vol.8, No.32. 10,730 1895 Burrows, Montagu The History of the Foreign Policy of Great Britain 10,158 Table 4.Samples from CHET Wordcount summary by individual text in PPCMBE Text Date Genre Wordcount austen-180x 1805–1808 LETTERS_PRIV 9,650 benson-190x 1905–1906 DIARY 9,986 brougham-1861 1861 DRAMA_COMEDY 10,049 carlyle-1835 1835 LETTERS_PRIV 9,343 collier-1835 1835 DRAMA_COMEDY 9,459 colman-1805 1805 DRAMA_COMEDY 10,161 dickens-1837 1837 FICTION 9,437 froude-1830 1830 SERMON 9,254 godwin-1805 1805 FICTION 9,343 haydon-1808 1808 DIARY 10,015 meredith-1895 1895 FICTION 9,322 nightingale-188x 1888–1889 LETTERS_PRIV 3,302 nightingale-189x 1890 LETTERS_PRIV 6,201 pusey-186x 1865–1866 SERMON 9,022 ruskin-1835 1835 DIARY 9,882 statutes-1805 1805 LAW 9,440 statutes-1835 1835 LAW 9,370 statutes-1865 1865 LAW 9,456 statutes-1895 1895 LAW 9,411 talbot-1901 1901 SERMON 9,138 thring-187x 1870–1872 DIARY 9,997 victoria-186x 1863–1865 LETTERS_PRIV 9,368 watson-1817 1817 PROCEEDINGS_TRIAL 28,271 wilde-1895 1895 DRAMA_COMEDY 9,713 yonge-1865 1865 FICTION 9,329 Table 5.Samples from PPCMBE