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Article published In: International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 21:4 (2016) ► pp.499–526

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Was late Modern English scientific writing impersonal?

Comparing Philosophy and Life Sciences texts from the Coruña Corpus

 | University of A Coruña
Published online: 6 December 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.21.4.03mon
This paper focuses on the use of certain linguistic features conveying impersonal style in late Modern English scientific prose (1700–1900). Samples are taken from two subcorpora of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing, one from the humanities (Philosophy) and the other from natural sciences (Life Sciences). The methodology applied is based on Biber’s (1988) Multidimensional Analysis, consisting of a study of register variation as manifested through sets of co-occurring linguistic features with a shared discursive function. The aim of the present study is to detect variation across scientific disciplines, genres, and subject matter. Findings are compared to those found in both diachronic and contemporary reference corpora.
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