Cover not available

Article published In: Language, Context and Text
Vol. 1:1 (2019) ► pp.4–38

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Context and text in scientific disciplines of English

A social semiotic perspective

 | Macquarie University
Published online: 4 February 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/langct.00002.but
Abstract
As major world languages – Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese, for instance – become the medium of university networks, it may be the right time to take stock of the influence that English has had over the way the disciplines of humanities and sciences have been shaped, directed and evaluated, in particular in the second half of the 20th century. This paper is an attempt to understand some of the textual, linguistic and historical determinants of Disciplinary English (DE) specifically in the spectrum of technical subjects. DE is now a way of meaning which has become associated with objective authority. From this association, DE has shaped our disciplinary knowledge and spread across to registers of bureaucratic and political subject matter. The discussion also considers innovative potential in disciplinary discourses, in particular what Halliday regarded as the “knight’s move” in text: this is the related, analogical effect of Hasan’s “symbolic articulation” in verbal art and grammatical metaphor in the language of technical disciplines.
Article outline
  • 1.Configurations of meanings for specific cultural tasks
  • 2.Textual motivations for the “favoured form” of verbal science: A logogenetic perspective
  • 3.Phylogenetic and contextual perspectives
  • 4.Context of culture
  • 5.Contexts of situation
    • 5.1Field
    • 5.2Material action
    • 5.3Action with symbols
    • 5.4“Goal orientation”: short or long term goals; or both; with or without explicit declaration or evidence of the ultimate goals
    • 5.5Tenor
    • 5.6Mode
  • 6.The ontogenetic perspective: the early roots of disciplinary discourse from home to school and to university
  • 7.Disciplined imagination: from analogy to meaning potential
  • References
References (60)
References
Bacciagaluppi, Guido & Antony Valentini. 2009. Quantum theory at the crossroads: Reconsidering the 1927 Solvay conference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Banks, David. 2008. The development of scientific writing: Linguistic features and historical context. Sheffield: Equinox.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. The birth of the academic article: Le Journal des Sçavans and the philosophical transactions 1665–1700. Sheffield: Equinox.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bateson, Gregory. 1979. Mind and nature: A necessary unity. New York: E. P. Dutton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beer, Anna. 2008. Milton: Poet, pamphleteer and patriot. New York & London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bell, John. 1993 [1986]. Interview. In Paul C. W. Davies & Julian R. Brown (eds.), The ghost in the atom: A discussion of the mysteries of quantum physics, 45–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berkeley, George. 2002 [1734]. The analyst; Or, a discourse addressed to an infidel mathematician. London: Tonson in the Strand; reprinted by D. Wilkins in 2002.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brooks, Michael. 2011. Free radicals: The secret anarchy of science. London: Profile Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Roger, Courtney Cazden & Ursula Bellugi. 1968. The child’s grammar from I to III. In J. P. Hill (ed.), Minnesota symposia on child development, 28–73. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Butt, David G. 2004. How our meanings change: School contexts and semantic evolution. In Geoff Williams & Annabelle Lukin (eds.), The development of language: Functional perspectives on species and individuals, 217–240. London & New York: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2008a. Whiteheadian and functional linguistics. In Michael Weber & Will Desmond (eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian process thought, 21–32. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2008b. The robustness of realizational systems. In Jonathan J. Webster (ed.), Meaning in context: Implementing intelligent applications of language studies, 59–83. London & New York: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crosby, Alfred W. 1996. The measure of reality: Quantification and western society 1250 – 1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles. 1998 [1859]. The origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. New York: The Modern Library.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deacon, Terrence W. 2012. Incomplete nature: How mind emerged from matter. London & New York: W. W. Norton & Co.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Defoe, Daniel. 2003 [1722]. A journal of the plague year. Based on a journal by HF from 1665. England: Penguin Classics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dolnick, Edward. 2011. The clockwork universe: Isaac Newton, the royal society, and the birth of the modern world. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Edelman, Gerald M. 1992. Bright air, brilliant fire: On the matter of the mind. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2006. Second nature: Brain science and human knowledge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Edelman, Gerald M. & Giulio Tononi. 2000. A universe of consciousness: How matter becomes imagination. USA: Basic Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Firth, John R. 1957 [1950]. Papers in linguistics 1934–1951. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grand, Edward. 1957 [1950]. The foundations of modern science in the Middle Ages: Their religious, institutional, and intellectual contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grant, Edward. 2007. A history of natural philosophy: From the ancient world to the nineteenth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gilder, Louisa. 2008. The age of entanglement: When quantum physics was born. New York: Vintage Books Random House.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1973. Towards a sociological semantics. In Michael A. K. Halliday, Explorations in the functions of language, 64–94. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2002[1988]. On the ineffability of grammatical categories. In Michael A. K. Halliday, On grammar, volume 1 in the collected works of M. A. K. Halliday. Edited by Jonathan J. Webster. London & New York: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2004 [1988]. On the language of physical science. In Michael A. K. Halliday, The language of science, volume 5 in the collected works of M. A. K. Halliday, 140–158. Edited by Jonathan J. Webster. London & New York: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2004 [1998]. Things and relations: Regrammaticizing experience as technical knowledge. In Michael A. K. Halliday, The language of science, volume 5 in the collected works of M. A. K. Halliday, 49–101. Edited by Jonathan J. Webster. London & New York: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. & James R. Martin. 1993. Writing science: Literacy and discursive power. London & Washington DC: Falmer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. & Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen. 1999. Construing experience through meaning: A language-based approach to cognition. London: Cassell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K., & Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen. 2014. Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar (4th edition). London & New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hasan, Ruqaiya. 1999. Speaking with reference to context. In Mohsen Ghadessy (ed.), Text and context in functional linguistics, 219–328. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Language, society and consciousness: volume 1 in the collected works of Ruqaiya Hasan. Edited by Jonathan J. Webster. London: Equinox.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. Semantic variation: Meaning in society and in sociolinguistics, volume 2 in the collected works of Ruqaiya Hasan. Edited by Jonathan J. Webster. London: Equinox.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. Language and education: Learning and teaching in society, volume 3 in the collected works of Ruqaiya Hasan. Edited by Jonathan J. Webster. London: Equinox.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011 [1985]. The implications of semantic distance for language in education. In Ruqaiya Hasan, Language and education: Learning and teaching in society, volume 3 in the collected works of Ruqaiya Hasan, 73–99. Edited by Jonathan J. Webster. London: Equinox.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heisenberg, Werner. 1973. Tradition in science: Science and public affairs. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. XXIX 10. 4–11. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hoenigswald, Henry M. & Linda F. Wiener (eds.). 1987. Biological metaphor and cladistic classification: An interdisciplinary approach. London: Frances Pinter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jones, Steve. 2000. Almost like a whale: The origin of species updated. London: Transworld Publishing Ltd.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kappagoda, Astika K. 2004. Semiosis as the sixth sense: Theorising the unperceived in Ancient Greek. Doctoral Dissertation. Macquarie University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kellogg, David J. 2017. Narrative and dialogue in child development: Vygotsky’s pedology in systemic functional perspective. Doctoral Dissertation. Macquarie UniversityGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klemperer, Victor. 2002 [1957]. The language of the Third Reich. LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii: A philologist’s notebook. Translated by. Martin Brady. London & New York: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen. 1990. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. Geelong: Deakin University PressGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lamb, Sydney M. 1984. Semiotics of language and culture: A relational approach. In Robin P. Fawcett, Michael A. K. Halliday, Sydney M. Lamb & Adam Makkai (eds.), The semiotics of culture and language, volume 2: Language and other semiotic systems of culture, 71–99. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lewontin, Richard C. 2000. It ain’t necessarily so: The case of the human genome and other illusions. New York: New York Review of Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R. 2002. The ambitions of curiosity: Understanding the world in ancient Greece and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martin, James R. & Robert Veel (eds.). 1998. Reading science: Critical and functional perspectives on discourses of science. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ostler, Nicholas. 2007. Ad infinitum: A biography of Latin. London: Harper Collins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Toole, Michael. 2011 [1994]. The language of displayed art (2nd edition). Oxford & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Popper, Karl R. 1972. Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de (2011). Course in general linguistics. Translated by Wade Baskin. Edited by P. Meisel & H. Saussy. Columbia University Press: New York.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schrödinger, Erwin. 1944. What is life? The physical aspect of the living cell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shapiro, James A. 2011. Evolution: A view from the 21st century. New Jersey: FT Press Science.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smitwick, Fiann M., Robert Nicholls, Innes C. Cuthill & Jakob Vinther. 2017. Countershading and stripes in the theropod dinosaur sinosauropteryx reveal heterogeneous habitats in the early cretaceous Jehol Biota. Current Biology. 271: 3337–3343.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Toulmin, Stephen. 1961. Foresight and understanding: An enquiry into the aims of science. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vygotsky, Lev S. 1962. Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Waddington, Conrad H. 1977. Tools for thought. London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Whittaker, Martin A. 2006. Einstein, Bohr and the quantum dilemma: From quantum theory to quantum information. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Williams, Geoff. 2001. Literacy pedagogy prior to schooling: Relations between social and semantic variation. In Ana Morais, Isabel Neves, Brian Davies & Henry Baillie (eds.), Towards a sociology of pedagogy: The contribution of Basil Bernstein to research, 17–45. New York & Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Whorf, Benjamin L. 1956. Language, thought and reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Edited by John B. Carroll. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue