Perspectives on the Popularisation of Natural Sciences in a Diachronic Overview
Perspectives on the Popularisation of Natural Sciences in a Diachronic Overview

Author: Eleonora Chiavetta

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-05-02

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 1443860034

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This volume combines strands of research currently being debated in linguistic scholarship, such as the issue of specialized discourse, the issue of knowledge dissemination, and the issue of the versatility of genres. It presents some of the relevant findings of an Italian National Research Project focusing on specialized discourse, which involved researchers and scholars from several Italian universities. Discursive popularisation is here analysed with regard to the domain of natural sciences, particularly focusing on botany and gardening. Another relevant feature of the book is the diachronic approach used in discussing the issue of popularisation. The authors of the volume focus on their research following their own methodological choices, and, as such, investigate critical discourse analysis, genre analysis, and corpus analysis. All the authors, however, apply a diachronic perspective to their study. Chapters, therefore, span from the dissemination of science in the 17th century English scientific community, through the Late Modern English Period, to the end of the 19th century, throughout the 20th century, up to the present day. Within the common frame of natural sciences, each author develops a specific topic such as Irish botanical terminology; the development of garden notebooks; the manipulation of Darwin’s theory of evolution; the role played by the Puritans in promoting a plain and clear English scientific prose; Darwinism in the 20th and 21st century British press; and scientific popularisation in Nobel lectures.

Variations in Specialized Genres
Variations in Specialized Genres

Author: Vijay K. Bhatia

Publisher: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag

Published: 2015-09-16

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 3823378333

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The book is an edited volume of carefully selected articles by eminent scholars focusing on the specialist knowledge transmission through genre variation, particularly on the issues of standardization and hybridity. The main focus was to analyse discursive popularization in the contexts and domains of natural sciences, law, and commerce, viewed in a diachronic perspective. The scholars involved have concentrated their studies on the creative transformation, hybridization, and even bending of genres used to popularise scientific, legal and commercial discourse for different communicative purposes and audiences, thus extending the conventional genre boundaries to disseminate specialized knowledge. The proliferation of specialized knowledge has indeed created a growing need to convey expert knowledge to a variety of addressees, with different levels of shared understanding and expertise. Such disciplinary knowledge can only be conveyed through various subtle manipulations of generic conventions keeping in mind the aims, the users, the media, the social contexts, and the domain with which specific knowledge is associated.

'The Conditioned and the Unconditioned'
'The Conditioned and the Unconditioned'

Author: Isabel Moskowich

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9027262179

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This volume includes methodological considerations and descriptions of some of the texts compiled in The Corpus of English Philosophy Texts (CEPhiT), together with a number of pilot studies that demonstrate how the corpus can be used to investigate English philosophy writing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. CEPhiT is part of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing (CC). The sampling method employed requires the collection of extracts of ca. 10,000 words. This method has been followed in CETA and CEPhiT, with samples from 40 different authors in the latter, both from Europe and North America. Text selection is based on some extralinguistic criteria, such as year of publication, sex, geographical provenance and text-types/genres. The corpus contains samples belonging to six different genre categories. This taxonomy, as well as some other extralinguistic information, can be used to search the corpus. CEPhiT, together with the Coruña Corpus Tool purpose-designed software by IrLab, was originally made available with the volume on CD-rom. As of late 2018, these are also accessible online at the Repositorio Universidade Coruña: CCT at http://hdl.handle.net/2183/21850 and CEPhiT at http://hdl.handle.net/2183/21847

Genealogy of Popular Science
Genealogy of Popular Science

Author: Jesús Muñoz Morcillo

Publisher: transcript Verlag

Published: 2020-11-30

Total Pages: 587

ISBN-13: 3839448352

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Despite the efforts of modern scholars to explain the origins of science communication as a social, rhetorical, and aesthetic phenomenon, most researchers approach the popularization of science from the perspective of present issues, thus ignoring its historical roots in classical culture along with its continuities, disruptions, and transformations. This volume fills this research gap with a genealogically reflected introduction into the popularization of science as a recurrent cultural technique. The category »popular science« is elucidated in interdisciplinary and diachronic dialogue, discussing case studies from all historical periods. Classicists, archaeologists, medievalists, art historians, sociologists, and historians of science provide the first diachronic and multi-layered approach to the rhetoric techniques, aesthetics, and societal conditions that have shaped the dissemination and reception of scientific knowledge.

Interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity

Author: Andrew Barry

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-06-26

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1136658459

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The idea that research should become more interdisciplinary has become commonplace. According to influential commentators, the unprecedented complexity of problems such as climate change or the social implications of biomedicine demand interdisciplinary efforts integrating both the social and natural sciences. In this context, the question of whether a given knowledge practice is too disciplinary, or interdisciplinary, or not disciplinary enough has become an issue for governments, research policy makers and funding agencies. Interdisciplinarity, in short, has emerged as a key political preoccupation; yet the term tends to obscure as much as illuminate the diverse practices gathered under its rubric. This volume offers a new approach to theorising interdisciplinarity, showing how the boundaries between the social and natural sciences are being reconfigured. It examines the current preoccupation with interdisciplinarity, notably the ascendance of a particular discourse in which it is associated with a transformation in the relations between science, technology and society. Contributors address attempts to promote collaboration between, on the one hand, the natural sciences and engineering and, on the other, the social sciences, arts and humanities. From ethnography in the IT industry to science and technology studies, environmental science to medical humanities, cybernetics to art-science, the collection interrogates how interdisciplinarity has come to be seen as a solution not only to enhancing relations between science and society, but the pursuit of accountability and the need to foster innovation. Interdisciplinarity is essential reading for scholars, students and policy makers across the social sciences, arts and humanities, including anthropology, geography, sociology, science and technology studies and cultural studies, as well as all those engaged in interdisciplinary research. It will have particular relevance for those concerned with the knowledge economy, science policy, environmental politics, applied anthropology, ELSI research, medical humanities, and art-science.

Theoretical Perspectives on Terminology
Theoretical Perspectives on Terminology

Author: Pamela Faber

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2022-06-15

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 9027257787

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The aim of this volume is to provide an overview of different theoretical perspectives on Terminology, from Wüster to other initiatives that have emerged since the beginning of the 1990s. The volume also covers important topics which have significantly influenced Terminology and its evolution. These include variation, multidimensionality, conceptual relations, and equivalence, among others. The twenty-two chapters of the volume, all written by acknowledged experts in the field, explore the questions that different approaches seek to answer. They also describe the theoretical and methodological principles that were devised over the years to characterize, analyze, and represent terminological data. The semi-chronological, semi-thematic organization of chapters not only provides readers with a clear vision of the evolution of ideas in Terminology, but also gives them an understanding as to why some of these ideas were initially challenged. In addition to being accessible to readers unfamiliar with the basic theoretical principles in the field, the chapters provide a showcase of current research in the field, the challenges looming on the horizon, and finally future directions in terminological research. By bringing together work that is often disseminated in different forums and written in different languages, this volume provides a unique opportunity to look at how different theoretical approaches to Terminology offer complementary perspectives on terms, concepts and specialized knowledge, and help to further a better understanding of the complex phenomena that terminologists must successfully deal with in their work.

Popularizing Science in the Digital Era
Popularizing Science in the Digital Era

Author: Sichen Xia

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-06-23

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 1000898148

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This book offers a comprehensive overview of TED talks as a digital-multimodal video genre, exploring the ways in which myriad rhetorical, structural, digital, and multimodal resources are used to communicate scientific knowledge to lay audiences. Drawing on insights from genre analysis, the systemic functional approach to multimodal discourse analysis, and the social semiotic approach to multimodality, the volume examines the communicative contexts in which TED talks are constructed, their rhetorical structure, the deployment of multimodal tools, and diachronic developments. The book reflects on the ways in which TED talks are uniquely positioned to offer new insights into how experts disseminate scientific knowledge for non-specialist audiences, constructed as they are within a community defined by a fluidity and diversity of audiences and speakers. The volume offers strategies for not only making the process of disseminating specialized knowledge more engaging and accessible but also expanding their own semiotic and communicative repertoires, increasingly crucial in our digitally driven era. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of English for Specific Purposes, multimodality, discourse analysis, and digital communication.

Mfecane Aftermath
Mfecane Aftermath

Author: Carolyn Hamilton

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 518

ISBN-13: 9781868142521

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A guide for interpreting the mfecane's role in history Was the mfecane a figment of historians' imagination as Julian Cobbing contends? How large a responsibility do Shaka and the Zulu people bear for the social turbulence in South-central and South-east Africa in the early decades of the 19th century? These are some of the issues explored in this collection, which is designed as a response to the radical critique of Dr. Cobbing and other scholars. The mfecane, suggests Cobbing, must be seen as a myth lying at the root of a set of interlinked assumptions and distortions that have seriously twisted our understanding of the main historical processes of late 18th- and early 19th-century Southern Africa. Contributors to this collection assess the implications of this critique for scholars from a range of disciplines, notably history, anthropology, archaeology, history of art and African languages. But the book is not only about the debate over Cobbing's work; it is also an indicator of the state of current scholarship in Southern Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries and, because it raises questions about the nature of sources and, indeed, about the nature of historical debate itself, it is also about historiography. This book should provide a useful guide for students starting out in this field, as well as a resource for established scholars seeking their way through the textual intricacies of varied editions and secondary texts that become the primary sources for historiographical debate.