Scientific Discourse in Sociohistorical Context

The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1675-1975

Dwight Atkinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 1998
• ISBN:
  9781135691752
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Scientific Discourse in Sociohistorical Context represents the intersection of knowledge and method, examined from the perspective of three distinct disciplines: linguistics, rhetoric-composition, and history. Herein, Dwight Atkinson describes the written language and rhetoric of the Royal Society of London, based on his analysis of its affiliated journal, The Philosophical Transactions, starting with the 17th century advent of modern empirical science through to the present day. Atkinson adopts two independent approaches to the analysis of written discourse--from the fields of linguistics and rhetoric-composition--and then integrates and interprets his findings in light of the history of the Royal Society and British science. Atkinson's study provides the most complete and particular institutional account of a scientific journal, which in this case is a publication that stands as an icon of scientific publication. He supplies his readers with important material found nowhere else in the historical literature, including details about the operation of the journal and its relation to the society. The work embeds the history of the journal and its editors within the history of the Royal Society and other developments in science and society. The synthesis of historical, linguistic, rhetorical, and cultural analysis makes visible certain complex communicative dynamics that could not previously be seen from a single vantage point. The work presented here reinforces how deep historical examinations of linguistic and rhetorical practices have direct bearing on how and what scholars read and write now. Most significantly, this volume demonstrates how these historical activities need to inform current teaching of and thinking about language.

CHAPTER 1
Conceptual Framework

If “discourse” is nothing less than language itself, and “discourse analysis” attempts to admit a broad range of research to the analysis of language, then it is by nature interdisciplinary.

–Tannen, 1990, p. 10

Discourse is a difficult concept, largely because there are so many conflicting and overlapping definitions formulated from various theoretical and disciplinary standpoints.

–Fairclough, 1992, p. 3

Discourse is language-in-the-world, and discourse analysis is thus the study of language in all its located complexity and glory. Although discourse and discourse analysis have been variously conceptualized, these are the definitions I will adopt here.

Given these broad definitions, studies in rhetoric/composition of how people use language to operate in and on their worldly environments are located squarely within the field of discourse analysis. At the same time, rhetorical studies at least has maintained an existence, historically speaking, somewhat apart from the more linguistically oriented traditions of discourse analysis. It has therefore developed theoretical assumptions and methods that do not always comport comfortably with—and which in some cases may even oppose—their counterparts in the linguistics-influenced traditions. To give but one general example: The former’s emphasis on rhetorical effectiveness seems epistemologically opposed to the latter’s relativist stance that all language is by nature equally suited to its contexts of use and culture.¹

As an interdisciplinary endeavor, discourse analysis will always contain within it the potential for internal discoherence and fragmentation based on such differences in “professional vision” (Goodwin, 1994)—this is not a unique feature of the relationship between rhetorical and linguistic discourse analysis. It does suggest, however, that the introduction of concepts central to a study such as this one, which attempts to bring the two traditions closer together, may be a necessary place to begin. In order therefore to establish grounds for clear communication and understanding in this complex, “pluralistic” endeavor (Kirsch, 1992), this chapter is devoted to defining major theoretical concepts, or “conventions for construing reality” (Bizzell, 1982), underlying the research on which this book is based. As will be seen, the definitions themselves often aim to integrate theory in rhetoric/composition and linguistics, or to use earlier attempts at integration as points of departure. Similar but less involved integrative efforts are also made in chapter 3 in regard to the research methodologies used in this study, and in chapter 6 at the level of empirical results. Both of the latter two attempts, however—as well as much of the rest of the book—are predicated on the concepts established first in this chapter.

DISCOURSE AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Having defined discourse broadly as language-in-the-world, and discourse analysis as its study, I will now specify these concepts more closely. Given the complex worldliness of discourse, however, discourse analysis will be treated not as a discrete science with precise definitions and a rational internal structure, but as a process of “entering something messy with messy tools—probably the only way of doing it” (Galtung, 1988, cited in Phillipson, 1992, p. 3).

Fairclough (1992) distinguishes among three levels of discourse and its analysis:

Any discursive “event”…is seen as being simultaneously a piece of text, an instance of discursive practice, and an instance of social practice. The “text” dimension attends to language analysis of texts. The “discursive practice” dimension…specifies the nature of the processes of text production and interpretation The “social practice” dimension attends to issues of concern in social analysis such as the institutional and organizational circumstances of the discursive event and how that shapes the nature of the discursive practice, and the constitutive/constructive effects of discourse. (p. 4)

This conceptualization provides a useful heuristic for moving toward an integrative definition of discourse for analytical purposes. Fairclough’s level of “text”—of discourse as more-or-less pure language—is what has historically been studied by linguists: Such definitions of discourse as “language above the level of the sentence,” although less popular than formerly, are even now current in linguistically oriented discourse analysis (Pennycook, 1994; Tannen, 1990). Fairclough’s discourse as “discursive practice,” on the other hand, is substantially congruent with the traditional concerns of rhetoric, perhaps even much of the “new rhetoric” into the 1980s. Bitzer’s (1968) classic analysis of the rhetorical situation, for example, would seem to be located squarely in this tradition, as would—though perhaps less squarely—Miller’s (1984) concept of genre as social action.

Fairclough’s third category—discourse as social practice—is the one that has received special attention across academic fields over the past 15 years. Its root formulation is, of course, that of Foucault, although his ideas have been widely modified and adapted. When Jarratt (1994, p. 1) defines rhetoric as “a set of inquiries around the uses of language, the institutional and power structures creating and created by historically specific discourse worlds,” I take her to be describing, in Fairclough’s terms, the analysis of discourse as social practice.

Having used Fairclough’s categorization to bootstrap us into the discussion, let me now complexify it. His categories are obviously mere analytical conveniences; there is no such thing, for example, as “pure language”—all language is language in context, so to speak. Likewise, Fairclough’s intermediate level—the production and reception of language/ texts—is predicated on their imminent, immediate, or trace material existence (Fairclough’s “language/text” level) and their discursive social histories (Fairclough’s “so cial practice” level), and nontrivially involves these phenomena at every turn. Similarly, although pioneers like Foucault were less than cognizant of the importance of microlevel linguistic detail in realizing and modifying macrolevel social action and organization, discourse as social practice presupposes dynamic activity at all levels of discourse, as later theorists have shown (e.g., Bazerman, 1994, chap. 12; Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995, chap. 1; Fairclough, 1992; Gee, 1990; Giddens, 1984; Stubbs, 1996).

A theory of discourse that usefully complements and expands on Fairclough’s is that of Gee.² For Gee (1990), discourse is always part of a specific form of life, or a “Discourse,” which he defines as:

a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or “social network,” or to signal (that one is playing) a socially meaningful “role.” (p. 143)³

Gee’s definition is useful in that it clarifies the place of language in social life, wherein language enjoys equal status with a variety of other sociocognitive practices but is in no sense privileged over or to be studied apart from them. Rather, it functions as an organic part of a larger sociocognitive whole—a Discourse.

Together with those of Fairclough, Gee’s ideas provide an “opportunity space” for the form of discourse analysis I try to develop in this study. Viewing all concrete instances of language as part of one or more larger “saying-writing-doing-being-valuing-believing” combinations (Gee, 1990, p. 142)—combinations that are furthermore always historically constituted (p. 145)—licenses the use of non-language focused historical resources and knowledge as an integral part of a discourse/analytic framework. Thus, the study of discourse can—indeed must—be undertaken by studying social practices (including historical ones) that may have little to do with language per se.

With rare exceptions,⁴ linguistically oriented discourse analysts have avoided granting any status to historical concerns in their research, perhaps due to Saussure’s foundational separation of synchronic and diachronic perspectives on language, and his subsequent banishment of the latter (D. Atkinson, 1994, 1995).⁵ Even studies in composition/rhetoric have tended to treat history more as a variably powerful contextual explanans than as an integral part of the object under analysis (Bazerman, 1988, chap. 1, note 1). Gee’s decentering of language from a privileged position, however—a move made less explicitly also by Fairclough—allows history in as a more equal partner.

My own version of discourse analysis, described in more detail in chapter 3, attempts to capture activity at all three of the levels described by Fairclough (1992), and to treat them integratively. It does so gradually, however—historical social practice, rhetoric, and language are first treated more or less independently (in chapters 2, 4, and 5, respectively), and only afterwards do I attempt to bring them together (in chapter 6). This is partly for analytical convenience, and partly because my understanding of the relationships between these different aspects of discourse—and the very fact that they can be encompassed in a larger integrated conception of discourse/Discourse at all—evolved substantially in the course of writing this book. Such an approach makes for a less-than-homogeneous presentation of material—and no doubt for some internal inconsistencies—but is, I believe, a more accurate record of the thinking that has gone into this volume.⁶

The four main concepts described in the remainder of this chapter—discourse community, discourse conventions, genre, and register—serve further to undergird the integrative model of discourse analysis I have introduced here.

DISCOURSE COMMUNITY

Gee’s Discourses represent complex combinations of cognitive but intersubjective knowledge and activity with external, socially purposive activity and practice.⁷ The much-discussed concept of “discourse community,” on the other hand, has focused largely on the outward manifestations and consequences of the intersubjective knowledge systems accounted for partly in Discourses.

Since the discourse community concept has been widely discussed and debated (e.g., Bizzell, 1982, 1992; Cooper, 1989; Freed & Broadhead, 1987; J.Harris, 1989; Killingsworth, 1992; C.R.Miller, 1993; J.Porter, 1986; Rafoth, 1988, 1990; Swales, 1990, 1993), I will limit my discussion here to two or three major points focusing on the single most widely cited definition of “discourse community”—that of Swales (1990, chap. 2). This definition has been criticized for emphasizing the foundational, consensual, and realist nature of discourse communities. In my own view, Swales’ six definitional criteria are useful as identifying features of mature discourse communities, but they have an after-the-fact status as mostly the public results or consequences of the strong social and communal motivations and mechanisms that lead, in the first place, to the constitution and maintenance of such groups.

A first point to make regarding Swales’ definition is that the weakness mentioned just above is partly addressed by Gee’s notion of Discourses, because, fully developed, the latter foregrounds the underlying motivations for and socialization/apprenticeship practices by which people are actually inducted into sociocultural groups. An additional element of Gee’s notion not mentioned so far—that humans are normally participants in multiple such Discourses, some of which will be mutually inconsistent with or opposed to one another in terms of their inherent systems of values and practices—also suggests how dissonance, fragmentation, heterogeneity, and change can be natural attributes of discourse communities, and the individuals who make them up.⁸

Second, Swales (1993) himself has backed away from some of the more realist implications of his earlier definition, preferring what he calls a “virtual existence” for discourse communities of the sort theorized by Giddens (e.g., 1979; cf. Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995, chap. 1; Stubbs, 1996, chap. 3) for social structures and systems in general. As is widely recognized, Giddens’ structuration theory is important here because it suggests a mechanism by which ongoing social change can operate in conjunction with relatively stable (or metastable) social systems and structures. Bakhtin’s (1981) “centripedal versus centrifugal” tendencies in language use and development, Foucault’s (1972) juxtaposition of “inclination versus institution” in discourse, and Bourdieu’s (1977) social fields versus individual habitus in social life are other dialectical conceptualizations of the relationship between microlevel social practices and macrolevel social structures.

An alternative way of conceptualizing expert communities—as “communities of practice” with their multiple, historically evolved “activity systems”—has been proposed by students of Vygotskian psychology and situated cognition (e.g., Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Chaiklin & Lave, 1993; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1990; cf. Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995, chap. 1). Such concepts would seem to capture some of the multiplex variety of interwoven human actions and activities that characterize disciplinary networks. That is, rather than seeing such communities as necessarily organized around texts per se, we can profitably view texts as part of larger, integrated systems around which sociodisciplinary activity is organized and through which it is accomplished. As with Gee’s notion of “Discourse(s),” language/text is thereby decentered and thus able to be viewed in a holistic ecological relationship with other social practices.⁹

At a different conceptual level, the pragmatic notion of discourse conventions also helps to explain the dynamics underlying the establishment, survival, and change inherent in discourse communities.

DISCOURSE CONVENTIONS

In Lewis (1969), a convention is defined as an institutionalized solution to a recurring coordination problem. A coordination problem, in turn, is a class of interpersonal situations in which a mutually beneficial activity, in order to be performed, demands the coordinated efforts of those involved. The idea here, then, is that where social action of any type will bring greater benefit to individuals than they could achieve acting separately, and where conditions for such action recur, this coordinated action will tend to become regularized, or conventionalized. Such conventions can be found in virtually all domains of human social activity—written discourse conventions are simply conventionalized solutions to recurring coordination problems that are addressed through written communication (D. Atkinson, 1991).

Written discourse conventions, from this perspective, exist for the primary purpose of ensuring smooth and efficent communication among discourse community members. Although linguists commonly view all language as conventional in this sense, some of the most concrete examples of conventions beyond the basic units of language are certain collocationally restricted grammatical features, formulaic phrases, and technical vocabulary that are highly discourse-community specific. Legal formulas, for example, such as in good faith or by or on behalf of, or technical medical expressions like human blood group B and acute myocardial infarction, can be seen as providing the tools necessary to communicate about events either particular to, or viewed from the particular standpoints of, the communities that use them (Goodwin, 1994). At a more abstract level, principles of textual organization such as the conventionalized three-part “rhetorical move” sequence of experimental research article introductions (Swales, 1981, 1990)—or the highly conventionalized Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion (IMRD) experimental research-report format (e.g., Bazerman, 1985)—have been shown to provide templates by means of which both scientific reading and writing can be performed with maximal efficiency.

At the most abstract level of discourse conventions are what Bizzell (1982) has called “conventions for construing reality.” These are basically the socially normative folk theories that Gee (1990, 1992) has characterized as partly making up Discourses, and which likewise in part constitute the communal knowledge bases of discourse communities. For example, a dominant shared assumption in the scientific community is that of “scientific objectivity” (e.g., Daston, 1992); that is, that by following a certain prescribed set of methods in the study of nature, enough analytical rigor can be attained to effectively neutralize fallible human judgments. Although such guiding conventions are substantially nonlinguistic, they have significant rhetoricallinguistic parallels; thus, such features as the “scientific passive” (Ding, in press; Halliday & Martin, 1993, chap. 3), and heavily sanctioned restrictions like those on lexical self-reference (i.e., the use of “I” or “we”), are powerful linguistic indexes of the convention of scientific objectivity.

But perhaps the most significant aspect of discourse conventions is that they “look both ways,” or are multifunctional. That is, although they are often directly represented in language and rhetoric, discourse conventions serve larger social and cognitive functions as well. Cognitively, they represent the input to and output of the schematic patterns or mental models that are believed to organize thought and memory (e.g., Adams & Collins, 1979; Holland & Quinn, 1987). Socially, besides serving as tools for efficient ingroup co...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Editor’s Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Overview and Motivations
• Chapter 1: Conceptual Framework
• Chapter 2: The Royal Society and Its Philosophical Transactions: A Brief Institutional History
• Chapter 3: Methods of Analysis and Description of Text Corpus
• Chapter 4: Rhetorical Analysis
• Chapter 5: Multidimensional Analysis
• Chapter 6: Synthesis and Discussion: Scientific Discourse and Scientific Forms of Life
• Chapter 7: Implications and Conclusions
• Appendix A: Contents of “Corpus B”
• Appendix B: Ranges of Variation for Overall MD Analysis
• Appendix C: Standard Deviations for Overall MD Analysis
• References