The Language of Scientific English - Assignment Example

Descriptive Report Name Institutional Affiliation The language of scientific English has been used for years for descriptions and analysis of scientific phenomena. English is an important language that has to be mastered for one to succeed in the scientific field. Scientific English is used differently with different audiences and its roles cover broad life areas. Similarly, the purpose of a text influences its way of writing and thus has an impact on the relationship between the reader and audience. Thus, this report tends to focus on describing three texts with regards to how the language of scientific English adjusts in accordance to the changes in purpose and audience. The analysis will focus on seven aspects. The topic is very important as it acts as a basis for linguists and other professionals to understand how purpose and audience influence a piece of writing. First tex: Ancient European Hunter- gatherer was a blue eyed boy Genre Typically, in literature, a genre refers to the specific type of writing used. The first article which talks about an ancient European hunter and gatherer mainly can be considered as both historical nonfiction and a mystery genre. It is a historical nonfiction genre in the sense that it gives a historical account of past events. An archeological description of the findings by an archeologist called Carles Lalueza about the blue eyed man. On the hand, the genre is a mystery because the description of the boy seems to be fictitious and a mystery that cannot be well explained. The boy who existed more than 7000 years ago, based on the description, exhibited traits of modern humans. He had blue eyes and an immune system that resembles the modern man; this mystery was could not be explained. Thus, the author of the article was able to employ the mystery genre to narrate the story of the blue-eyed man.  Technical language  A language that is perceived as difficult to be understood by people is a technical language. The author embraced the use of different language structures to relay her information. Archeological terms are predominantly used all through the paper such as ‘DNA and extraction’. Agricultural language has also been used to a larger extent. The main character of discussion was a hunter and gatherer who possessed genomes that were lactose tolerant. The author was able to integrate successfully agricultural and archeological terms to come up with a simple and well-articulated description that can be understood by different readers. Even people with less or no knowledge on farming can easily comprehend.  Lexical density The author has been able to use lexical words to emphasize what the text was about. She described the man as a ‘hunter-gatherer’ who was ‘blue-eyed’. The heading of the text in itself already portrays a lot of what is expected in the text. From a glance, the reader can tell what the story is about. The author used the word ‘lactose tolerant’ and further went ahead to give a description of its meaning thus an aspect of lexical density. Nominal groups and nominalization  In the first article, the author was able to generate noun words from other word classes. For instance, the nouns “hunter-gatherer’ is derived from the verbs to hunting and gathering. Similarly, the noun blue-eyed is made from adverbs. The author used nominalization to make her arguments better understood by her readers. The nominalization was done in a way that it did not tamper with the flow of the text. The lexical density of this text is 80%. Many of the descriptions, the objects, and the subjects are stated giving a description of how the subjects were formed. Information organization The flow of the information is coherent. The author starts by describing the blue-eyed man and goes ahead to stating his traits in a chronological order and his adaptation to farming and also his health genome. The information is organized in subheadings to make it more it easier for the readers to understand and what is being described in each of the subsections. Furthermore, the information provided is valid since an extensive seems to have been done on the subject. There are many quotations from past scholars. For instance, the works of Carles Lalueza-Fox has been widely used in the article.  The use of the quotation is a clear indication that the information provided are facts from valid research studies.  Interpersonal representation Interpersonal representation has also been achieved in this article. The description mainly focuses on the use findings the archeologist who found the remains of the blue eyed man. Use of visuals There is the use of visual in the article. The visual represents the blue-eyed man. It was primarily used to give a vivid overview of how the man was. The picture is a true reflection of the description provided in the text. For instance, the visual portrays the man as blue-eyed as described in the article Second text: Ancient Europeans had a dark skin and blue eyes, researchers say Genre Some of genres present in this text are narrative nonfiction; scientific genre is seen whereby there are factual events are presented in a format which presents the story of ancient Europeans’ physical characteristics. The scientific English writing is the major genre of this piece and the use of a persuasive voice is evident. The historical genre of this text can be explained in the sense that only past events are being analyzed to draw a conclusion on the features of the ancient Europeans. Technical language Scientific jargon to describe the evolution of man including “Neolithic, Palaeolithic, Mesolithis, and La Brana” is used to give the audience a scientific view of the topic in discussion. In this context, it would not serve the purpose to use non-technical terms as such a scientific topic requires the use of complex jargons. The purpose of this text is to look into the ancient Europeans, there features and present to an audience that are well versed in the scientific phenomenon. Thus, the technical language is relevant and justified in this piece. Lexical density The lexical density of this text is 70%. There are variation of lexical words including nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs in the text. The lexical density of this text makes it clear to the audience and the purpose is also clearly stated. In most sentences, the subjects and objects are named thus giving a clearly description of how the subject performed the action. Therefore, the higher the lexical density ion a text, the more informative it is.  Nominal groups and nominalization The nominalization process transforms nouns and verbs into nominal groups. Nominal groups are words expressing an entity in a piece of text thereby providing more information and about concepts, organizations, or people. Some of the use of nominal groups in this text includes “light-skinned Europeans emerged much later” which include more information about the Europeans and “a strange combination of dark skin and blue eyes from a tooth of La Brana 1,” includes more information about the La Brana 1.The nominal groups are important as they provide a complex and sophisticated content in this text. Information organization The ability of the writer to organize the information in this text not only increases the use attention but also provides a good basis for comparison of the ideas with other articles. The evidence to authenticate the features of ancient Europeans is organized and information brought forward from Mesolithic period to the Late Stone Age through the Upper Paleolithic Period. The consistent information organization leads to the proof that indeed the tooth of La Brana 1 is archeological evidence relevant to the study of ancient European features. Relating the past archeological evidences with the present evidences leads to an in-depth analysis of the ancient Europeans and a stand that light skinned Europeans appeared much later than it had been previously thought. Use of visuals Visuals are evident in this text and the picture of Tilda Swinton is used to give a clear explanation of the era that light-skinned Europeans emerged. The use of a celebrity picture gives the text authenticity and a wide audience. In the event that the writes did not use a well known figure in the society, the message in the text would not have reached a wider audience. The purpose of this text is to convince the audience that the light- skinned Europeans did not emerge in the Neolithic era but much later. Third text: Derived Immune and ancestral pigmentation alleles in a 7,000 year old Mesolithis European Genre The kind of genre that comes out clearly from this text is nonfiction genre. This is because the text provides a lot of facts in the body. The text shows how the research was carried out, so that final information arrives. The text also shows how the immune being discussed arrived at following a sequence of laboratory experiments that was conducted. It also shows much about the ancestral pigmentation allele and how the allele was tested to the Mesolithic genome. The results were real as they were analyzed after the experiments to ascertain the results. It is not fictional. The scientific English writing is also another genre under which the text can be categorized under as a lot of scientific terms combined with common English language are used. The text talks about historical research that was conducted to find the validity of the claims. This means that it can also be categorized as a historical genre. Technical language  The language that has been used in the text is scientific English. The text uses certain scientific terms to describe the immune and ancestral pigmentation alleles. The scientific language used in the text can be well understood by one who has a broad knowledge of the subject. It, therefore, becomes clear that the author used a technical language in writing his text. The readers of the text must, therefore, be familiar with the scientific English language to comprehend what is in the text. The use of terms such as single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) will require the reader of the text to research over the term if the reader is unaware of the subject discussed.  Lexical density The lexical density of this text is 74%. In the text, there is a wide range of lexical words that have been used which include the verbs, nouns, adjectives as well as adverbs. The lexical words that have been used in this text have made it easy for the text to be easily understood. They lexical words used in the text are not complicated, and therefore the reader can easily go over the text in a short time but comprehend the message that the writer wanted to pass across. In the text, the writer keeps on referring to the subject. This is an indication that the lexical words of the text are spread throughout the paper. The distribution of the lexical words in the text which has contributed to the higher lexical density has contributed to the success of the text. Nominal groups and nominalization The writer of the text has been able to transform the verbs and nouns within the text to nominal groups. The nominal groups in the text have provided more information about the subject being discussed in the skin. Some of the nominal groups in the text include; intracellular adaptor molecules, pattern recognition receptors as well as cytokines. Information organization The text is well organized as their systematic flow of information from how the problem arose, the steps that were followed including the methods that were used in conducting his research. The writer has indicated how the regulation of the genome was made so as to reach the final results that were the main aim of the paper. The reader of the text does not struggle to join the writer’s ideas. Use of visuals The text has used some visuals so as to pass out some information to the reader. The texts show the location of where the ancestral genomes were located. The audience can understand more about the subject through the visuals used. The visuals have been used by the writer t show the samples that were used in research and also the location where the samples were got. Comment on the three articles From the above analysis, it can be observed that all the articles used a narrative nonfiction genre. This is because the narrations are based on factual scientific findings of different researches. Scientific jargons have also been employed to give the readers the scientific perspective of the narrations. However, their nontechnical terms were also used as in the first article to enable an easy understanding of the article. Similarly, it can also be depicted that there was a variation of lexical words in the articles. The lexical densities were 80%, 70%, and 74% respectively. Nominalization was also evident in the articles. They were mainly used to give more information about the main subject. For instance, in the first article there author described the man as “blue-eyed” and in the second article, La Brana was described as “light-skinned”. These descriptions were meant to provide more information about the characters. Furthermore, the information in the articles was well organized that made it easy to comprehend and draw conclusions from the articles more easily. Finally, the use of visual is evident in all the three articles. They give a vivid visual description of the main characters in the texts. They are mainly used to convince the readers. Bibliography Inigo et al., (2014). Derived immune and ancestral pigmentation alles in a 7,000 year ols Mesolithis European. Nature . Ancient Europeans had dark skin and blue eyes, researchers say. (2014, January 27). Retrieved April 18, 2016, from http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/ancient-europeans-had-dark-skin-and-blue-eyes-researchers-say/story-fn5fsgyc-1226810985900 Rosebery, A. S., Warren, B., & Conant, F. R. (1992). Appropriating scientific discourse: Findings from language minority classrooms. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2(1), 61-94. Lado, R. (1964). LANGUAGE TEACHING, A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH. Lange, C. d. (2014, January 26). Ancient European hunter-gatherer was a blue eyed boy. Scientist . Read More