The language of science: A systemic-functional perspective

Over the course of history, as the need arose for more powerful and abstract theories of experience, humankind has relied on the power of language ‘to reconstrue commonsense reality into one that imposed regularities on experience and brought the environment more within our power to control’. The source of that power in language lies in its potential for grammatical metaphor.

Grammatical metaphor in scientific discourse is described as ‘a steady drift towards things; and the prototype of a thing is a concrete object’. Examples of grammatical metaphor include length, which is ‘a junction of (the quality) “long” and the category meaning of a noun, which is “entity” or “thing”', and motion, which is ‘a junction of the (the process) “move” and the category meaning, again of a noun’. With grammatical metaphor, the scientist can make the world stand still, or turn it into one consisting only of things, or even create new, virtual realities.

We will also explore how the features of scientific English have developed over time, evolving to meet the needs of the experts, giving them enormous power over the environment, but at the risk of alienating learners and turning science into ‘the prerogative of an elite’.