The Evolution of the English Scientific Register

Content

1 Introduction

2 The process of standardisation and vernacularisation from late Middle English to Early Modern English
2.1. English versus Latin
2.2. The role of translation

3. Evolution of the English scientific register
3.1. Term definition: SCIENTIFIC ENGLISH
3.2. Contextual dimensions in the production and transmission of early scientific writing
3.3. Evolution of linguistic features in the organisation of scientific discourse
3.3.1. Evolution of emotive features in scientific writing
3.3.2. Evolution in the scale from learned to popular forms of scientific writing
3.3.3. Evolution in patterns of agentivity and narrativity in scientific writing
3.3.4. Evolution in the principles of botanical discourse organisation

4. Evolution of scientific prose

5. Conclusion

References

1 Introduction

Between the early stages of scientific writing in the late Middle English period and today, there have been significant changes in the grammatical properties and the rhetorical strategies of scientific discourse. These developments had an influence on the style of scientific writing, resulting in the change from a narrative towards a more argumentative style. According to this, the purpose of the present essay is to consider, from a historical stance, the evolution of linguistic features in the English scientific register. Thus, the essay takes into account several examples of linguistic features which are characteristic of late Middle English and Early Modern English scientific writing. Based on these examples, it is further the aim of my essay to provide an overview of the evolution of the English scientific register concerning its grammatical properties and rhetorical strategies up to the present day.

2 The process of standardisation and vernacularisation from late Middle English to Early Modern English

Concerning the establishment of a standard variety of English, the late Middle Ages (1375 – 1550) had seen the triumph of the English language over French in England and the establishment once more of a standard form of written English (Barber 2000: 175). The first time a notion of a standard form of English evolved was in the ninth century due to King Alfred’s educational policy. His educational policy aimed at establishing the regional variety of West Saxon as a standard variety of English in order to extend his influence more widely throughout England. By providing copies of books translated from Latin into English and re-establishing learning in the country as a whole, the West Saxon variety of English came to be taught as a standard variety (Blake 1996: 8). This spread of a standardised variety, namely West Saxon English, helped to provide support for political unity resulting in the gradual re-conquest by the Wessex kings from Alfred onwards of the northern and eastern parts of the country occupied by the Vikings (9).

With the Norman Conquest in 1066, a new political and social situation concerning the English standard was created in that the native aristocracy were largely destroyed and their lands were distributed to the French aristocracy, who became the new ruling class (Barber 2000: 135). Thus, the West Saxon standard variety of English decreased in prestige, since it was only spoken by the peasantry, whom Robert of Gloucester referred to as ‘lowe men’ (Barber 2000: 136). So anybody whose native tongue was English and who wanted to be successful in life, had to learn French. Nevertheless, the notion of a standard form of English was still strong and Old English at first survived as an ideal (Blake 1996: 9). Therefore, astrological and computational treatises as well as herbals and medical texts, e.g. Bald’s Leechbook from the early tenth century survive in late Old English manuscripts as a form of scientific vernacular writing containing materials of the remedy book traditions (Taavitsainen 2001: 188). Additionally, other Old English manuscripts were copied in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries so that the concept of Old English seems to have inspired the development of the contemporary local standardised forms of English.

A few time after the Norman Conquest, English re-established its position as a written language next to Latin. This vernacularisation process of scientific writing and other genres of English at the end of the fourteenth century emerged due to a ceasing importance of French and Latin in the area around London. The London area built a framework for the creation of an English standard which was prompted by the concern to use English as a national language of communication rather than the achievement of a high degree of standardisation throughout the country (Blake 1996: 10).

As concerns the degree of standardisation, the Chancery Standard spelling system as the administrative language of the Early Modern English period (1476-1660) carried with it the prestige of the aristocracy, since it was established by the Lancastrian monarchy. In contrast to this, scientific writing in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century is associated with the Central Midland Standard focusing on an intellectual pursuit with learned connections, thus separating the scientific register from the administrative one in terms of spelling and morphology. This early notion of a debate on standardisation contrasts the modern study of standardisation which is mostly concerned with normative attitudes rather than spelling and morphology (Taavitsainen in Diller 2001: 192). In comparison to the spread of the national standard spelling system used for administrative purposes in the fifteenth century, the spread of a standard spelling system in scientific writing seems to have been slower than in some other text types due to its intellectual prestige (Taavitsainen in Wright 2000: 147).

Finally, the language of science formed a new register in English during the period of c. 1375 – 1550, widening the functions of the vernacular to the prestige area of learning. Hence, the conventions of English scientific writing were transferred from authoritative Greco-Roman models, in which the most typical discourse form was turntaking, a dialogue form of discourse. This authoritative Greco-Roman model of turntaking built the core of late Medieval and Early Modern scholasticism in English, with textual commentaries and treatises on medical theory (Demaitre 1976: 81). Since scholastic philosophy relied on the philosophical dialogue form of discourse, derived from the Greek philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, university teaching methods in medicine as in other fields of science relied on debates. As far as scientific writing is concerned, one may emphasize certain features of medical scholasticism such as the reference to authoritative sources, the use of dialectical reasoning, paraphrasing and prescriptive phrases conveying practical knowledge (85).

To sum up, the vernacularisation process started in the latter half of the fourteenth century and continued to the seventeenth century coinciding with the process of language standardisation from 1400 to 1660 which led to the establishment of a written standard throughout the country. In regard to scientific writing, the language variety consciously chosen as the scientific written standard was Central Midland Standard for reasons of prestige and so identifying the Central Midland Standard as the standard of the learned scholars in contrast to the Chancery Standard which was the language of administration and monarchical power (Taavitsainen in Wright 2000: 131).

2.1. English versus Latin

The sixteenth century of the Early Modern English period (1476-1660), was dominated by the scribes’ attempts to make English syntax flexible and expressive enough to equip it for the functions of increasingly written communication, particularly in fields largely taken over from French law register and Latin scientific register of scholarly prose (Görlach 2003: 12). In order to fill these gaps for the written register, the English vernacular language had to be supplemented with many syntactic distinctions resulting in a number of new prepositions and conjunctions.

From a linguistic stance, imitation of Latin was seen as the quickest and most reliable way of coping with syntactic deficiencies of the English language. The strict take-over of Latin concepts makes many sixteenth century texts, such as scientific texts, look odd to modern readers. This is the case whenever Latin sentence structure is translated into English resulting in endless sentences, in which the structural potentials of English cannot achieve what Latin can. Nevertheless, as Görlach (2003: 12) puts it, “the imitation of Latin sentence structure contributed to the syntactic beautification of English Kunstprosa, modelled largely on elaborate medieval Latin prose”.

But as most of the medical writings of the medieval and Early Modern period are translations or adaptations from Latin or French sources (though original compositions were also written in English), the next section will focus on the purpose of translation from Latin sources, in particular, which served as a guide to a standardised form of the English scientific register.

2.2. The role of translation

As translation is characterized by, or mainly determined by, a time space between the original and the rendering, or the source language [SL] and the target language [TL], Görlach (2001: 76) thus defines translation as the “rendering of a spoken or written text in another language”. Therefore, the aim of this section is to provide an overview of the influence of translation from the Late Middle Ages (1375 – 1550) to the Early Modern Age (1550 – 1750) and to see how, within the historical linguistic context, its importance in earlier times differs from that of modern approaches to translation.

Mixed with nationalistic strivings of the Late Middle Ages, the desire to improve the status of English as a functional variety of scientific writing led to a particular translation policy: translators strove to polish and enrich the target language and transfer the already established conventions and features of Latin scientific writing into English. Hence, they were free to treat the contents fairly liberally so that additions and adaptations of various kinds were not infrequent (Taavitsainen and Pahta 1998: 157). Contrary, in modern times, biblical, technical and literary texts have been translated for the purpose of transferring the content of a work from the SL to the TL, whereas in earlier times, as mentioned above, the scribe aimed at preserving the style or tone of the SL during translation in order to refine the TL (Blake in Rissanen 1992: 5).

In order to improve both the educational and linguistic-stylistic standards of the receiving language via translation, Greco-Roman writing served as a model against which English medical writing evolved, since these early medical texts were translations or adaptations from Latin or French sources (Taavitsainen in Diller 2001: 193). Besides, a small number of texts from Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch were translated due to their high literary educational or academic merit. Since languages were not regarded as inherently different, the purpose of translation in the latter half of the fourteenth century was to improve the receiving language by means of imitating style and syntax of the original (Blake in Rissanen 1992: 7). However, translators of medical texts struggled with many difficulties in both syntax and lexicon to find adequate expressions in English, as scientific writing in the vernacular was new and thus new conventions had to be created (Taavitsainen and Pahta 1998: 158).

In contrast to the style of educational treatises, the style of scientific writing seems to have been modelled by the influence of the Royal Society (the first scientific society in England and still the most famous) from the seventeenth century onwards (Barber 2000: 214-215). The Royal Society established the style of expository writing which can be characterised by first-person narration, subjective point of view and expressions of low modality (Taavitsainen in Diller 2001: 196). Despite the introduction of expository writing, some medical treatises, such as academic and surgical texts, still emulate authoritative^[1] and prescriptive features of scholastic philosophy as translated from Latin: it is to wit, it is to note and other prescriptive phrases. In contrast, remedy books do not contain these scholastic features and refer to authorities more vaguely.

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^[1] The sources of knowledge are mentioned by explicitly referring to the authorities, without quoting a specific work.