Volume 12, Issue 1 (2021)
LRR 2021, 12(1): 303-327 |
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Shariatzadeh M, Haghbin F, Ameri H. The Study of the Inverse Flow of Grammatical Metaphor in the Process of Popularization of Scientific Articles in the Mass Media. LRR 2021; 12 (1) :303-327
URL: http://lrr.modares.ac.ir/article-14-27367-en.html
URL: http://lrr.modares.ac.ir/article-14-27367-en.html
1- PhD Candidate in Linguistics, Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran
2- Professor of Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Literature, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran ,fhaghbin@alzahra.ac.ir
3- Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
2- Professor of Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Literature, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran ,
3- Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract: (3100 Views)
The present paper on the reverse flow of Grammatical metaphor has surveyed the usage of grammatical metaphor in two varieties of Scientific articles- medical academic articles and medical popularized articles- with the same topics.
This subject was chosen to be studied aiming to discover the differences between language structures that scientific journalists and academic authors use to transfer scientific ideas and issues in their articles. Grammatical metaphor is the concept that Halliday uses in Systemic functional grammar and it means changing one grammatical category to another; in this process verbs and adjectives change to noun and clauses to nominal groups as well. This process leads to increase of lexical density and also complexity and abstraction of the text. Findings of this study show that authors of popularized scientific articles to publish their writings in mass media, usually simplify the grammatical structures in addition to lexicon. To reach this aim and also to justify simplified texts with the normal and congruent process of transferring meanings via language, avoid using grammatical metaphor in their texts.
2. Methodology
Grammatical metaphor is a metaphor that replaces a grammatical structure with another and conveys a similar meaning. In other words, replacing one grammatical form with another grammatical form is called grammatical metaphor.
The main manifestation of the grammatical metaphor is nominalization. Nominalization is the most common type of grammatical metaphor at the lexical level that increases the density of information.
This structure, which is considered as one of the features and characteristics of the language of science, increases the lexical density and, consequently, the semantic complexity of scientific texts.
According to the studies that have been done in this field so far, grammatical metaphor is of special importance in the evolution of scientific writings and is a characteristic feature of this type of discourse.
In this research, the authors also try to examine and compare the corpuses that has been selected from technical and popularized Persian scientific texts and answer the question of whether the use of grammatical metaphor in these two styles of same linguistic species is different, and how can this be explained if there is a difference?
The data of the present study in the specialized scientific language section are taken from one hundred technical medical articles in the fields of cardiovascular diseases, neurology, breast cancer, diabetes and MS published in scientific-research journals approved by the Ministry of Health. Also, in the mass media section, one hundred articles with similar topics to technical articles have been selected from the scientific pages of widely circulated newspapers and the scientific sections of cyberspace databases.
After collecting the data, it was necessary to measure the frequency of using grammatical metaphors in data from scientific-research articles and popularized scientific articles in the field of medical disciplines mentioned.
The aim is to investigate the differences in the frequency of usage of grammatical metaphor in scientific-specialized texts and popularized scientific texts and also to examine the results of these differences in recognizing the characteristics of grammatical metaphor in different linguistic types.
To achieve this goal, first the sentences of one hundred scientific-research articles and one hundred popularized scientific articles with similar topics were identified. then sentences and clauses containing grammatical metaphors in both types of articles also were recognized.
In the next step the congruent expression corresponding to each of them was reconstructed and the lexical density of each of these two types of expression was measured to reveal all the aspects of reverse flow of grammatical metaphor.
Then the results were statistically, analytically and descriptively reviewed to provide an appropriate answer to this question that what is the use of grammatical metaphor construction in two different types of Persian scientific language and how grammatical, lexical and discourse consequences related to this difference affect readers' understanding of science.
3.Results
After analyzing the data of this research, it was found that the authors of technical scientific articles used 44.53% grammatical metaphor in expressing their content and the authors of popularized scientific articles used about 10.94% of this construction.
Figure1.
The frequency of grammatical metaphor in the technical and popularized article
For this reason, readers often have difficulty understanding the content of specialized articles with a high rate of usage of grammatical metaphor, which leads to the formation of long sentences with high lexical density.
This is due to the different nature of the two figures in expressing the same meaning. The scientific language used by experts often results in a different interpretation of the experience by changing the structure of the adaptive language, and the use of grammatical metaphor is one way to achieve these different interpretations. For this reason, readers often have difficulty understanding the content of specialized articles with a high rate of grammatical metaphor - which leads to long sentences with high lexical density -. The reverse flow of grammatical metaphor that occurs in the writing of public science articles is an effective tool for conceptualizing science for the general public.
This subject was chosen to be studied aiming to discover the differences between language structures that scientific journalists and academic authors use to transfer scientific ideas and issues in their articles. Grammatical metaphor is the concept that Halliday uses in Systemic functional grammar and it means changing one grammatical category to another; in this process verbs and adjectives change to noun and clauses to nominal groups as well. This process leads to increase of lexical density and also complexity and abstraction of the text. Findings of this study show that authors of popularized scientific articles to publish their writings in mass media, usually simplify the grammatical structures in addition to lexicon. To reach this aim and also to justify simplified texts with the normal and congruent process of transferring meanings via language, avoid using grammatical metaphor in their texts.
- Introduction
2. Methodology
Grammatical metaphor is a metaphor that replaces a grammatical structure with another and conveys a similar meaning. In other words, replacing one grammatical form with another grammatical form is called grammatical metaphor.
The main manifestation of the grammatical metaphor is nominalization. Nominalization is the most common type of grammatical metaphor at the lexical level that increases the density of information.
This structure, which is considered as one of the features and characteristics of the language of science, increases the lexical density and, consequently, the semantic complexity of scientific texts.
According to the studies that have been done in this field so far, grammatical metaphor is of special importance in the evolution of scientific writings and is a characteristic feature of this type of discourse.
In this research, the authors also try to examine and compare the corpuses that has been selected from technical and popularized Persian scientific texts and answer the question of whether the use of grammatical metaphor in these two styles of same linguistic species is different, and how can this be explained if there is a difference?
The data of the present study in the specialized scientific language section are taken from one hundred technical medical articles in the fields of cardiovascular diseases, neurology, breast cancer, diabetes and MS published in scientific-research journals approved by the Ministry of Health. Also, in the mass media section, one hundred articles with similar topics to technical articles have been selected from the scientific pages of widely circulated newspapers and the scientific sections of cyberspace databases.
After collecting the data, it was necessary to measure the frequency of using grammatical metaphors in data from scientific-research articles and popularized scientific articles in the field of medical disciplines mentioned.
The aim is to investigate the differences in the frequency of usage of grammatical metaphor in scientific-specialized texts and popularized scientific texts and also to examine the results of these differences in recognizing the characteristics of grammatical metaphor in different linguistic types.
To achieve this goal, first the sentences of one hundred scientific-research articles and one hundred popularized scientific articles with similar topics were identified. then sentences and clauses containing grammatical metaphors in both types of articles also were recognized.
In the next step the congruent expression corresponding to each of them was reconstructed and the lexical density of each of these two types of expression was measured to reveal all the aspects of reverse flow of grammatical metaphor.
Then the results were statistically, analytically and descriptively reviewed to provide an appropriate answer to this question that what is the use of grammatical metaphor construction in two different types of Persian scientific language and how grammatical, lexical and discourse consequences related to this difference affect readers' understanding of science.
3.Results
After analyzing the data of this research, it was found that the authors of technical scientific articles used 44.53% grammatical metaphor in expressing their content and the authors of popularized scientific articles used about 10.94% of this construction.
Figure1.
The frequency of grammatical metaphor in the technical and popularized article
For this reason, readers often have difficulty understanding the content of specialized articles with a high rate of usage of grammatical metaphor, which leads to the formation of long sentences with high lexical density.
This is due to the different nature of the two figures in expressing the same meaning. The scientific language used by experts often results in a different interpretation of the experience by changing the structure of the adaptive language, and the use of grammatical metaphor is one way to achieve these different interpretations. For this reason, readers often have difficulty understanding the content of specialized articles with a high rate of grammatical metaphor - which leads to long sentences with high lexical density -. The reverse flow of grammatical metaphor that occurs in the writing of public science articles is an effective tool for conceptualizing science for the general public.
Keywords: Science popularization, Science in media, Grammatical metaphor, Academic medical articles, Popularized medical articles, Halliday Systemic Functional linguistics
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