Turbulent periods and the development of the scientific research article, 1735–1835
The results of a previous study (
Banks 2018) suggest that the
development of scientific writing is more conservative in times of great turbulence. In an attempt to verify this, samples were
taken from the
Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences and the
Philosophical Transactions for the
years 1735, 1785 and 1835. The development over the years 1735 to 1785 was compared to that between 1785 and 1835. Analysis of the
grammatical functions and semantic categories of themes and of process types indicates that there is some evidence in favour of
the conjecture that scientific writers are more conservative in times of turbulence. Whilst this is not conclusive, it suggests
that further research would be fruitful.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Some historical background
- 3.Corpus for the present study
- 4.Theme: Grammatical function
- 5.Theme: Semantic fields
- 6.Process types
- 7.Conclusion: Evidence for the conjecture
- Notes
-
References
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Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Banks, David
2024.
Preamble. In
Early Academic Periodical Translation,
► pp. 1 ff.

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