Scientific and Humanistic Texts: Characteristics and Styles

Scientific Texts: An Analysis

The scientific literature often proposes theoretical explanations on various aspects of reality. The texts are most applicable to technical, scientific innovations and factual situations, showing how the nature of reality may be modified thanks to such developments.

Specialized Scientific Texts

The recipient is a subject matter expert in a specific language and raises the issue professionally.

Informative Scientific Texts

The recipient is not a specialist, so the content of the text is adapted to make it intelligible, and scientific precision is sacrificed in favor of understanding.

Key Features of Scientific Language

Unambiguous Voices: Monosemic words transmit information as concretely and clearly as possible. This language is characterized by three basic features: objectivity, universality, and accuracy.

• Objectivity: Information is addressed in a neutral and denotative way, as these texts predominantly use the referential or informative function of language.
• Universality: There is a tendency towards linguistic homogenization, revealed by the incorporation of foreign words, such as Anglicisms in technology and Greco-Latin roots in many scientific disciplines.
• Accuracy: Reality is defined or named more accurately, avoiding ambiguities or polysemic expressions.

Common Elements in Scientific Texts

Definitions and taxonomies are common. Scientific texts use deductive, inductive, and explanatory approaches. They often combine problem-solution structures, descriptive sequences (including diagrams, pictures, and graphics), narrative sequences (explaining processes, events, or situations), prescriptive or instructional sequences (in technical texts explaining the operation or composition of an object), and argumentative sequences (defending the validity of a particular scientific hypothesis).

Scientific Text Style

Logical consistency, proper ordering and hierarchy, objective expression (avoiding ambiguity and connotation), and clear exposition (sometimes using redundancy) are key. These features are realized through linguistic phenomena such as the frequent use of syntactic constructions that express logical relationships, a preference for impersonal constructions to focus attention on the subject and hide the author's personal values, and a predominance of adjectives and complex noun phrases due to the desire for lexical precision.

Humanistic Texts: An Overview

Humanistic texts are informative and objective, with no single predominant form of speech. They involve careful planning, formal registration, a preference for precise terminology, abstract lexicon, and varied genres.

Essays

Essays are usually brief and share features with factual scientific texts, literary texts, and journalistic opinion pieces. They have an informative purpose, seeking clarity and scholarship. They address issues related to various human and social sciences, presenting a point of view without the rigor and precision of science. The style is often considered literary.

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Shortening, abbreviation, abbreviations, and acronyms are common in both scientific and humanistic texts.