Lecture 13 The Problem of Functional Styles

Scientific Prose Style Peculiarities (Galperin)

• Use of special terminology, new coinages

E.g. Phoneme, morpheme, lexeme; polysemy, hyponym, meronym, tautonym. Претекст, прецедентный текст; наносема.

• The words employed tend to be used in their primary logical meanings. New terms are explained and clearly defined

E.g. This relation will be called endonymy. It is based on the notion of semantic encapsulation, and involves the incorporation of the meaning of one lexical item in the meaning of another. The term whose meaning is included in this way will be called the endonym, and the containing term will be called the exonym (Cruse Lexical Semantics)

Scientific Prose Style Peculiarities (Galperin)

• Sentences are complete, compound or complex. Certain sentence patterns are used (postulatory, formulative, argumentative)

E.g. However, the predicate displays at least one of the characteristics of a semantic dependant, and that is that it is expected to bring to the construction semantic traits not encapsulated in the subject; furthermore, in cases of pleonasm, it is the predicate whose specificity must be increased to achieve normality: ?The speaker is speaking → The speaker is speaking French. (Cruse Lexical Semantics)

• Use of quotations, references and foot-notes

Scientific Prose Style Peculiarities (Galperin)

• Impersonality (frequent use of passive constructions and “we”)

BUT! In the Humanities sphere patterns can be more personal.

E.g. The gases can be made to react much more rapidly by the use of a suitable catalytic agent… If a piece of asbestos fibre is steeped in a solution of platinum chloride in hydrochloric acid and then heated, the asbestos becomes coated… (Chemistry Textbook)