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Popularizing features in English journal editorials

AbstractJournal editorials allow readers to select the most deserving contributions in the literature andadopt approaches or procedures endorsed by an authority in the field; they act as gatekeepers tothe community of practice and at the same time allow editors to connect directly with their reader-ship. Following a number of studies on the structure and evaluative language of medical editorials,this article investigates the genre’s popularizing features in two unrelated domains (medicine andapp本论文由英语论文网www.51lunwen.org整理提供lied linguistics) linked by a common concern for the practitioner as well as the researcher. While some of these features are known to occur also in popular science articles, others are borrowed fromthe contingent repertoire of science or from non-academic registers, resulting in extremely rich,hybridised textualisations. The evidence collected from a corpus of 40 editorials is thus discussedwith reference to the popularizing pressure placed on editorials and to the needs of ELF readers con-fronted with such texts. Possible avenues for further research are also suggested, in the light of cur-rent literature on intercultural academic discourse. 

1. Introduction

Popularization, meaning the dissemination of scientific findings outside the communi-ties that produce and to a certain extent ‘own’ such knowledge, helps to maintain a vitalrelationship between researchers and the general public. As most scientists rely on publicfunding and favourable legislation, regular coverage of their activities in newspapers, pop-ular magazines, websites and broadcasts contributes to the accountability and transpar-ency of ongoing research projects. Communicating scientific knowledge to lay audiencesis no simple matter, however, as it requires a shift between two different types of discourseor narrative, according to Myers’s well-known definition:The professional articles create what I call a narrative of science; they follow theargument of the scientist, arrange time into a parallel series of simultaneous eventsall supporting their claim, and emphasize in their syntax and vocabulary the concep-tual structure of the discipline. The popularizing articles, on the other hand, presenta sequential narrative of nature in which the plant or animal, not the scientific activ-ity, is the subject, the narrative is chronological, and the syntax and vocabularyemphasize the externality of nature to scientific practices (1990a, p. 142).Yet the traditional separation between expert and layperson is anything but stable,since every scientific community comprises ‘‘a number of variously organised social struc-tures, whose internal relationships change and whose connections with non-scientificgroups are also varied and changeable’’ (Whitley, 1985, p. 11). Popularization is thus amatter of degree and operates along a continuum, with practitioners positioned some-where in the middle, between researchers and the educated public. As observed by Myers,‘‘When I go to the doctor, I treat her as an expert in medicine, but her relation to currentmedical research will generally be as a continuing student, not as a participant, and themedical journals have to perform a kind of popularizing function for her’’ (2003,p. 268). While popularization has been widely reported as a textual phenomenon in newspa-pers and popular science magazi本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。