Until recently, the notion of a "rhetoric of science" may have sounded oxymoronic. Traditional conceptions of science as the embodiment of disinterested, objective knowledge of nature, coupled with perceptions of rhetoric as empty verbiage, subterfuge, or stylistic embellishment, made science and rhetoric appear quite incompatible. However, recent…

Analyzes several examples of metalanguage from current literature on professional writing, applying three principles for evaluating metalanguage in industry and academe. Considers a potentially effective metalanguage based on simple grammatical expressions. (MM)

Discusses translation problems resulting from semantic differences in legal and sociopolitical vocabulary, and the translator's responsibility in exposing erroneous or false presuppositions found in the source document. (AM)

Reviews distinctions between negative and positive letters and summarizes the advice commonly offered for conveying negative messages. Outlines the tenets of Grice's theory of conversational implicature, and discusses sociolinguistic explanations for the use of indirectness in negative messages. Analyzes the texts of several letters, using Grice's…

Discusses the dichotomy between legal terminology and legal discourse, and its implications for translation. (AM)

A study examined the effectiveness of messages to stockholders in the annual reports of four Chief Executive Officers (CEO's) representing corporations that are struggling to recover from financial losses or declining profits. The examination first considered each CEO's syntax and diction, then each CEO's awareness of audience and clarity of…

Analysis of how students of English for Science and Engineering use certain categories of nouns in their technical writing projects revealed a significant use of "sub-technical" and "text-structuring" words serving both referential and discourse-oriented functions. The use of matching or cloze-type and open-ended writing exercises to improve…

Argues that an understanding of professional and popular science writers' goals provides a basis for both explaining and evaluating their language use. Suggests that charges normally made against both types of writing deflect attention from the obstacles writers face and the ways in which they use language to overcome these obstacles. (KEH)

The extensive use of clausal embedding in legal language is examined. The extent and depth of left-branching, nested, and right- branching clauses in the 1972 British Road Traffic Act are also studied. The complexity of the resulting constructions, and the problems created for comprehension are described. The analysis reveals complex sequences of…

A description of scientific language using three approaches: text, textualization, and discourse. Scientific discourse is analogous to universal deep structure; text, to surface variations in diverse languages; and textualization, to transformational processes. The relationship of the primary and secondary (scientific) cultures and their languages…

The following paper deals with the importance of genre in academic and professional engineering discourse. The main objective is to explore the use of analogy and metaphor in one specific genre, namely civil engineering research journal articles both in English and in Spanish. Thus, we will start by briefly outlining the use of metaphor in…

Use of complex noun phrases, complex nominals, and other nominalized expressions has been a controversial characteristics of academic and professional writing. To the specialist community it is an indispensable linguistic device that brings precision and clarity and removes ambiguity by promoting text cohesion and facilitating reference to…

Suggests that speech act theory can help researchers and teachers in professional communication to define indirectness more precisely and to determine when it is appropriate and can provide them with a means of analyzing texts and refining rhetorical principles. (ARH)

A study investigated the usefulness of instructional materials on the writing of scientific articles by comparing the descriptions of abstracts offered in the textbook with a sample of abstracts drawn from four fields of medicine (clinical medicine, surgery, epidemiology, basic sciences). The comparison was confined to abstracts of results-focused…

The entire process of legal writing would be shorter and more effective if writers would give as much attention to the politics of the rhetorical situation as they do to legal research. To do that requires the following considerations: (1) understanding the three dramatic elements in the rhetorical situation (audience, purpose, tone); (2)…