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In the nineteenth century, a number of new science names were established, including biology (1802), palaeontology (1838), ethnology (1842), gynaecology
(1847), histology (1847), embryology (1859) and ecology (1866) (Savory, 1967: 89–90). Novel concepts were introduced in many fields, particularly in biology, chemistry, geology, medicine and physics. A large variety of new words had to be coined to meet the new needs – further examples of focussing and continuing elaboration of the standard. Many of these words were borrowed from Latin and Greek, or coined using Latin and Greek elements, thus increasing the number of what are called Neo-Latin/Greek Internationalisms – or NGIs, as Gorlach¨ (1999) calls them – in English. The Greek elements that can now freely combine to form technical terms include both prefixed elements such as apo-, auto-, bio-, di-, dia-, eco-, hetero-, neo-, poly-, tele-, thermo- and xeno-, and suffixal ones such as -cracy, -gamy, -graph(y), -logy, -meter, -nomy, -pathy, -phoby, -phone and -scope (Gorlach,¨ 1999: 111–12).
The consequences of augmenting the technical and scientific lexis of the English language by systematic introduction of neo-classical and other Latinate elements were twofold. As Gorlach¨ (1999: 114–15) notes, the stock of these words is international, and they are widely intelligible across language boundaries. They have therefore significantly increased the transparency of English worldwide, and greatly enhanced its role as an international lingua franca of science and technology. The inevitable downside of neo-classical coinages and extensive borrowing is that they make English vocabulary less transparent and intelligible to native speakers, and are hence instrumental in raising a ‘language bar’ between the educated and uneducated. The sharp contrast between a largely Germanic common core and non-native special-register lexis amounts to a dual lexicon – or ‘double tongue’, as Adamson (1989) calls it – causing linguistic insecurity and problems of acquisition. They are reflected in a wide variety of vocabulary-related activities ranging from spelling bees to courses in vocabulary building in school curricula, and continue to guarantee the popularity of usage guides. Large portions of these guides are devoted to lexical matters – from ‘elegant variation’ and ‘superfluous words’ to the famous ‘pairs and snares’, contemptuous and contemptible, deprecate and depreciate, masterful and masterly, etc. (Fowler, 1926).
5.3.5 |
Registers |
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As was shown in Sections 5.3.3 and 5.3.4, standard English grammar and vocabulary both have a common core but may vary according to register. We have also seen that there have been a number of centres of focussing to promote linguistic standardisation in particular registers. One of the first to have a supralocal impact on register-specific language was no doubt the king’s chancery in the fifteenth century (see Section 5.2.1). It is nevertheless arguable whether chancery writings served as immediate stylistic models in genres other than official documents. The most influential of these documents were the Acts of Parliament, the first one being issued in English in 1483.
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The Statutes of the Realm are characterised by compactness and precision of expression. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries these characteristics were reflected in linguistic features such as participial adjectives with anaphoric reference (the (afore)mentioned, the (afore)said), compound adverbs (herewith, thereof), and compound noun-phrase determiners (this his realm, any our grant). The requirement of precision gave rise to new clausal links such as except and provided (that) based on French and Latin models. Some of these features continue as the hallmark of legalese today (the said, herewith), while others have become obsolete in all registers (this his). Others still, typically conjunctions like except and provided that, spread to other registers – but not without native competition from less formal contexts of use. One of the competitors of except was unless, which surpassed it as a conjunction in most contexts in the seventeenth century (Rissanen, 1999b: 200 and 2000: 126–7).
In the course of the last four or five hundred years, the functional elaboration of standard English has been marked by the proliferation of genre-specific styles. One way to weigh their similarities and differences is to consider particular individual linguistic features of these styles, as was done above with statutory language. A more complex task is to compare the various paths of development undergone by whole genres across time. This kind of reconstruction can be based on the idea that there are sets of functionally related linguistic features which co-occur in a genre at any given time. It has been established by quantitative methods, for instance, that face-to-face conversations and personal letters today typically show high frequencies of features expressing personal involvement, including firstand second-person pronouns, private verbs (e.g. think, know), that-deletion, present-tense verbs, contractions (it’s, won’t), hedges (maybe, sort of), emphatics and amplifiers (really, totally). By contrast, academic texts, such as scientific research articles, exhibit few involvement markers. They focus on information and display features such as high frequencies of nouns, prepositions, attributive adjectives, long words and varied lexis (Biber, 1988, 1995).
Register comparisons based on bundles of linguistic features show several contextual dimensions reflected in linguistic variation in different kinds of speech and writing in present-day English. Comparisons carried out with historical material from the early Modern English period onwards also reveal trends of diachronic register evolution along these dimensions. Apart from involved as opposed to informational production, they include situation-dependent as opposed to elaborated reference, and non-impersonal vs impersonal style. The three dimensions all distinguish between stereotypically oral (conversational) registers and stereotypically literate (written expository) registers. Biber & Finegan (1997) discuss how such popular written registers as essays and fiction largely develop in a more oral direction along these three dimensions between 1650 and 1990 in both British and American English. By contrast, such specialist expository registers as legal, medical and other scientific writings reveal a consistent trend towards the more literate end of these dimensions: they all show varying tendencies of
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increasingly informational production, elaborated reference and impersonal style (see also Biber et al., 1994).
Some aspects of this generic specialisation may be illustrated by two scientific texts, both describing experiments which deal with electricity, an expanding field of research referred to in Section 5.3.4 above. The first passage comes from the first book on electricity to appear in the English language. It was published in 1675 by Robert Boyle (1627–91), an Anglo-Irish chemist and founding member of the Royal Society.
E X P E R. I
ANd first, having with a very mild heat slowly evaporated about a fourth part of good Turpentine, I found, that the remaining body would not, when cold, continue a Liquor, but harden’d into a transparent Gum almost like Amber, which, as I look’d for, proved Electrical.
E X P E R. II
SEcondly, by mixing two such liquid Bodies as Petroleum and strong Spirit of Nitre in a certain proportion, and then distilling them till there remained a dry mass, I obtain’d a brittle substance as black as Jet; and whose Superficies (where it was contiguous to the Retort) was glossie like that Mineral when polished; and as I expected I found it also to resemble Jet, in being endowed with an Electrical Faculty. (Robert Boyle, Experiments and Notes about the Mechanical Origine or Production of Electricity, 1675: 21–2)
The second extract is taken from An Elementary Treatise on Electricity by James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79), the Scottish physicist and developer of the theory of electromagnetism. The treatise, based on his earlier, more extensive exposition, was published posthumously in 1881.
Electric phenomena of Tourmaline
141.] Certain crystals of tourmaline and of other minerals possess what might be called Electric Polarity. Suppose a crystal of tourmaline to be at a uniform temperature, and apparently free from electrification on its surface. Let its temperature be now raised, the crystal remaining insulated. One end will be found positively and the other end negatively electrified. Let the surface be deprived of this apparent electrification by means of a flame or otherwise; then if the crystal be made still hotter, electrification of the same kind as before will appear, but if the crystal be cooled the end which was positive when the crystal was heated will become negative. (James Clerk Maxwell,
An Elementary Treatise on Electricity, 2nd edition, 1888: 117)
As both texts have few time and place adverbials or adverbs in general, they do not rely on the external context for interpretation. But neither are they very elaborated in terms of reference: they contain, for instance, only a few nominalisations (e.g. electrification in Maxwell) and wh-relatives (which . . . proved Electrical, whose
Superficies . . . , in Boyle and which was positive in Maxwell). The two texts, however, markedly differ in their use of impersonal style, which is signalled by frequent use of passives, both agentless and by-passives, and passive postnominal