Instituto Superior del Profesorado “Dr. Joaquín V. González”

Departamento de Inglés

Objectivity in Academic Writing: A Study of Some of the Most Salient

Linguistic Rhetorical Devices Employed in Radford’s Textbooks

with the Aim of Construing a De-agentivized Prose.

Fernando Damián Mortoro

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ABSTRACT

Linguists in the field of generative grammar make use of the scientific or hypothetico-

deductive method of inquiry. Such method of inquiry requires generative grammarians to

employ a number of rhetorical devices in order to present their theories in an elegant and

objectified fashion. To that end, generative linguists should make use of a number of lexico-

grammatical devices aimed at de-agentivizing the prose of the texts they employ in order to

communicate their findings to the rest of their linguistic community.

This paper explores some of the most salient objectifying rhetorical devices employed in

Radford’s textbooks, more specifically Radford’s Syntactic Theory and the Structure of

English (1997) and Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English (2004). Such

objectifying lexico-grammatical devices include: (a) the employment of abstract rhetors, (b)

nominalizations, (c) the use of non-finite forms of the verb, (d) passivization, and (e) the

employment of the historic present tense. Such devices are mostly employed in the description

of the technical aspects of the theory.

It is important to point out here that this study is by no means representative of each and

every sentence employed in either Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English (570 pages) or

Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English (526 pages). Only some passages and

sentences thought to be representative of Radford’s prose have been selected for the purpose of

linguistic analysis. Last but not least, it is worth noting here that Radford’s prose, like any other

text, is neither completely and thoroughly objective nor subjective: apart from the objectifying

devices mentioned above, Radford’s prose contains modalizations, evaluative statements,

hedges and the other agentivizing devices that clearly point to the presence of the writer’s

subjectivity in his text. The study of how and to what extent the writer is present in his text

would deserve a paper of its own right. This paper explores the writer’s employment of the

linguistic devices that are used in the production of an objectified, de-agentivized and

thingified prose.

1. Introduction

Scientific discourse is believed to simply report or describe facts with almost no

human intervention (Hyland, 1998:14): “In a strictly empiricist view, a scientific text is

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regarded as a neutral descriptive medium which allows a scientist to act simply as “a

messenger relaying the truth from nature” (Gilbert, 1976:285). However, as will be

clear from our unfolding argument, writers of scientific papers do intervene in their

texts: to begin with, they are the “linguistic creators” of the texts they produce in order

to communicate their findings to the rest of their scientific communities. The methods,

results, and interpretations of their scientific findings are represented by propositions

which are expressed in ordinary human language. In other words, language is always

mediating between reality and the cognitive entities it represents, as illustrated by

Klimovsky’s quotation (2001:33):

“…[L]a captación de entidades no es un fenómeno de nuestra conducta que se ofrezca a nuestro conocimiento sin el auxilio de algunos dispositivos, entre los cuales el principal con que contamos es el lenguaje ordinario. Los términos y vocabulario de este nos permiten una primera conceptuación de la realidad…”

The idea that language is always mediating between cognition and reality has a

long standing tradition in western scientific philosophy:

“…[El] concepto aristotélico de verdad […] se funda en el vínculo que existe entre nuestro pensamiento, expresado a través del lenguaje, y lo que ocurre fuera del lenguaje, en la realidad. Aristóteles se refiere a esta relación como “adecuación” o “correspondencia” entre pensamiento y realidad. De allí que a la noción aristotélica se la denomina también “concepción semántica” de la verdad, pues la semántica, como es sabido, se ocupa de las relaciones del lenguaje con la realidad, que está más allá del lenguaje.” (Klimovsky, 2001:24).

Given the primacy of linguistic considerations in the creation of scientific

knowledge, it is only natural that writers of scientific papers should make use of

elaborate rhetorical devices in order to persuade their audiences of the truthness of their

propositions. Moreover, as Hyland (1998:16) claims, one of the most important

rhetorical objectives involves “persuading readers that a particular observation actually

lies beyond questions of persuasion and is situated within the realm of fact.”

Linguistically, there are a number of strategies standardly employed in the creation of

an objectified, impersonalized and de-agentivized prose. These include (a) the use of

abstract rhetors (Hyland, 1998:172), nominalizations, the employment of non-finite

forms, passivization, and the employment of the historic present tense.

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Therefore, one may confidently claim that academic writing is the objectified

presentation of a subjective and linguistically mediated perspective, in accordance with

the requirements of the scientific community. According to Hyland (1998:16) scientific

discourse is “grounded in disciplinary […] practices transmitted through socialization

and secured via a system of peer review. In other words, scientific knowledge is seen to

be socially contingent and scientific discourse to be a rhetorical artifact.” Writers of

academic texts belong to well-defined discourse communities, which possess common

goals and participatory mechanisms, and whose information exchange is conducted in

accordance with community specific genres and a highly specialized terminology

(Swales, 1990:29).

2. Purpose

The purpose of this paper, the final ‘tesina’ dissertation, a requirement for my

specialization course in Linguistics at I. S. P. Dr. Joaquín V. González, is to make a

small and modest, though I hope valuable, contribution to the understanding of the

rhetorical aspects of the language of scientific English. More specifically, I will be

dealing with the language employed in the field of Linguistics by writer Andrew

Radford in his textbooks Syntactic theory and the structure of English: A Minimalist

Approach (1997) and Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English (2004)1.

Given the overwhelming nature of this enterprise and considering the fact that this paper

focuses on qualitative rather than quantitative aspects of language, I have deemed it

sensible to illustrate my points with only some passages from MS and STSE which, I

believe, are representative of their prose. The reason for choosing passages from

Radford’s textbooks as the corpus for my investigation is two-fold: firstly, Radford’s

prose contains the rhetorical features I am interested in investigating, namely

objectifying rhetorical devices such as the employment of abstract rhetors,

nominalizations, the employment of non-finite verbs, passivization and the employment

of the historic present tense. Secondly, given the fact that Radford’s textbooks have

been employed by teachers of Linguistics at Teacher Training Colleges in Buenos Aires

City2 for at least the last ten years, and considering that tesina dissertations are often

1 From now onwards, I will use the short-hands STSE and MS. 2 Namely, I.S.P. Dr. Joaquín V. González, I.E.S. en Lenguas Vivas Juan Ramón Fernández and Escuela Nacional Superior en Lenguas Vivas Sofía E. B. de Spangenberg.

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included in teachers’ syllabuses as either compulsory or suggested reading material, this

paper could be of interest to teachers and students of linguistics at undergraduate level.

Moreover, given the fact that Teacher Training College students are presently being

required to write papers in classes such as Linguistics & Discourse Analysis, a paper

that concentrates on the lexico-grammatical manifestation of some of the rhetorical

devices employed in academic texts should undoubtedly be of interest to undergraduate

students at Teacher Training College, since reflecting upon the mechanisms employed

in the production of academic texts should help students become better and more critical

readers and writers of research papers themselves. Moreover, there is evidence that lack

of knowledge regarding the rhetorical features of scientific writing leads to lower

efficiency in the production of academic writing (Gosden, 1992, in Hyland, 1998:8).

Swales (1985:42, in Hyland, 1998:8) claims that “such demands [linguistic and

rhetorical fluency in a second language] may be responsible for the low level of NNS3

contributions to the scientific literature in English.”

3. 1. The Representational Function of Language

Halliday (1994:106) claims that speakers make use of the lexico-grammatical

resources available to them in the language in order to linguistically construe their view

of their inner and outer experience:

“There is a basic difference […] between inner and outer experience: between what we experience as going on ‘out there’, in the world around us, and what we experience as going on inside ourselves, in the world of consciousness and imagination.”

Our inner and outer experiences can be construed grammatically by means of the

realization of the system of transitivity. The transitivity system (Halliday, 1994:107)

construes experience by means of a set of processes, participants and accompanying

circumstances. There are six such processes and have come to be known in the literature

(Halliday, 1994:107) as relational, existential, material, mental, verbal and behavioral.

Here I will briefly review relational identifying, mental and verbal processes, given the

fact that these are the process types that are directly relevant to our discussion of

objectivity.

3 NNS stands for Non-Native Speakers of English.

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Relational identifying processes involve the use of copular verbs, such as be or

seem, which establish a relationship of equality between the two participants in the

clause:

(1) “The only structural learning which children face in acquiring their native language is the task of determining the appropriate value for each of the relevant structural parameters along which languages vary.”(Radford, 1997:21)

However, the two participants conjoined by is have very different functions. In (1) the

participant The only structural learning which children face in acquiring their native

language has the role of Identifier and the participant the task of determining the

appropriate value for each of the relevant structural parameters along which languages

vary has the role of identified (Halliday, 1994:122). Therefore, identifying relational

processes (be, seem) establish an Identifier/Identified (or signifier/signified) relationship

between the two participants in the clause. Let us take another example in order to

illustrate our point: in sentences such as John is a brave man, John is Identifier (or

Signifier) and a brave man is Identified (or Signified), given the fact that the participant

a brave man assigns some “value” to the participant John, which, in turn, has a

referential function: in other words, the term that has reference, the Identifier/Signifier,

is assigned some value by the phrase that functions as Identified/Signified. (Identifying

relational clauses will be further dealt with in section 4 on nominalizations below)

Mental processes construe inner experience and are related to three possible

subcategories: cognition (“…the goal of the linguist is to determine what it is that native

speakers know about their native language…” (Radford, 2004:6), volition (“an

important question which we want our theory of UG to answer is …” (Radford,

2004:8), or perception (“how is it when we see a sort of irregular figure drawn in front

of us we see it as a triangle?” (Radford, 2004:12); verbal processes are related to the

metalinguistic function of language since verbs such as suggest or maintain describe the

speech acts that are being performed by the locutions that contain them (“Chomsky

maintains that the ability to speak and acquire language is unique to human beings”

(Radford, 2004:11). As is clear from the examples just given, verbal processes and

mental verbs of cognition, volition and perception can project a clause, the projected

clause, as the complement of the verbal or mental predicate, housed in the projecting

clause. Such projections are known in the Hallidayian literature as “Metaphenomena”:

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“The projected clause […] stands for a ‘wording’: that is, the phenomenon it represents is a lexicogrammatical one. Take for example ‘I’m not so sure,’ replied the Fat Controller. While the projecting clause replied the Fat Controller represents an ordinary phenomenon of experience, the projected clause I’m not sure represents a second-order phenomenon, something that is itself a representation. We will refer to this as a ‘metaphenomenon’. If we want to argue, the issue is not ‘is he, or is he not, so sure?’ – that is a separate question; it is ‘did he, or did he not, say these words?’” (Halliday, 1994:254)

It is important to clarify here that this is an abstract and idealized picture of the way we

humans construe experiential reality through language: there will be in-between or

borderline cases. As Halliday (1994:107) points out:

“There is no priority of one kind of process over another […] in our concrete visual metaphor, they form a circle and not a line. That is to say, our model of experience, as interpreted through the grammatical system of transitivity, is one of regions within a continuous space; but the continuity is not between two poles, it is round in a loop. To use the analogy of colour: the grammar construes experience like a colour chart, with red blue and yellow as primary colours and purple, green and orange along the borders; not like a physical spectrum, with red at one end and violet at the other.”

Since this is the way in which speakers make use of the lexicogrammatical resources of

the language in order to construe experience, Halliday has coined the expression

“experiential metafunction” to refer to the representational function of language.

In the lines that follow special attention will be given to both mental and verbal

processes. As we will see, these two processes are strategically used in the creation of

an objectified prose in both MS and STSE.

3.2 Abstract Rhetors

It is to be expected that mental and verbal process types require the presence of a

human being functioning as the participant experiencing the mental state (e.g. ‘We

thought that she was on her way’) or performing the verbal action (e.g. ‘We told him

that she was on her way’). Halliday (1994:112) has coined the terms Senser and Sayer

for the participants “experiencing the thinking” and “doing the speaking” respectively.

Radford (1997:326) employs the terms Experiencer and Agent to refer to these two

arguments of the verb. Leaving these terminological discrepancies aside, it is important

to note here that the participants in question, which in the unmarked case occupy the

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position of both logical and grammatical subject4, are expected to be animate entities

capable of rational thinking. However, in MS and STSE we find mental and verbal

clauses that contain abstract inanimate entities functioning as the syntactic subjects of

such clauses. These inanimate participants occupying the subject position within the

clause are known in the literature as abstract rhetors (Hyland, 1998:172) and are

strategically employed in MS and STSE with the aim of objectifying the propositions or

nominalizations introduced by such abstract rhetors, as the following examples (2-9)

illustrate5:

(2) “[A] traditional grammar of English would tell us that the simplest type of finite declarative clause found in English is a sentence like (1) in which a nominal subject is followed by a verbal predicate.” (Radford, 2004:2)

(3) “This [experiment] suggests that the acquisition of grammatical inflections involves the creation of a set of hypotheses about how such inflections are used.” (Radford, 1997:11)

(4) “…such an analysis relies crucially on the assumption that moved constituents leave behind full copies of themselves. It also assumes the possibility of split spellout/discontinuous spellout, in the sense that (in sentences like (15) and (16) above) a PP or CP which is the complement of a particular type of moved constituent can be spelled out in one position (in the position where it originated), and the remainder of the constituent spelled out in another (in the position where it ends up). More generally, it suggests that (in certain structures) there a choice regarding which part of a movement chain gets deleted…” (Radford, 2004:194)

(5) “Icelandic data like (4) suggest that there is a systematic relationship between nominative case assignment and T-agreement.” (Radford, 2004:283)

(6) “The requirement that a theory should explain why grammars have the properties they do is conventionally referred to as the criterion of explanatory adequacy.” (Radford, 2004:8)

(7) “What [sentence] (4) tells us is that the overall phrase privatize hospitals is a verb phrase/VP, and that it comprises the verb/V privatize and the noun/N hospitals.” (Radford, 1997:87)

(8) “Principle (29) claims that all non-terminal nodes branch into two and only two immediate constituents, never more than two, and never fewer than two.” (Radford, 1997:98)

4 Following Halliday (1994: 31), we will define ‘grammatical subject’ as the entity “of which something is predicated” and ‘logical subject’ as “the doer of the action”. The expression ‘grammatical subject’ makes reference to the ‘syntactic subject of the sentence’, and the expression ‘logical subject’ makes reference the ‘semantic subject of the sentence’, that is the actual does of the action or experiencer of the psychological state predicated in the sentence. 5 In examples 1-8 the use of brackets and underlining is mine.

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(9) “The tree diagrams […] make specific claims about how sentences are structured out of successive layers of constituents.” (Radford, 1997:102)

The underlined words and expressions in 2-9 above represent either mental or verbal

processes that contain some inanimate participant in the role of Senser or Sayer. So, for

example, in (4) above, we learn that an “analysis” is capable of undergoing a mental

process (“assume”) or performing a verbal action (“suggest”); in (2), we learn that a

“grammar” of a language is capable of performing a verbal action (“tell”); and in (6) we

are told that a “theory” should be capable of performing a verbal action (“explain”). But

we know that these are not the congruent (i.e. non-metaphorical or unmarked)

realizations of such clauses: in fact, it is linguists and researchers that are capable of

“assuming”, “suggesting”, “telling” and “explaining”, not “analyses”, “grammars” and

“theories”. However, as sentences 2-9 above illustrate, in MS and STSE we do find

sentences in which inanimate abstract entities function as the participants performing

the verbal action or experiencing the mental state. An interesting question for the type

of analysis we are adopting here is “what is the rhetorical effect caused by the

employment of abstract rhetors?” Given the fact that the notional, animate subjects in

sentences 2-9 have been replaced by abstract, inanimate rhetors, one must conclude

that the desired effect is one of objectification (via de-agentivization). So, instead of

sentences such as “I (the linguist) am concerned with grammatical competence rather

grammatical performance,” in which the grammatical and notional subjects of the

sentence coincide, we get metaphorical, objectified sentences such as “Grammar is

concerned with competence rather than performance,” in which the position of syntactic

subject is occupied by the inanimate, abstract noun “grammar”. Thus, the “theory” (in

this case, the theory of internalized (vs. externalized) language) and the “text” that

linguistically construes such a theory become de-agentivized, objectified, or

“thingified” (Thompson, 1996:172), that is, a thing, an entity with an existence of its

own right, autonomous from human agency. Thus, the employment of an objectifying

prose is coherent with generative grammarians’ claim that generative grammar has the

status of a “serious (i.e. scientific)6 field of enquiry”:

“Why do we need to invoke the formal properties of tree structures? Well, any adequate description of any phenomenon in any field of enquiry (in our present case, syntax) must be fully explicit, and to be explicit, it must be formal – i.e. make use only of theoretical constructs which have definable formal properties. The use of a formal apparatus (involving a certain amount

6 The brackets are mine.

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of technical terminology) may seem confusing at first to the beginner, but as in any other serious field of enquiry (e.g. molecular biology) no real progress can be made unless we try to construct formal models of the phenomena we are studying. It would clearly be irrational to accept the use of formalism in one field of enquiry (e.g. molecular biology) while rejecting it in another (e.g. linguistics)” (Radford, 1997: 99)

Halloran (1984 in Hyland 1998) makes a very interesting reflection on the

impersonalizing effect of the use of abstract rhetors:

“Writers can distance themselves from their propositions through the manufacture of “abstract rhetors” (Halloran, 1984) which implies that rhetorical acts can be accomplished without human volition […] this convention of scientific discourse [the employment of “abstract rhetors”] allows the writer to employ verbs such as indicate and imply which contribute to the impersonalisation of the discourse by appearing to make the text or the data the source of epistemic judgments. These represent a linguistic sleight of hand by implying that any reasonable and informed reader would draw the same conclusions. Such forms obscure the functioning of verbal and mental processes by nominalizing a personal projection, thereby encouraging and interpretation close to ‘makes us think that X’, or ‘leads us to the conclusion that X’, rather than ‘my interpretation is that X’.” (Hyland, 1998: 123-4)

It is interesting to note that clauses employing abstract rhetors are instances of

experiential grammatical metaphors (Halliday, 1994:343-353), since they display a

mismatch between the actual representation of the world (in which the linguist does the

“thinking” and the “saying”) and the representation construed by the linguist in the text,

in which “abstract entities” performs such human actions. In the next section, on “non-

negotiability”, I will discuss other lexico-grammatical resources that are commonly

employed in the creation of an objectified prose: namely, the employment of

nominalization and the use of non-finite clauses.

4. Non-Negotiability

4. 1 Nominalization

Another factor contributing to the construing of an objectified prose is

nominalization. According to Halliday (1994:352), nominalizing is a device by means

of which processes and properties, the former being typically worded as verbs and the

latter as adjectives, are reworded metaphorically as noun-like expressions. The

advantage of nominalization is that it enables speakers and writers to construe processes

and properties as participants in relational processes of identification or attribution

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(Halliday, 1994:119-138). In order to illustrate this point, let us see how nominalization

works in the following passage from MS:

(10) “[Very often, performance is an imperfect reflection of competence] a: [we all make occasional slips of the tongue] b, or [occasionally misinterpret something which someone else says to us] c. However, [this doesn’t mean that we don’t know our native language or that we don’t have competence in it] d. [Misproductions and misinterpretations are performance errors] e, [attributable to a variety of performance factors like tiredness, boredom, drunkenness, drugs, external distractions and so forth.] f7”(Radford, 2004: 7)

In (10), clause (b) contains the predication we all make occasional slips of the tongue,

and clause (c) contains the predication we misinterpret something which someone else

says to us. Further below, in clause (e), these two processes (make slips of the tongue

and misinterpret something) are realized as two nominalizations in coordination:

namely misproductions and misinterpretations. Such nominalizations represent the

objectified or thingified versions of the processes for which they stand, since they

function as participants in identifying relational clauses. Clause (b) realizes a material

(Halliday, 1994:109-112) representation of the outer reality it stands for; clause (c)

realizes a mental representation of the inner reality it stands for; clause (e) is realized as

an identifying relational clause in which the nominalizations misproductions and

misinterpretations function as the Identifier participant in the clause, and the nominal

group performance errors functions as the Value participant in the clause.8

Nominalizations are essential in academic writing in that they enable speakers to

pack a lot of information in a simple sentence: as we have just seen, the nominalizations

misproductions and misinterpretations are the compressed versions of two main clauses

in coordination. This grammatical packing and compressing of information is known in

the literature as “meaning condensation.” (Thompson, 1996:171)

From a textual perspective, meaning condensation enables writers and speakers

to thematize information that has previously occupied rhematic position in the clause:

the strings make slips of the tongue and misinterpret something are rhematic in clauses

(b) and (c) respectively. In clause (e) they become thematic. Also, by condensing

information into nominalizations, the content of such clauses acquires the status of a

7 I have bracketed and numbered all ranking (not down-ranked) clauses in passage (9) for clarity of exposition. (For an interesting account of ranking and down-ranked clauses, see Halliday, 1994:218-225 & 242.) 8 For processes types (material, mental, relational, verbal, existential and behavioural) see section 3 above, page 4. For a fully-fledged discussion of process types, see Halliday (1994:109-149)

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presupposition, i.e. information presented as given and non-negotiable (Levinson, 1983:

177). In addition, in condensation, the doer of the process gets reduced or lost: in clause

(b) the doer of the action (we) appears in subject position as unmarked topical theme; in

clause (c), the subject is again (we), in its elliptical guise. Two clauses further down the

text, the subject we has disappeared and has been replaced by the nominalizations

misproductions and misinterpretations. This “vanishing” of the logical subject produces

an effect of objectivity, since the process has now been deprived of its agency: it is non-

negotiable, objectified, thingified. In Thomson’s terms:

“One reason why nominalization is in harmony with the ideology of science, and of academic, formal writing in general is that it allows processes to be objectified, to be expressed without the human doer […] Nominalized processes are non-finite: they are not tied to any specific time in relation to the time of speaking. Thus a nominalized process is detached from the here-and-now in a way that is not normally possible for a process expressed by a verb. It is therefore inherently generalized – again in harmony with the aim of science to establish general truths not tied to specific conditions of time or observer. If we go a step further, we can see that, by removing the option of a Mood, a nominalized process has been made non-negotiable. This is also intimately connected with the fact that it has been ‘thingified’ by being expressed as a noun. Science aims to establish not only general truths, but unassailable, certain truths.” (Thompson, 1996: 172)

4.2 Non-finite forms

There is a halfway house type of lexico-grammatical structure between the

nominalization and the fully-fledged finite verb: the non-finite forms of the verb,

namely infinitival, present participial, past participial and gerundial forms of the verb: in

MS section 1.2, for instance, out of 237 verbal forms (i.e. both finite and non-finite),

non-finite forms of the verb amount to 61: 21 infinitival forms; 16 present participial

forms; 12 past participial forms; 12 gerundial forms. These non-finite forms of the verb

share some features with nominalizations: in both nominalizations and non-finite verb

forms, the doer of the action is not present, which makes the non-finite clause less

accessible for negotiation. As Martin (1997:64) points out, the subject is an

interpersonal element, given the fact that it is the element that bears the modal

responsibility of the proposition (or proposal) in question.

In addition, non-finite forms of the verb are not anchored in time, which makes

them suitable for the generation of generalized, impersonal, objectified statements.

Finite forms of the verb, on the other hand, are interpersonal elements by virtue of the

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fact that speakers use them to present their statements from different temporal

perspectives. Moreover, finite verbs usually carry aspectual information regarding the

duration, completion or iteration of an action, features which are also dependent on the

speaker’s subjective viewpoint. Therefore one must conclude that subject and finite

constituents are interpersonal elements. As Martin (1997:62) points out:

“…The Mood element makes the clause ‘negotiable’ and consists of Finite, Subject and (sometimes) modal Adjunct(s). The finite makes a clause negotiable by coding it as positive or negative and by grounding it, either in terms of time (it is/it isn’t: it was/it wasn’t: it will/it won’t) or in terms of modality (it may/it will/it must, etc.) The subject is the element in terms of which the subject can be negotiated. Consequently, the absence of the subject and the finite element in the non-finite clause makes them ideal for the presentation of propositional content in an objectified and impersonal style…”

To put our discussion under a more concrete footing, let us consider the

following two clauses (11) and (12):

(11) “Complementizers can’t be used to introduce main clauses in English.” (Radford,

1997:148)

(12) “Having arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs, we now turn our attention to

the syntax of nominal structures.” (Radford, 1997:151)

Clause (11) is a fully-fledged finite clause consisting of a subject Complementizers, a

modalized, passivized verb can’t be used, and an infinitival complement to introduce

main clauses in English. The fact that clauses such as (11) contain a subject and a finite

form of the verb makes them “arguable” and “negotiable”. This is clear from the fact

that such clauses can be tagged, i.e. they can be questioned, as (11b) below illustrates:

(11b) Complementizers can’t be used to introduce main clauses in English, can they?

In (12), the picture is quite different. Sentence (12) is made up of a subordinate present

participial clause Having arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs and a

main clause we now turn our attention to the syntax of nominal structures. In turn the

subordinate clause Having arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs is

made up of a present participial verb phrase Having arrived and its prepositional

complement at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs. Notice that the lack of

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subject and finite in the thematized present participial clause in (12) deprives the

subordinate clause of “negotiability” and “arguability”, as illustrated in (12b):

(12b) ***Having arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs, we now turn our

attention to the syntax of nominal structures, have we?

The fact that (12b) cannot be tagged in the way shown in (12b) above lends evidence to

the claim that subjectless non-finite clauses are less arguable and less negotiable than

their fully-fledged counterparts:

(13a) We have arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs, haven’t we?

(13b) A: We have arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs.

B: Have we?

Functionally, in (13a) the tag is interpreted either as an invitation to confirm the

information contained in the main clause or as an interrogative whose job is to demand

information (in this case ‘yes’ or ‘no’) from the interlocutor. In either case, the job of

the tag is to invite the interlocutor to take part in the interaction. In (13b), on the other

hand, it is the interlocutor who “takes the reins of the conversation” and questions the

validity of the propositional content of A’s statement. What is important to note here is

that, in both (13a) and (13b), there is room for interaction between the participants in

the conversation. Finally, it is interesting to note that in sentence (12) the subordinate

present participial clause Having arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs

is in thematic position, which makes it even less accessible for negotiation. As Grundy

(2000:120) points out, subordinate clauses occupying thematic position usually carry

presuppositional content, and presuppositional content is regarded as “non-negotiable”,

“taken-for-granted” information.

Our arguments regarding the non-negotiability and non-arguability of

nominalizations and non-finite forms lead to the conclusion that the employment of

both nominalizations and non-finite forms of verbs makes a contribution to the creation

of the objectified and impersonalized prose in MS and STSE.

5. Passivization

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The objectivized prose in MS and STSE is also the result of the employment of

the passive construction. As Hyland (1998:77) points out: “The use of the passive voice

without an agent is a further impersonating technique, allowing writers to withhold full

commitment.” The extract below, from MS, contains passivized mental processes (e.g.

“is concerned”), passivized material processes (e.g. “is subdivided”, “are combined”,

“are formed”, “are structured”) and passivized verbal processes (e.g. “called”, which is

in fact occupying the blurry middle ground area between relational and verbal). The

active counterparts of the passivized forms of such verbs typically require an

Agent/Actor or Senser/Experiencer participant in subject position. However,

functionality requirements dictate that such participants be absent if the sentence is to

acquire the objectified, impersonal presentation commonly used in academic writing, as

illustrated in (14) below:

(14) “In broad terms, this book is concerned with aspects of grammar. Grammar is traditionally subdivided into two different but inter-related areas of study – morphology and syntax. Morphology is the study of how words are formed out of smaller units (called morphemes), and so addresses questions such as ‘What are the component morphemes of a word like antidisestablishmentarianism, and what is the nature of the morphological operations by which they are combined together to form the overall word?’ Syntax is the study of the way in which phrases and sentences are structured out of words, and so addresses questions like ‘What is the structure of a sentence like What’s the president doing’ and what is the nature of the grammatical operations by which its component words are combined together to form the overall sentence structure?’ In this chapter, we take a look at the approach to syntax adopted by Chomsky.” (Radford, 2004:1)

Although there sure is a slight variation in the number of passivized verbs found in

different sections in MS and STSE, the passage cited above is no doubt representative of

the objectified prose in MS and STSE. This claim is borne out by statistic evidence from

different sections in different chapters of MS and STSE. In section 1.2 of MS, for

instance, 25 out of the 188 finite verb forms are passivized.

Passivized prose has constituted a feature of scientific writing since the

beginning of its establishment as an academic genre. This claim is supported by

evidence from scientific texts belonging to previous stages in the development of

scientific writing in English. The following examples have been taken from Chaucer’s

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Treatise on the Astrolabe, written in 1391 and 1392, and regarded as “the oldest English

‘technical manual’, i.e. a description of a scientific device – the astrolabe”9:

(15) “…Under the compas of thilke degrees ben writen the names of the 12 Signes: as Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, Piscis. And the nombres of the degrees of thoo signes be writen in augrym above, and with longe divisiouns fro 5 to 5, dyvidid fro the tyme that the signe entrith unto the lastende…”

(16) “…Next this folewith the cercle of the daies, that ben figured in manere of degres, that contenen in nombre 365, dividid also with longe strikes fro 5 to 5, and the nombre in augrym writen under that cercle…”

(17) “…The names of these monthes were clepid somme for her propirtees and somme by statutes of Arabiens, somme by othre lordes of Rome. Eke of these monthes, as liked to Julius Cesar and to Cesar Augustus, somme were compouned of diverse nombres of daies, as Julie and August….”

The Treatise was a translation of a compilation of other astronomical works, and

since most scientific writing was done in Latin at that time, Chaucer was translating this

text for his 10-year-old son. This is why, apart from the passivized prose illustrated by

passages (15) – (17), we also find imperative mood sentences, such as those underlined

in (18) below, which mark the overt dialogic nature of Chaucer’s text:

(18) “…But understond wel that these degres of signes ben everich of hem considred of 60 mynutes, and every mynute of 60 secundes, and so furth into smale fraccions infinite, as saith Alkabucius. And therfore knowe wel that a degre of the bordure contenith 4 minutes, and a degre of a signe conteneth 60 minutes, and have this in mynde…”

It is interesting to note in passing that these imperative mood verbs (i.e.

“undestond”, “knowe”, “have this in mynde”) are all mental processes of cognition.

Given the linguistic and discoursal context in (18), one must conclude that Chaucer was

using these processes as “intensifiers”, i.e. expressions that are used to highlight the

truthfulness of the propositions being made (Grundy, 2000:125)

Last but not least, it is important to note that Chaucer also makes use of verbs in

the active, past form in order to describe the way in which an “agent” carries out an

action. This is evident from the verb forms “toke,” “putte,” “clepid,” and “ordained” in

(19) below:

9 http://www.astrolabe.vidmo.net/treatise.html

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(19) “…all though that Julius Cesar toke 2 daies out of Feverer and putte hem in his month of Juyll, and Augustus Cesar clepid the month of August after his name and ordained daies, yit truste wel that the sonne dwellith therfore nevere the more ne lasse in oon signe than in another.”

With Newton, we see the birth of scientific English as an academic genre. In

order to explore the prose adopted by Newton, which, like Chaucer’s, is representative

of his time, we will examine extracts from Newton’s Opticks. Newton’s prose in his

Opticks often contains instances of passivization, as the following extract clearly

illustrates:

(20) “…the Light […] made an Angle with the Paper, equal to that Angle which was made with the same Paper by the Light reflected from it to the Eye. Beyond the Prism was the Wall of the Chamber under the Window covered over with black Cloth, and the Cloth was involved in Darkness that no Light might be reflected […] These things being thus ordered, I found that if the refracting Angle of the Prism be turned upwards, so that the Paper may seem to be lifted upwards by the Refraction, its blue half will be lifted higher by the Refraction than its red half. But if the refracting Angle of the Prism be turned downward, so that the Paper may seem to be carried lower by the Refraction, its blue half will be carried something lower thereby than its red half.”10

However, as Halliday and Martin (1993:58) point out, these instances of passivization

employed by Newton in his prose have nothing to do with the impersonal passive

typically adopted by modern scientific writers. Newton’s passivized clauses display the

typical function of the passive in English, that of achieving “the balance of information

the speaker or writer intends – often describing the result of an experimental step, where

the Theme is other than the Actor in the process” (Halliday & Martin, 1993:58), as

illustrated by extract (17) below:

(21) “[1 …under the Window covered over with black Cloth], and [2 the Cloth was involved in Darkness…]”

In (21.1), the circumstantial with black cloth occupies rhematic position in the clause,

and in (21.2) the noun phrase the Cloth is in thematic position. So, by thematizing

information that was initially rhematic, we are making a contribution to the flow of

10 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Opticks_%282nd_Ed%29/The_First_Book/Part_I#Propositions

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information in the text. This thematic pattern is known in the literature (of Systemic

Functional Linguistics) as the zig-zag pattern (Eggins, 2004:324).

However, Newton’s clauses are very often agentive since “his discourse is one

of experimentation” (Halliday & Martin: 57-58). Consequently, we get descriptions of

material processes (“I took a black oblong stiff paper”; “One of these parts I painted

with a red colour and the other with a blue”), intended to construe a world in which

scientific processes do not simply occur but are the result of human intervention and

experimentation. In addition, we get mental processes of perception (“I view'd through

a Prism of solid Glass”) or cognition (“I found that if the refracting Angle of the Prism

be turned upwards”), intended to display the observations of the scientist’s

experimentations. Therefore, as Halliday claims: “if the discourse context requires

Actor as Theme Newton displays no coyness about using I” (Halliday & Martin,

1993:58)

In Radford’s prose, passivization is also employed as a resource for the flow of

information in the text:

(22) “(a) This book is concerned with aspects of grammar. (b) Grammar is typically subdivided into two typical but interrelated areas of study – morphology and syntax. (c) Morphology is the study of how words are formed […] (d) Syntax is the study of the way in which phrases […]” (Radford, 2004:1)

Clause (22a) presents “grammar” as rhematic; in clause (22b), “grammar” becomes

thematic, thus forming a zig-zag pattern. Clause (22b) presents “morphology” and

“syntax” as rhematic. These two elements are then thematized in the two subsequent

clauses, (22c) and (22d), thus rendering a multiple-rheme pattern (Eggins, 2004:325), in

which more than one element is introduced in the rheme to then become thematic in

subsequent sentences or paragraphs. These textual resources make a contribution to the

text’s method of development and are materializations of the textual metafunction.

Therefore, by application of either the zig-zag pattern or the multiple-rheme pattern,

information that is ‘rhematic’ and ‘new’ in one clause is presented as ‘thematic’ and

‘given’ in the following clause. As shown (22), passivization can make a contribution to

the text’s flow of information as well as the textual organization of the prose into

cohesive patterns.

However, we also find clauses in MS and STSE in which the use of passivization

seems to be motivated not only by the writer’s desire to organize the text’s flow of

information into cohesive patterns but also by his intention to conceal the expression of

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subjectivity in the text’s prose. This is evident from clauses such as (22a) above: “This

book is concerned with aspects of grammar.” The verb “concern” represents a mental

process and it is therefore to be expected that such predicates select an Experiencer (or

Senser) subject, that is, an entity capable of human thinking, as illustrated in (23b&c):

(23b) I am concerned with aspects of grammar.

(23c) Linguists are concerned with aspects of grammar.

The difference between 22a, on the one hand, and 23b&c, on the other hand, is related

to the degree of objectivity or subjectivity displayed by the different lexico-grammatical

realizations, (22a) being an objectivized presentation of the sentence, (23b) being the

most agentivized version, and (23c) being a halfway house between the two.

6. Use of the Historic Present Tense

The choice of tense in MS and STSE is in keeping with writer’s attempt at

creating an ‘objectified’ presentation of his theory, as illustrated by the following

examples, (24)-(26), which are representative of most of the prose in MS and STSE:

(24) “Auxiliaries differ from main verbs in a number of ways” (Radford, 2004:47)(25) “Traditional grammarians use this term [auxiliary] to denote a special class of items...” (Radford, 2004:47)(26) “Since we and you in (32a) modify the nouns republicans/democrats and since determiners like the are typically used to modify nouns, it seems reasonable to suppose that we/you function as pronominal determiners in (32a)” (Radford, 2004:46)

The term “historic present” illustrates the fact that the present tense

“occasionally occurs in fiction to produce a more vivid description, as if the events were

being enacted at the time of speech” (Biber et al, 1999:456). Also, the historic present

tense is said to be “especially common in jokes, which are also told entirely in the

historic present” (Biber et al, 1999:456). These uses of the historic present tense can be

regarded as discrete and local. What all uses of this tense seem to have in common,

however, is the fact that, as Biber et al (1999:457) claim “[p]resent tense is the verb

form of “all-inclusive time reference” and “can be considered the unmarked form […]

expressing a wide range of meanings. […] [It] can be used to refer to events in the past,

to present states, to present habitual behavior, or future events.” Such pervasiveness and

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versatility is indicative of the fact that the historic present tense is the verb form used to

expresses a-temporality: it is typically used to refer to an all-encompassing time, typical

of generic, impersonal prose. In this respect, Biber et al (1999:457) claim that “[h]ere

and elsewhere in academic writing, the present tense is used to convey the idea that

these propositions are true, regardless of time.”

If our observations are along the right lines, we can be confident in claiming that

language is endowed with a two-tense system: one realized by tenses such as the

historic present tense, which is a-temporal, impersonal and generic, and the other

realized by tenses such as the present perfect tense, which is anchored to the here-and-

now of discourse. This distinction was first drawn by Benveniste, who claims that “los

tiempos de un verbo francés no se emplean como miembros de un sistema único, sino

que se distribuyen en dos sistemas distintos y complementarios […] y que corresponden

a dos planos de enunciación diferentes”: “discurso” and “historia” (Maingueneau,

1989:118). The system of discourse is related to the ‘here-and-now’ of the

communicative event, as illustrated by the use of the present perfect tense in (27):

(27) “Although the D-pronoun analysis has become the ‘standard’ analysis of personal pronouns over the past three decades, it is not entirely without posing problems”

The other system, which, following Benveniste we will call “history”, has, as one of its

most salient representatives, the historic present tense, which is used for the expression

of modality of cognition, since it is employed to express “facts” or “propositions that are

true all the time” rather than to refer to events that take place at a certain deictic point

along the time-line. Such statements of fact construe texts whose events stand on their

own, i.e. they are objectified or thingified.

It is interesting to relate the choice of the historic present tense to the choice of

personal pronoun. In that respect, it is important to note that, apart from employing the

historic present tense, most propositions related to the theory or meta-theory in MS and

STSE take either the third person singular or the third person plural. In reference to this,

it is interesting to take note of the distinction drawn by Benveniste between first and

second person pronouns, on the one hand, and the third person pronoun, on the other

hand:

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En las dos primeras personas hay a la vez una persona implicada y un discurso sobre esta persona. “Yo” designa al que habla y designa a la vez un enunciado a cuenta de “yo” […] En la 2ª persona, “tú” es necesariamente designado por “yo” y no puede ser pensado fuera de una situación planteada a partir de “yo”; y, al mismo tiempo, “yo” enuncia algo como predicado de “tú”. Pero de la 3ª persona, un predicado es enunciado, sí, sólo que fuera de “yo-tú”; de esta suerte tal forma queda exceptuada de la relación por la que “yo” y “tú” se especifican. En este punto y hora la legitimidad de esta forma como “persona” queda en tela de juicio […] Se trata en efecto del “ausente” […] La diferencia debe ser formulada netamente: la “3ª persona” no es una “persona”; es incluso la forma verbal que tiene por función expresar la no-persona.”(Benveniste, 1974:164)11

Notice then that there is an interesting correlation between choice of third person

and choice of historic present tense: given the fact that academic discourse is objectified

and thingified, it is only natural to expect that writers of academic texts should typically

choose the third person and the historic present tense: these are the least agentivized

choices available in the pronoun and the tense systems respectively.

7. Conclusion

This paper has explored some of the different objectifying devices employed in

MS and STSE, namely the use of abstract rhetors, passivization, the nominalization of

processes, the use of non-finite clauses, and the employment of the historic present

tense. As has been mentioned above, only some passages regarded as representative of

Radford’s prose have been selected for the purpose of linguistic analysis. These

passages bore witness to the fact that Radford’s prose in MS and STSE is highly

objectified, de-agentivized and thingified. However, our focus on objectivization should

not blind us to the fact that texts are the creation of individuals, and as such, inevitably

contain elements of subjectivity. Radford’s prose is, in this respect, no exception: in his

texts one will find ‘hedges’, ‘modalizations’, and other ‘evaluative’ devices that clearly

point to the presence of the writer’s intervention in his text. Needless to say, a study of

the expression of subjectivity in Radford’s prose has not been the focus of this paper

and would deserve a paper of its own right. Here we have placed our attention on some

of the devices employed by the writer in the creation of an objectified prose, which,

paradoxically, points to the writer’s intervention in the process of production of his text.

11 It is important to clarify here that by using the term “no person” Benveniste is referring not referring to a possible empirical individual but to that entity 8or entities) that fall(s) outside the “I-You” of the “here-and-now” of discourse. Notice also in passing that the third person is the only person that is made up of three entities (he, she, it) in singular, and one form (they) in its plural, though notice that ‘they can be used to refer to people or things. On the other hand, notice that none of the other personal pronouns can be used to refer to objects or things.

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References

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Biber, D. Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Edward, F. (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, London, Longman.

Eggins, S. (2004) An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics, London, Continuum.

Grundy, P. (2000) Doing Pragmatics, London, Arnold.

Halliday (1994) Introduction to Functional Grammar, London, Arnold.

Halliday. M and J. Martin (1993) Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press.

Hyland, K. (1998) Hedging in Scientific Research Articles, Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Klimovsky, G. (2001) Las Desventuras del Conocimiento Científico, Buenos Aires, A-Z Editora.

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Maingueneau, D. (1989) Introducción a los Métodos de Análisis del Discurso, Buenos Aires, Hachette.

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (1997) Working with Functional Grammar, London, Arnold

Radford, A. (1997) Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English, Cambridge, CUP.

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Swales, J. (1990) Genre Analysis: English in academic and research settings, Cambridge, CUP.

Thompson, G. (1996) Introducing Functional Grammar, London, Arnold.

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Eggins, S. (2004) An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics, London, Continuum.

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Hyland, K. (1998) Hedging in Scientific Research Articles, Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Maingueneau, D. (1989) Introducción a los Métodos de Análisis del Discurso, Buenos Aires, Hachette.

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (1997) Working with Functional Grammar, London, Arnold

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