The paper addresses the popularisation of science by scientists themselves analysed along the cline from teaching to popularising. Richard P. Feynman’s collections of lectures, both academic and public, are chosen as a case in point. The paper aims to investigate the physicist’s pedagogical and popularising style to pinpoint differences and/or similarities in terms of language choices, word-choice and phraseology, and textual strategies. The approach is corpus-driven in that it looks at words distribution and recurrent word-combinations. Further, the textual and registerial specificities of each collection of lectures are related to qualitative studies of scientific discourse, particularly in the wake of rhetoric of science (Fahnestock 2004). It is suggested that corpus tools by helping to identify frequent phraseology and textual functions can lead to a more thorough mapping of Feynman’s unconventional style of communicating science, as well as a deeper understanding of successful science popularisation in general.
A linguistic mapping of science popularisation: Feynman’s lectures on physics and what corpus methods can tell us
FREDDI, MARIA
2009-01-01
Abstract
The paper addresses the popularisation of science by scientists themselves analysed along the cline from teaching to popularising. Richard P. Feynman’s collections of lectures, both academic and public, are chosen as a case in point. The paper aims to investigate the physicist’s pedagogical and popularising style to pinpoint differences and/or similarities in terms of language choices, word-choice and phraseology, and textual strategies. The approach is corpus-driven in that it looks at words distribution and recurrent word-combinations. Further, the textual and registerial specificities of each collection of lectures are related to qualitative studies of scientific discourse, particularly in the wake of rhetoric of science (Fahnestock 2004). It is suggested that corpus tools by helping to identify frequent phraseology and textual functions can lead to a more thorough mapping of Feynman’s unconventional style of communicating science, as well as a deeper understanding of successful science popularisation in general.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
