Scientific communication and the nature of science: An illustration of oscillations from researcher´s proximity to researcher´s distance in scientific titles and its pedagogical implications

Abstract

A number of linguists have proposed that impersonality is the strategy through which scientists distance themselves from their written claims. A review of these theories shows that despite positive science has progressed under the spell of the so-called objectivity paradigm and the primacy of its method, scientific discourse shows how this paradigm has not survived for long. Based on our research on scientific titles, the purpose of this work is to reflect on the demythification of this paradigm as shown by title discoursive strategies. Furthermore, while not attempting to address linguists exclusively but scientists in general, our work is done in support of those who address the urgency to pay attention to titles, an unexplored textual territory for language philosophers and epistemologists. To this end, 1) reflections on science, particularly its communicative potential, from the point of view of the epistemology of science are provided, and 2) examples from a title database including 570 research and review paper titles written in English in the fields of biological and social sciences are analyzed as excerpts of pendulations to communicate knowledge via total agency concealment, particularly following an object-based approach, to agency textual proximity. These title oscillations not only illustrate how scientists choose to show themselves in the process of knowledge communication, but also give clues on how to explicitly teach these strategies. Though restricted to a specific example, these clues shed light on what issues regarding the communicative approach of science could be explicitly taught to effectively guide title reading and writing in science.

Basándonos en nuestros estudios sobre títulos científicos, este trabajo reflexiona sobre la desmitificación del paradigma de objetividad según las estrategias discursivas de los títulos científicos. Por tal razón: 1) se reflexiona sobre el quehacer científico, particularmente la comunicación, desde la perspectiva de la epistemología de la ciencia, y 2) se analizan a la luz de la perspectiva de la Gramática Sistémico Funcional ejemplos tomados de una base de datos construida con 570 títulos científicos de artículos de investigación y de revisión en inglés en áreas de ciencias biológicas y sociales. Nuestras reflexiones muestran que en la comunicación del conocimiento a través de los títulos, el científico/ comunicador elige mostrarse u ocultarse en el texto a través de distintas estrategias de discurso. Si bien nuestras reflexiones se restringen a un territorio muy pequeño de los artículos científicos, como lo es el territorio de los títulos, las oscilaciones observadas no solo ilustran esta elección sino que también determinan claves a seguir hacia una enseñanza explícita que garantice la escritura y lectura apropiadas de los títulos científicos.