Perspectives on the Popularisation of Natural Sciences in a Diachronic Overview

Book excerpt: This volume combines strands of research currently being debated in linguistic scholarship, such as the issue of specialized discourse, the issue of knowledge dissemination, and the issue of the versatility of genres. It presents some of the relevant findings of an Italian National Research Project focusing on specialized discourse, which involved researchers and scholars from several Italian universities. Discursive popularisation is here analysed with regard to the domain of natural sciences, particularly focusing on botany and gardening. Another relevant feature of the book is the diachronic approach used in discussing the issue of popularisation. The authors of the volume focus on their research following their own methodological choices, and, as such, investigate critical discourse analysis, genre analysis, and corpus analysis. All the authors, however, apply a diachronic perspective to their study. Chapters, therefore, span from the dissemination of science in the 17th century English scientific community, through the Late Modern English Period, to the end of the 19th century, throughout the 20th century, up to the present day. Within the common frame of natural sciences, each author develops a specific topic such as Irish botanical terminology; the development of garden notebooks; the manipulation of Darwin’s theory of evolution; the role played by the Puritans in promoting a plain and clear English scientific prose; Darwinism in the 20th and 21st century British press; and scientific popularisation in Nobel lectures.