Levels of technicality in scientific communication

Abstract

The large number of specialized languages which have resulted from the rapid development of modern science and technology, although meant to facilitate communication within each area of specialization, may create barriers to understanding between different levels of competence and specialization. Ways have to be found for identifying and describing the fundamental features of technical and scientific writing and for clarifying its differences from what is called "common" language.In this paper, the style of scientific writing has been discussed from the point of view of its lexical, semantic, and use characteristics. On the assumption that the level of technicality of a scientific publication is responding to the degree of training and specialization of its readership, a comparison was made between the language of a group of articles taken from the Scientific American and the language of articles given as references by them. Distribution and overlap of vocabulary in the two groups of articles were analyzed. Some differences between the writings in two areas of science were found.