(2015) PRAGMALINGUISTIC CATEGORIES IN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF SCIENCE JOURNALISM

Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 11.2 (2015): 157–179

DOI: 10.1515/lpp-2015-0009

Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska

University of Opole

PRAGMALINGUISTIC CATEGORIES IN DISCOURSE

ANALYSIS OF SCIENCE JOURNALISM

Abstract

Drawing on selected approaches from pragmatics, functional linguistics,

discourse space theories and evaluation theories, this article proposes a

methodological framework for the study of science journalism. It presents

the institutional context of science journalism, which is considered a hybrid

discourse, as it combines features of science communication and of market-

driven journalism, particularly the need for the coverage to meet the criteria

of newsworthiness. To enable the study of how science journalists tend to

engage the readers linguistically without foregoing the appearances of

credibility, the article demonstrates the analytic potential of such

pragmalinguistic categories as illocutionary force, reference and

positioning, agency and stance, proximization and alignment, as well as

emotivity and evaluation. Finally, the article illustrates the applicability of

the above categories in a qualitative analysis of a special corpus of “most-

read” medicine and biotechnology reports published in the online version of

the popular international science magazine New Scientist. The analysis

shows how to combine these categories in a productive way in order to

develop a methodologically viable and theoretically grounded approach to

doing (critical) discourse analysis of science journalism.

Keywords science journalism, hybrid discourse, discourse analysis, pragma-linguistics,

newsworthiness

1 Introduction

The specificity of language used for science journalism is evident, so is the role of

science journalism in shaping general knowledge, science literacy and public

understanding of science. And yet, there are some common misconceptions about

science, such as “considering science to be a neutral activity (…) that (…) procures

158 Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska

Pragmalinguistic categories in discourse analysis of science journalism

stable and eternally valid truths” or “conceiving the linguistic representation of

science as rhetoric-free, maximally informative and transparent” (Calsamiglia

2003: 142). This project takes the above observations as a departure point to make

a claim that contemporary science journalism is a hybrid discourse that combines

features of science communication (academic discourse) and popular journalism.1

This hybrid form of communication requires a fine-tuned set of pragmalinguistic

categories to be described before it is interrogated critically, for example, to

examine which representations of science are naturalized through language uses

and how ideologies are reproduced through professional journalistic practices.

Much as academic discourse has been scrutinized for its textual practices of

rhetorical rationalization or social legitimization (cf. Hyland 2000; 2008; Perez-

Llantanda 2012), popular science writing requires a detailed analysis, as it not only

re-contextualizes scientific discourse, but also re-presents, frames and legitimizes

some types of science for a large part of citizens (Calsamiglia and van Dijk 2004;

Gruber and Dickerson 2012).

Science journalists aim to translate and mediate science from the highest levels

of professional academia into the lifeworld discourses of the public through diverse

media and genres. Nowadays science journalism constitutes not only a register of

science communication (i.e. science popularization), but also an important branch

of commercial media activity, which thrives on the double appeal to broader

publics with noteworthy science-related news items on the one hand, and dramatic

or extraordinary, and thus newsworthy, stories on the other. Indeed, research shows

that the styles of popular journalism (Ekstrom 2002; Conboy 2006; Bednarek and

Caple 2012), characterized by thematic preoccupation with human-interest

narratives, simplified and stereotyped imagery and more colloquial emotion-laden

language have colonized more serious domains, including science-oriented

coverage (Calsamiglia and van Dijk 2004; Myers 2003; Jensen 2012). The

linguistic tensions between the registers of science communication and market-

driven popular journalism (cf. McManus 1994) that characterize science journalism

are of specific interest here.

This article is primarily methodological in its scope, as it aims to specify which

pragmalinguistic categories could be useful for the descriptive and interpretive

stages of a critical discourse analysis of science journalism. Its main objective is to

identify the key analytic categories and propose a methodological procedure in

order to study the hybrid discourse of online science journalism. The main question

to ask is which pragmalinguistic resources are used by science journalists to

effectively engage the readers (the main feature of popular journalism) without

distorting the issues and foregoing credibility (the main features of science

1 For more on the question of science journalism as a hybrid discourse, cf. Molek-

Kozakowska 2014.

Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 11.2 (2015): 157–179 159

DOI: 10.1515/lpp-2015-0009

communication). It also aims to show how a language-focused perspective could

complement and enrich content analyses in the description of this specific type of

journalism.

The methodological proposal presented in this article has been developed from

categories drawn from well-known theories of functional linguistics, pragmatics

and discourse analysis and adduced on the basis of a quantitative and qualitative

analysis of a special corpus of science reports published in the online version of the

popular international science magazine New Scientist (which is sold in retail outlets

and on subscription and which also has a website with most content which is freely

available). The magazine covers current developments, news, reviews and

commentary on science and technology as well as more speculative feature articles,

ranging from the technical to the philosophical2. The corpus has been compiled by

downloading five most read articles (according to online traffic registry) each week

within the period of fifteen months between October 2013 and December 2014. To

downsize the sample (n=400) for the qualitative analysis and make it coherent for

the sake of methodological overview, only articles about medicine and

biotechnology (n=58) were subjected to detailed analysis.3 The domain of

medicine and technology is the single largest thematic domain in the entire sample

and involves articles that report new findings related to human anatomy and

physiology, drug and therapy development, neuroscience, human genetic

engineering, aging and pain mechanisms, and longitudinal studies of diet-health

relations.

2 The institutional context of science journalism

With the professionalization of scientists and their reluctance to engage with the

general public in the early twentieth century (Bowler 2009), the role of mediators

between the science world and the world of the public grew increasingly important.

Since then popular science writing has proliferated to bridge the public domain of

science and the private experience of science news consumption. Broks (2006) sees

popular science as a connector between scientific literature as a professional

medium of disseminating research and the domains of popular culture, where, in

accordance with the journalistic standards, science reporters are to convey

newsworthy scientific knowledge in clear, attractive and palatable ways. Thus their

2 New Scientist’s estimated global print circulation is 129,585 and its global readership is

807,388, while the online version is subject to over 8 million page impressions and over 3.5

million unique visitors (cf. http://mediacentre.newscientist.com/ data from late 2014) 3 The thematic choice follows a general tendency in the science coverage towards

medicalization (cf. Bauer 1998).



task, according to discourse analysts, would be to “recontextualize” scientific

discourse into popular journalistic discourse (Fairclough 1995; Myers 2003).

However, such recontextualization inevitably involves re-presentation and

interpretation, e.g., framing or legitimizing of some issues while backgrounding

others (cf. Calsamiglia and van Dijk 2004; Kitzinger and Williams 2005; Jensen

2012).

Recontextualized and popularized science is also an arena of competing

discourses and multiple voices, where some of the so-called “enunciative

standpoints” (of researchers, institutions, experts, governments, citizen

organizations and media outlets) may be given more or less rhetorical potency (cf.

Moirand 2003). By being provided with multiple voices in science reporting, a

reflective audience may have an opportunity to interpret new scientific facts from

the vantage points of different identity positions. While the democratizing and

educational effects of science journalism are appreciated,4 attention needs to be

paid to how language is implicated in attracting (and keeping) science-related news

consumers. The linguistic choices involved in sensationalizing reporting (cf.

Molek-Kozakowska 2013) are inevitably linked with the question of credibility and

responsibility of science communicators. Hence, popular science not only re-

presents the research findings and scientific work in a more accessible idiom, but

also impinges on the public understanding (or misunderstanding)5 of science (cf.

Molek-Kozakowska 2014).

According to the rules of market-driven journalism, the more newsworthy the

report seems, the more profit it is likely to generate. Journalism scholars studying

editorial news values (cf. Bell 1991; Harcup and O’Neill 2001) have noted that

priority is given to news issues that are recent and can be broken as latest

developments (timeliness), wide in scope and scale (impact) and relevant to readers

by virtue of geographical closeness or psychological engagement (proximity).

Newsworthy news focuses on “maximizing or intensifying particular aspects of an

event” (superlativeness) (Bednarek and Caple 2012: 44). News items that involve

conflict or drama (negativity), and concern individuals, particularly elite persons

and powerful institutions or countries (personalization, prominence) are more

likely to be covered. News that attracts most interest should be unexpected

(novelty), and yet “unambiguous and clear-cut rather than cloudy and complex”

(Montgomery 2007: 9). In addition, it should fit in with audience’s experience, be

compatible with standard schemas of coverage and bear some kind of cultural

relevance (consonance). Content analyses reveal more framing devices that make

4 Especially with the rise of critically oriented forms of science popularization, which do not

unquestioningly promote science but engage publics in deliberation on science-related issues

(cf. Perrault 2013). 5 The public controversy about global warming generated in the media (with no controversy

in the academic circles) is a case in point.


DOI: 10.1515/lpp-2015-0009

news items controversial (Jensen 2012). Harcup and O’Neill (2001) argue for

recognizing such additional newsworthiness criteria as entertainment (human-

interest in the event, humour and wit in the presentation, and aesthetic value of

imagery) and media agenda (stories selected to fit the news organization’s own

political or commercial stance).

Acknowledging the contribution of journalism scholars, discourse analysts

argue that news values are not intrinsic to events and that events “can be

constructed as newsworthy” with specific application of images and linguistic

devices (Bednarek and Caple 2012: 44; Ekstrom 2002; Richardson, 2007).

Language-oriented studies confirm the practices of emotionalizing, dramatizing or

simplifying the coverage for the purpose of increasing audience appeal

(Montgomery 2007; Molek-Kozakowska 2013; Chovanec 2014). This line of

research shows that popular journalism involves not only short texts, visuals and

catchy headlines, but also the use of personalized appeals to readers and

conversationalized formats of reporting (Fairclough 1995). In this project we

accept that whereas sometimes newsworthiness is intrinsic to the event, the news

value of a routine scientific finding (in the midst of hundreds of science-related

press releases publicized daily) is not always obvious. We look at how language

can be used then to enhance attractiveness, relevance or emotional load of science

news to construct newsworthiness.6

3 Towards a typology of pragmalinguistic categories of science

popularization discourse

To be able to identify the pragmalinguistic categories that would be applicable to

the study of online science journalism (which is claimed to be a hybrid between

science communication and popular journalism), we apply selected concepts,

categories and analytical procedures derived from pragmatics (Searle 1979),

functional-systemic linguistics (Halliday 1985), including the social actor model

(van Leeuwen 1996), as well as from discourse space theory (Chilton 2004),

proximization theory (Cap 2013; Kopytowska 2015a, 2015b), appraisal theory

(Martin and White 2007) and evaluation theory (Bednarek 2006). This framework

has been compiled in an attempt at demonstrating how particular news values are

likely to be instantiated linguistically and constructed in the discourse of science

journalism. Below we demonstrate the potential uses and justify the application of

the selected notions to the analyses of the mechanisms of audience engagement in

science journalism.

6 In the subsequent parts of the article, references to news values are also marked in italics.



3.1 Illocutionary force

Pragmatically, language offers choices that tend to be used strategically by

speakers in communication to achieve desired effects with the recipients. Science

journalism is primarily realized by such genres as reports, feature articles, reviews

and interviews. If we take each article as an example of a discursive encounter

marked by a given illocutionary force, we could safely assume that these would

mostly be assertives, as such texts are designed to convey information that is

deemed to be unknown to the receiver. The institutional context of journalism

would require this information to be true and objective. The “truthfulness” of such

information is enhanced textually by the use of quotes from authorities, experts and

witnesses, as well as by giving factual details, visual evidence and precise figures.

This can foster audience engagement through the value of consonance with their

notions of scientific communication.

However, to appeal to broader publics, such a “canonical” use of assertive

illocution may well be supplemented by linguistic elements that instantiate implicit

or even explicit illocutionary force of expressive or directive, for example by

revealing evaluations linked to the information conveyed (e.g., judging the merits

of a scientific project), or appealing to the public to do something in connection

with the information (e.g., changing dietary habits following a scientific finding).

Using appraisal theory’s (Martin and White 2007) system of attitude expression

through affect, judgment or appreciation or the engagement system (e.g.,

alignment, neutrality or antagonism), as well as Bednarek’s (2006) evaluative

parameters (e.g., of importance, comprehensibility, emotivity, expectedness,

necessity) could prove productive to detect alternative forms of reader engagement

through mixtures of illocutionary forces (e.g., information + advice/warning,

information + judgment/appreciation, information + affect/evaluative parameter of

emotivity). Given that science popularization texts are usually multi-paragraph

articles, with this procedure, an analyst could be able to code and determine the

actual dominating form of pragmatic engagements in each section and even

calculate the ratios of instantiations of given illocutions. Comparative analyses

could then be used to prove the journalistic practices of, for example dramatizing

or sensationalizing science communication (cf. Molek-Kozakowska, 2013).

3.2 Reference and positioning

The pragmatic category of discourse participant identification and social

positioning has been found to be instrumental in political discourse to foster

citizens’ engagement and support for a given policy (cf. Cap 2006; Chilton 2004;

2014). Following this train of thought, in science journalism one should also aim to

reveal the patterns of (social) deixis and referential strategies, particularly if they


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are used to categorize social actors into diverse, even oppositional groups: “us” vs.

“them” (e.g., doctors vs, patients, scientists vs. general public, Western vs Asian

researchers, patent-holders vs. needy patients). Such positioning in discourse can

realize the news value of (im)personalization, prominence, and, when polarization

is involved, negativity or dramatization.

The projection of the common ground, namely the presupposition as to who

is/belongs to “us”, can be instrumental in realizing the news value of proximity.

Referential strategies can be used to either unify or break the groupings of referents

(e.g., all women, phobiacs, diabetics) as well as to hierarchize them (e.g., African

vs Western Ebola infections). Using van Leeuwen’s (1996) social actor model, one

could observe which referential distinctions predominate (e.g., inclusion or

exclusion, personalization or impersonalization, determination or indetermination,

categorization or nomination) to foster continuous audience engagements through

actors’ membership (re)configurations and negotiation of participant roles (e.g.,

some as active or passive).

3.3 Agency

The last observation brings us to the pragmalinguistic category of agency, typically

realized through active voice of transitive syntactic constructions, where the

predicate links the “performer” of a given action with a specific effect/beneficiary.

By contrast, the use of passivisation is claimed by discourse analysts to obscure

agency (cf. Hart 2014). Although the cognitive path to the identification of the

agent is not usually lost, the processing and recovery of that information may be

harder. In academic prose, syntactic patterns involving passive constructions are

relatively more frequent than in other registers (cf. Hyland 2000; 2008; Perez

Llantanda 2012). Sometimes this is a rhetorical practice to hide the actual agency

of the researcher and allow “the data to speak for themselves,” or a way to present

a deliberate action (e.g., the act of drawing conclusions) as a naturally occurring

phenomenon. This use of agentless passives may increase the value of scale, and

thus impact, and background the individual actors behind a scientific project for

ideological reasons.

However, for the sake of engaging the reader, science journalists are likely to

diversify syntactic patterning and attribute more agency to researchers in order to

simplify the reporting on complicated experiments or equivocal research results for

the convenience of lay audince. Fahnestock (2005) finds evidence of dramatization

and celebration of science in science reporting when such texts are compared with

the original formulation of results in academic journals. Linguistically, this

projection of scientists’ enhanced agency could be also realized by the preference

for present tense and perfective aspect (cf. Chovanec 2014) to make reports

newsworthy in terms of proximity, impact and timeliness. It could also be realized



through the preference for predicates involving material (e.g., discover, release,

solve), verbal (e.g., claim, publish) and relational (e.g., have) processes rather than

behavioural, mental and existential ones (cf. Halliday 1985).7

3.4 Stance

Leaving aside its interactional and evaluative aspects for now, stance, considered

as a pragmalinguistic category in the study of science journalism, could be taken to

primarily encompass epistemic modality and evidentiality. Epistemic stance is the

expression of the degree of certainty of information about the issue one is

communicating and can be expressed with epistemic modal verbs or equivalent

constructions (e.g., it must/cannot be, it is certain/sure, it is highly likely/unlikely,

it could/might/may well be), verbs of cognitive attitude and expressions of factivity

(cf. Marin Arrese 2015). Through the use of stance-taking markers, the

communicators can strengthen or weaken their commitment to the truth of the

articulated proposition.

The sense of validity of communicated information can be usually

complemented by the use of evidentials (cf. Halliday 1985; Martin and White

2007). Evidentiality is the linguistic property of discourse that either explicitly or

implicitly reveals the source of evidence for a given proposition, be it sensory

experience, direct participation/knowledge, inferential processing, reporting from

other sources, or hearsay. In science journalism, evidentials tend to have a

justificatory function and can be represented by sentence adverbials, adverbs and

prepositional phrases or factive verbs with that-clauses (e.g., obviously, apparently,

in fact, to know that), or attribute information to authoritative sources of expertise

or witnesses (e.g., according to) (cf. Bednarek 2006). However, to attract audience

attention, the evidential status of a given piece of information can be

problematized, even challenged (as is increasingly the case with climate change,

GMOs, or neuroscience reports). Science journalists can expand or contract the

dialogic space by countering arguments, endorsing views, acknowledging points of

view, distancing themselves from some data, or entertaining multiple possibilities

(cf. Martin and White 2007: 110–112; Hart 2014: 52–56).

Furthermore, deontic modality adds an element of judgment to the information

with science journalists qualifying it as something that should be done,

requesting/permitting something that can/could be done, or even commanding that

something must be done. Tracing stance-taking patterns is likely to reveal how

claims to truth are made in science journalism and how some overtly speculative

7 It can be claimed that in terms of agency material processes (denoting deliberate actions

and activities) trump behavioural processes (which are mostly reactions), verbal processes

(acts of saying) trump mental processes (which do not explicitly involve articulations of

claims), and relational processes trump existential ones.


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information can be mitigated (or entertained as a possible alternative). It is

instrumental to revealing how readers can be led to accept certain claims and

evaluations as common-sensical and others as highly questionable. In the context

of generating engagement, stance-taking instantiates the values of novelty,

controversy, prominence, or superlativeness.

3.5 Proximization and alignment

According to discourse space theory (Chilton 2004; 2014), communicative

encounters create “mental spaces” in which speakers/hearers are positioned with

respect to each other and other entities along the spatial, temporal and evaluative

(epistemic/axiological/social) dimensions. It emerges from this pragmatic

assumption that the positioning of participants (as well as ideas or objects) is

dynamically constructed in discourse, with various linguistic resources (e.g.,

combinations of nominals, modifiers, adverbials, prepositional phrases) acting as

vehicles for distancing or proximization (cf. Cap 2006, 2013).8

In the case of spatial proximization, phraseological devices can position

participants as ever closer to each other (e.g., which such verbs as come or bring),

which can be evaluated as either proper (e.g., in terms of shared location) or

improper (e.g., as a threat of invasion of territory). In the case of temporal

proximization, past events can be emphasized as being close in time, and thus

consequential and relevant for the present situation (e.g., not so long ago, lately),

whereas future events can be predicted as immediate developments of present

situations (e.g., soon, no sooner). In the case of evaluative proximization, linguistic

markers work to strengthen the alignment or antagonism of participant positions in

the mental space of the discourse (cf. Martin and White’s (2007) system of

engagement). The more similarities of opinion and judgment are demonstrated,

either through proclamation or through presupposition, the more stable the

“common ground” that is constructed as shared by the participants (consonance).

By contrast, the starker the differences between proximous participants, the

stronger the conflict around a given issue (controversy).

As a result, proximization, understood as a rhetorical strategy for explaining the

choice of pragmalinguistic categories that build acceptable discourse space for the

communicator and the recipient, should be studied as a significant element of

engaging popular science readers. It is likely to be used to realize such

newsworthiness criteria as timeliness, proximity, or impact, and may well deployed

strategically for superlativeness, prominence and personalization. It is also

congruent with journalism scholarship on how abstract and indirect experiences

8 This differs from a more “static” model of social actor categorization in functional

linguistics (cf. van Leeuwen, 1996).



from “remote zones of relevance” (Cohen et al. 1990) can be framed as

psychologically close by localized coverage, narrow scope, or specific evaluative

angle.

3.6 Emotivity

The notion of emotivity is taken here to denote a parameter of evaluation9 that

reflects the degree of approval or disapproval expressed through an utterance in a

given context (Bednarek 2006: 45–48). Emotivity is inscribed in the social uses of

some lexicogrammatical resources and tends to be scalar (e.g., love/like/enjoy –

dislike/hate/detest). It may encompass not only positive and negative poles, but

also various scopes of intensity (high/medium/low), implicitness

(inscribed/evoked) and emotional involvements of discourse participants (emotions

of the communicator/receiver or third party). In appraisal theory (Martin and White

2007: 42–52), the same is conceptualized as a parameter of attitude, namely affect,

and involves linguistic representations of degrees of (un)happiness, (in)security,

(dis)satisfaction or (dis)inclination. It is claimed here that emotivity is a vital

mechanism generating audience engagement through emotional and attitudinal

investments, as it is natural for readers to seek information that produces positive

affect (happiness, confidence, satisfaction, relief, interest). At the same time,

human attentional and cognitive systems are pre-programmed to scan the

environment for signs of threat, so audience attention is also drawn to negative

information, even if this results in generating negative affect (anxiety, sadness,

boredom, disgust, anger). This explains the premium put on negativity in many

types of reporting, including science journalism, albeit to a lesser degree than in

general daily news coverage (Molek-Kozakowska, 2014). It is also worth checking

if abstract and distant academic issues or scientific projects that have little direct

influence on one’s life are not embellished and sensationalized by excessive

emotionalization, dramatization or personalization.

4 Verifying the applicability of pragmalinguistic categories: a

case study of New Scientist

As already mentioned, the methodological proposal presented above has been

adduced on the basis of quantitative and qualitative analysis of a special corpus of

science reports published in the online version of the popular international science

9 Evaluation is a superordinate category encompassing not only emotivity but also such

parameters as importance, comprehensibility, possibility, necessity, authenticity, reliability,

expectedness, evidentiality and mental state for example (cf. Bednarek 2006: 139).


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magazine New Scientist between October 2013 and December 2014. All he 400

articles collected were listed in the “most-read” section. Out of the sample, 58

articles on medicine and biotechnology (the largest thematic domain) were

extracted for a more detailed qualitative analysis of pragmalinguistic mechanisms

responsible for creating audience engagement. In each article, we consider the

formulation of the headline, the wording of the lead-in, and the text of the text of

the article separately and vis-à-vis the image accompanying the article (the image –

text relations in that sample are discussed in a separate study, Molek-Kozakowska,

2016 in prep.). The following section aims to demonstrate the utility of the

following categories in the study of the hybrid discourse of science journalism:

illocution mixing, referential strategies, agency, stance, proximization, evaluation

and emotivity.

It has been assumed that, to foster engagement, science journalists might

employ a mixture of assertives and other illocutions. The following list illustrates

the identified dominant illocutionary combinations and the number of such

occurrences in the sample of articles (n=58).

(1) Information on a completed study (n=13), e.g., Engineered vaginas grown in

women for the first time (10 April 2014)10

(2) Information on preliminary results from a study in progress, suggestions of

possible future applications (n=18), e.g., Cyborg gel implant fights diabetes with

light (20 October 2013)11

(3) Speculation based on information from a few studies/a study in progress

(n=10), e.g., Gunshot victims to be suspended between life and death (26 March

2014)12

(4) Information from a few studies/a new study and advice/warning (n=9), e.g.,

Drink two espressos to enhance long-term memory (12 January 2014)13

, Guzzling

milk might boost your risk of breaking bones (28 October 2014)14

(5) Information on a study that contradicts previous knowledge, stirring up a

controversy (n=8), Diabetes drugs may sometimes do more harm than good (1 July

2014)15

10 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25399-engineered-vaginas-grown-in-women-for-

the-first-time.html#.VZ93OPmviQc 11 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24438-cyborg-gel-implant-fights-diabetes-with-

light.html#.VZ94BfmviQc 12 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129623.000-gunshot-victims-to-be-suspended-

between-life-and-death.html#.VZ95DfmviQc 13 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24855-drink-two-espressos-to-enhance-longterm-

memory.html#.VZ96I_mviQc 14 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26469-guzzling-milk-might-boost-your-risk-of-

breaking-bones.html#.VZ967fmviQc



This survey reveals that, unlike it is often assumed, science articles are not just

accounts of recently completed scientific projects, but tend to include many diverse

speech acts. Quite often, the mixed illocutionary forces are signaled already in the

headlines or leads and constitute the alternating scripts for the whole article (e.g.,

information vs speculation). Although, understandably, assertives conveying

factual information about scientific discoveries predominate, they are often

combined with various less monoglossic, more expressive or audience-oriented

illocutions through which readers are invited to keep on reading.

Such is the specificity of the thematic domain of medicine and biotechnology

that many articles deal with fairly universal issues of biological facts/principles,

human body functions and health standards, as determined by evidence-driven

medical sciences. Variants of social actors projected in discourse are thus relatively

few, and are mainly aimed at forging the “common ground” between

scientists/doctors and the public, rather than antagonizing social actors and

introducing undue oppositions (except in one case when research from non-

Western lab is discredited). To engage the readers, New Scientist’s articles

underline the relevance of the studies using such all-inclusive categories as

humankind, humanity, adults, women/men, health-conscious people, patients,

future elderly, as well as more specific, but still large, groups of possible receivers:

diabetics, asthmatics, phobiacs, people with heart or fertility problems,

Alzheimer’s patients (or their family members). It can be safely assumed that some

readers are likely to personally identify or affiliate with some of those groups and

thus treat the item as highly relevant. One more maneuver to engage the readers is

to directly address them through personal pronouns. This, arguably, projects a

collective identity of New Scientist’s readers who are more “in the know” than

non-readers. The following examples illustrate the typical cases of reference and

positioning identified in the headlines in the sample (emphasis mine).

(6) Human brain’s ultimate barrier to open for first time (18 June 2014)16

(7) Women’s breasts age faster than the rest of their body (22 October 2013)17

(8) Learning drugs reawaken grown-up brain’s inner child (8 January 2014)18

15 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25820-diabetes-drugs-may-sometimes-do-more-

harm-than-good.html#.VZ97YPmviQc 16

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229742.400-human-brains-ultimate-barrier-to-

open-for-first-time.html#.VZ_MvPmviQc 17 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24439-womens-breasts-age-faster-than-the-rest-of-

their-body.html#.VZ_NnPmviQc 18 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24831-learning-drugs-reawaken-grownup-brains-

inner-child.html#.VZ_OAfmviQc


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(9) Testicular time bomb: Older dads’ mutant sperm (20 February 2014)19

(10) Sugar on trial: What you really need to know (30 January 2014)20

(11) The therapy pill: Forget your phobia in fast forward (13 March 2014)21

As regards agency, it is noteworthy that New Scientist’s headlines are

predominantly active present or past simple tense clauses (n=24), which

distinguishes them from academic journal titles, but which makes them more

similar to daily news coverage, as in:

(12) Man with tiny brain shocks doctors (20 July 2007)22

Additionally, nine headlines are modalized with may/can (cf. (4) and (5) above),

and relatively few feature phrases involving participles (n=9) or infinitives (n=5).

There are also two questions and three imperatives in the headlines. Only some

instances involve passive constructions, some with modal verbs or ellipses, as for

example (emphasis mine):

(13) Rosacea may be caused by mite faeces in your pores (30 August 2012)23

(14) Monster cancer chromosome is made from shattered DNA (10 November

2014)24

(15) Arachnophobia chopped out of a man’s brain (31 October 2014)25

What is characteristic of New Scientist’s lead-ins is that most of them present the

context of a medical discovery or study in terms of some biological facts (often in

a witty, colloquial style), so, even if active transitive processes predominate, the

19 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129570.800-testicular-time-bomb-older-dads-

mutant-sperm.html 20 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129540.500-sugar-on-trial-what-you-really-

need-to-know.html 21 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129600.500-the-therapy-pill-forget-your-

phobia-in-fast-forward.html 22 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-tiny-brain-shocks-

doctors.html#.VaDZdvmviQc 23 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22227-rosacea-may-be-caused-by-mite-faeces-in-

your-pores.html#.VaDZ9fmviQc 24 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26530-monster-cancer-chromosome-is-made-

from-shattered-dna.html#.VaDabvmviQc 25 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26483-arachnophobia-chopped-out-of-a-mans-

brain.html#.VaDavfmviQc



agents are not usually humans, but body parts, cells, diseases, etc., that perform

certain actions and have effects on humans, sometimes in dramatic ways. This is

usually followed by an introduction to the study, experiment or case that has lately

contributed to extending the knowledge on a given issue (e.g., so suggests a

discovery…, there is some good news…, the finding comes from…). It is only in

the body of the article that the actions of scientists and doctors are described

through such verbs as: show, demonstrate, develop, link, experiment, perform,

say/tell, estimate, suspect, announce, claim, know, look, investigate, call, which

mostly denote abstract, intellectual activities, ways of telling/showing and mental

processes. In both lexis and grammar, these parts of the articles are reminiscent of

academic register, save the faster pace, lower level of formality and avoidance of

unpalatable scientific jargon. Researchers’ agency is underlined later in the article,

as illustrated in example (16) (emphasis mine).

(16) Lose weight by tricking body into thinking it’s cold (6 June 2014)26

Being cold can burn calories but no one wants to freeze just to sculpt their muffin-

top. Soon we may not have to. Researchers have identified immune molecules

triggered by cold temperatures that make obese mice lose weight – without the need for the mercury to drop.

Humans and other mammals respond to cold in two ways. On the surface, we shiver

to burn energy and produce a quick burst of heat. On a deeper level, as Ajay

Chawla at the University of California, San Francisco, and his colleagues recently

discovered, cold temperatures send signals to immune molecules called

macrophages. They, in turn, release other molecules that convert energy-storing white fat into another type that burns energy.(…)

To conclude on the patterns of instantiation of agency in science journalism, it is

worth pointing to the diversity of syntactic structures across the parts of the article

(headline – lead –article). We can also observe a dominance of active voice used in

simple clauses and with diverse actions attributed both to inanimate agents and

(later) to researchers. Agency in such predication patterns condenses the text

semantically, makes it more action-laden and introduces a narrative flair that is

mostly absent in strictly academic prose.

As regards the category of stance in science journalism, particularly modality,

the sample offers interesting insights into how often modal verbs are used to

engage the audience in science issues that are still inconclusive, tentative and

preliminary. By running a frequency count of various modality markers that can be

26 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25686-lose-weight-by-tricking-body-into-

thinking-its-cold.html#.VaDbI_mviQc


DOI: 10.1515/lpp-2015-0009

found in the first three-five introductory paragraphs of the body of the article (often

separated by the blank line, section title or image from the remaining part), we

found that as many as 53 instances of can, 39 of could, 31 of may, 21 of might, 20

of will, 15 of would and 13 of should were used. Apart from examples of headlines

in examples (4), (5) and (12), and the lead in example (16), we found such typical

uses (emphasis mine):

(17) Cannabis can kill without the influence of other drugs (headline) (20 February

2014)27

(18) It’s neuroscience’s final frontier. Tiny bubbles will open the blood-brain barrier

to sneak drugs into tumours – and we might treat Alzheimer's the same way (lead)

(18 June 2014)28

(19) Vastly diluted bleach may have protective effect on skin (headline)

Forget Crème de la Mer, Crème de la bleach may be next on your bathroom shelf.

So suggests a discovery that highly diluted household bleach inhibits inflammation

in the skin, a finding that might help protect skin from sun exposure, radiation

therapy and even the natural ageing process. (lead)

Don’t try it at home, but doctors have known for decades that bathing in diluted

bleach helps alleviate severe eczema. “But no one really knew why,” says Thomas

Leung, a dermatologist at Stanford University in California. Many thought the

antimicrobial properties of bleach kept the skin clean, and therefore less irritated.

(…)

Leung suspected that bleach might also be involved in stemming inflammation. An

inflammatory response is vital for fighting infection but can cause damage when it

spirals out of control – as it does in eczema.

Leung’s team suspected a protein called NF-kB, which triggers the recruitment of

inflammatory cells to a site of infection, might be involved. To test that hunch, they

exposed human skin cells to a solution containing 0.005 per cent bleach for an hour.

(…)

Leung’s team next explored the therapeutic potential of the solution in mice with

radiation dermatitis – a type of sunburn-like irritation often seen in people

undergoing radiotherapy. They also tested the effect of bleach on healthy old mice

with ageing skin.

(…)

Leung says the fact that the action is reversible, and has not been shown to cause

infection or other ill effects in his experiments, provides hope that side effects will

be minimal in clinical trials. “The novelty here is that we’re taking an incredibly

cheap, widely available chemical and exploring additional applications,” Leung

27 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25092-cannabis-can-kill-without-the-influence-of-

other-drugs.html#.VaDjBfmviQc 28 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229742.400-human-brains-ultimate-barrier-to-

open-for-first-time.html#.VaDjTfmviQc



says. “Because we’ve been able to pinpoint hypochlorite’s precise mechanism of

action in the body, now we can expand the use of a safe and widely used treatment

even more.” (…) (article)

Example (19) can also be explored for patterns of evidentiality (see underlining).

As is typical of many articles on biotechnology/medicine, the story starts with a

description of initial suspicions, a review of previous knowledge/research, a

curious case or some observations form everyday life, which have led to a

formulation of a research hypothesis that is later checked in a series of laboratory

experiments, tests and re-tests. The status of knowledge is subsequently changed in

the article from theoretical or circumstantial to explicitly empirically verified (e.g.,

tested, has been shown, finding, effects, the fact), thus established as objective and

credible. This often leads to further inferences (e.g., because we’ve been able to)

about the possible applications and merits of the discovery in the concluding

paragraph. All information is meticulously attributed to the scientific source either

as a direct quote of in free indirect speech. Arguably, such evidentiality markers

are repeatedly introduced to keep up the standards of journalistic reporting and

appeal to more demanding and critical audiences that seek details, check facts and

assess the credibility of information before accepting it. A stronger perceived

validity of the covered information may translate into such news values as impact

and relevance.

As regards proximization, it has already been mentioned above how personal

pronouns and some deictic markers complement referential strategies in building a

stable “common ground” between scientists, New Scientist’s journalists and readers

(inclusive “we”). In addition, the material in the sample abounds in various

references to time and timing of events in terms of recency (timeliness). This is

evidence of journalists implementing strategies of temporal proximization, largely

as envisioned in Section 3.5 on proximization and alignmant above. A frequency

count of the words in the first three-five introductory paragraphs of the sampled

articles yields the following numbers of time-related words/phrases: now (26),

soon (3), future (2), recent (6), latest (4), previous (3), this/last week (4), this/last

month (5). There is also a range of time-related expressions that render the reports

more timely, relevant, novel and dramatic than might arguably be the case:

(20) We may now be a hair’s breadth away from a cure for baldness (lead) (21

October 2013)29

(21) Results from the latest clinical trials of his smartphone-linked artificial

pancreas suggest he might just make that deadline (article) (16 June 2014)30

29

www.newscientist.com/article/dn24445-3d-drops-raise-hopes-of-cure-for-baldness/


DOI: 10.1515/lpp-2015-0009

(22) In two-months’ time, a group of profoundly deaf people could be able to hear

again, thanks to the world’s first gene therapy trial for deafness (article) (23 April

2014)31

Apart from textual proximization strategies, the sample reveals a preoccupation

with what can be termed visual proximization, as more than half of all the images

accompanying the sampled texts are either in close-up or include microscope-

obtained imagery (cf. Molek-Kozakowska 2016 in prep). Finally, when analyzing

the sample cumulatively, one could note a discursive strategy of narrative

proximization (cf. Hart 2014: 170–172), in which the proximizing effect is not

derived from specific expressions, but rather through various textual

representations which focus on the transition between a scientific theory and its

practical applications, between laboratory experiments and the development of

therapies and remedies, or between results of clinical tests and the patenting of

medicinal products before releasing them onto the market. This could be

considered a “grand narrative of science,”32

which involves a proximizing vector in

the discursive flow of science from academia towards the general public. This,

arguably, is a crucial aspect of science journalism, as it shows how science is made

useful and applicable and thus aligned with readers’ needs, interests and values

(consonance). Proximization also highlights the drama of climactic moments of the

narrative (at the “preliminary results” stage or with first laboratory or human tests

completed), as well as reinforces the ideological narrative that legitimizes the

funding of biotechnological and medical research to the point that in which its

supreme position as a scientific discipline is unlikely to be challenged. To

conclude, proximization seems to be a very productive lens through which an

analyst is to study the discourse of science journalism and should be explored

further.

Evaluative discourse markers are pervasive elements in all kinds of journalism

motivated by the need for broader appeal, despite strong claims to objectivity and

neutrality (Bednarek 2006; Bednarek and Caple 2012). According to Richardson

(2007: 24–28), journalism is highly evaluative and ideological, which tends to be

disguised by such textual practices as impersonal constructions, modality and free

30 www.newscientist.com/article/dn25732-bionic-pancreas-frees-people-from-shackles-of-

diabetes/ 31 www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229662.400-deaf-people-get-gene-tweak-to-restore-

natural-hearing 32 Within the “grand narrative of science” the sample has articles focusing on the following

stages of scientific work: questions probed (3), preliminary results of data analyses revealed

(11), first laboratory experiments (e.g. on animals, post-mortem) conducted (18), results

published (9), application/remedy/therapy developed and first human patients tested (12),

clinical trials completed (3), application patented/released onto the market (2).



indirect speech, which obscure the journalistic stance without neutralizing it.

Among the most salient parameters of evaluation (cf. Bednarek 2006), the sample

includes journalists underlining the importance, comprehensibility,

unexpectedness, necessity and reliability of scientific work as reported by the

magazine:

(23) Replacement artificial heart keeps first [importance] patient alive (healine) (31

December 2013)33

(24) It was something of a surprise [unexpectedness] to find that the specific way

Ebola kills has only just been discovered [comprehensibility] (lead) (13 August

2014)34

(25) Globally, 35 million people are living with Alzheimer's [necessity]. It is

characterised by a toxic build-up of amyloid and tau proteins in the brain, which

destroys the neurons [comprehensibility]. Several blood tests can diagnose the

disease, but until now, none has had the sensitivity to predict its onset

[importance]. Howard Federoff at Georgetown University in Washington DC and

his colleagues studied 525 people aged 70 and over for five years [reliability]…

(article) (9 March 2014)35

The high frequency of such words as first (35), more (45) or new (15) testifies to

the premium put on the news values of novelty, superlativeness and impact.

However, all these devices are quite similar to much of academic prose in which

researchers are striving to justify the research studies undertaken and show their

utility. Additionally, in science journalism there are many extra devices that have

been identified here as primarily used to increase the emotive parameter of the

reports. Some of the simplest tricks include the use of emotion-laden words with

strong connotations (e.g., headline in example (14) Monster cancer chromosome is

made from shattered DNA), comparatives and superlatives (e.g., the biggest risk,

most shocking) and strictures involving various comparisons and contrasts (e.g., no

longer, unusual, the more… the less) for emphasis. Emotions are invited into

reporting with words inscribed with negativity (e.g., nightmare, killer, murderous),

or through vivid descriptions of cases of discomfort, pain, illness or even death

(e.g., It was as unexpected as it was tragic: children in northern Europe who got

one particular vaccine (…) later developed narcolepsy).

33

www.newscientist.com/article/dn24796-replacement-artificial-heart-keeps-first-patient-

alive/ 34 www.newscientist.com/article/dn26049-revealed-how-ebola-paralyses-the-immune-

system/ 35 www.newscientist.com/article/dn25190-first-test-to-predict-alzheimers-years-in-advance/


DOI: 10.1515/lpp-2015-0009

More sophisticated devices for enhancing emotivity involve humour through

word-play (e.g., Crème de la bleach in example (19)), ambiguity (e.g., Don’t mind

the gap. A woman has reached the age of 24 without anyone realizing she was

missing a large part of her brain) or ridiculing folk knowledge. Analogy and

metaphor, particularly personifying viruses, cells, organs or illnesses and

projecting them as scientists’ enemies, often increase the drama of the narrative (cf.

Tinnitus, the debilitating condition that plagued Beethoven and Darwin, affects

roughly 10 per cent of the world's population). Instances of uses of proverbs,

colloquialisms, conversational phrases, poetic diction, references to pop culture or

science fiction together with teasing visuals have also been noted:

(26) It sounds like the dark plot of a vampire movie. In October, people with

Alzheimer's disease will be injected with the blood of young people in the hope that

it will reverse some of the damage caused by the condition. (article) (20 August

2014)36

In brief, the range of resources to step up emotivity to engage the readers is vast

and requires a detailed empirical analysis of a larger sample to track some of the

dominant patterns and to pin down the news values realized through evaluative

parameters.

5 Conclusions

The anlysis reported in this article demonstrates how such pragmalinguistic

categories as illocutionary force, reference and positioning, agency and stance,

proximization and alignment, as well as emotivity could be used as a fine-tuned

toolkit to study popularity-driven science journalism. The selective and eclectic

treatment of theoretical frameworks of pragmatics (Searle 1979), functional-

systemic linguistics (Halliday 1985), the social actor model (van Leeuwen 1996),

discourse space theory (Chilton 2004), proximization theory (Cap 2006, 2013),

appraisal theory (Martin and White 2007) and evaluation theory (Bednarek 2006)

is not aimed to reduce them to a set of indiscriminate concepts, but to combine

them in a productive way to develop a methodologically viable and theoretically

grounded approach to doing (critical) discourse analysis of science journalism.

The pragmalinguistic categories used in the pilot analysis of a sample of

articles on biotechnology and medicine collected from a popular scientific

magazine New Scientist seem to offer a promising point of departure for the study

of the discourse of science journalism. The main question asked here is

36 www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329831-400-young-blood-to-be-used-in-ultimate-

rejuvenation-trial/



methodological: which pragmalinguistic resources can be used to study how

science journalists effectively engage the readers (as in popular journalism)

without foregoing credibility and distorting the issues (as in science

communication). The presented approach follows the call for calibration of

methods and models that can be productively used to demonstrate how such hybrid

discourses are constructed (cf. Hart 2014). It also shows that a language-focused

perspective needs to complement and enrich content analyses in the description of

this specific type of journalism.

Only after we develop tools to describe pragmatic categories and their linguistic

realizations inherent in increasingly hybridized discourses, can we start to

interrogate such texts more critically in terms of their ideological biases. Adopting

a critical perspective without grounding the interpretation in a multi-level

description of analysed discourses is one of the main weaknesses of critical

discourse analysis (cf. Hart 2014: 37–41). To examine further how ideologically

biased representations of science are naturalized through language uses and

reproduced through professional journalistic practices in larger corpora, one needs

first to persuasively demonstrate how science journalism is constructed

pragmalinguistically.

As analysts, we need to raise more awareness of how language can be

implicated in making and keeping audiences engaged in news items that tend to be

constructed as newsworthy and seemingly bear a lot of relevance while in fact they

foreground media agendas by resorting to typically market-driven journalism

tricks. As citizens, we are in a desperate need for guidelines for effective and

engaging science journalism that mediates between the academia and the general

public in a responsible manner.

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About the Author

Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor at the Institute

of English, Opole University, Poland. Trained as a linguist, she specializes

in discourse analysis and media studies. She has published articles and

chapters on various aspects of mass-mediated political discourse, rhetorical

and stylistic properties of journalistic discourse, methodology of critical

discourse analysis and critical media literacy. She co-edited a two-volume

book Exploring Space: Spatial Notions in Cultural, Literary and Language

Studies (2010, CSP), and authored a monograph Discursive Exponents of

the Ideology of Counterculture (2011, Opole University). She co-edits the

international open access journal Res Rhetorica.

Address

University of Opole

Institute of English

Pl. Kopernika 11

45-040 Opole, Poland

e-mail: [email protected]

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