A. Montemayor-Borsinger, Instantial and conventional representations in scientific knowledge construction, in C. Jones and E. Ventola (eds.

) New Developments in the Study of Ideational Meaning Equinox Publishing Ltd, London, U.K.
Chapter 8 Instantial and conventional representations in scientific knowledge construction Ann Montemayor-Borsinger

Abstract This chapter examines how the realization of ideational meanings in scientific articles changes as an author gathers experience by using the notions of Instantial and Conventional representations. Instantial representations are multifunctional expressions that have been especially modeled to create new combinations of meanings. These expressions may be used for issues that are concerned with interpretation or controversy, and often involve additional strands of interpersonal meanings. In contrast, conventional representations are well established expressions that are commonly used in a given field of research. These two types of representations were proposed for the analysis of an extended corpus of articles in physics published in international journals. An interesting finding that is confirmed by the present more detailed and qualitative case study is how the different uses of these representations affect the distribution and flow of ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings. The analysis shows that scientific knowledge construction may be enhanced by instantial combinations of content and argumentation in subject position, which point towards a strategic use of unmarked Theme for new, sometimes controversial, meanings that simultaneously function as the nub of the argument. 1 Introduction

Systemic Functional Linguistics has had a long standing interest in the role language plays in the creation, communication and negotiation of scientific discourse. This chapter is a detailed case study of how a physicist changes his grammatical subject representations in two research articles published within a decade of each other in international refereed journals. Grammatical subject is crucial when composing texts as it represents the nub of the argument: something by reference to which the proposition can be affirmed or denied (Halliday 1994: 76), and is the element on which the validity of the information is made to rest (ibid.). A study over time of different representations in grammatical subject with increased experience provides significant information on changes in the communication and negotiation of scientific knowledge, and provides a better understanding of how established scientists choose to convey the results of their research. Section 2 considers the situational context of the texts. Section 3 focuses on methodological aspects of the text analysis by discussing Hallidays concept of grammatical metaphor and introducing the notions of Conventional and Instantial representations of scientific knowledge. Section 4 examines how grammatical subjects change with increased experience in publishing research articles, with a marked tendency towards more instantial representations. The last section discusses the linguistic and pedagogical implications of this case study, which is in agreement with statistical results

obtained from studying a larger corpus of research articles.

The situational context of the two articles

Since this study derives its motives from a larger project concerning research writing in the sciences, an understanding of the context in which scientific articles are written is necessary to ensure the effective interpretation of the analysis of the texts. In what follows characteristic features of the corpus are briefly discussed in relation to the writing and publishing contexts.

2.1

The writing context

Montemayor-Borsinger (2005, 2007) presented a study of an extended corpus of research articles published in international refereed journals. It was set up to analyze representational changes in grammatical subject by asking ten established physicists to submit their first article and two later articles that they had written on their own. Publications of the articles in international refereed journals were necessary to ensure they were socially validated texts as regards both language and scientific ideas. The physicists concerned have all published well over fifty articles, sometimes co-authored, and regularly act as referees themselves. Here I examine in more detail conventional and instantial subject representations in two articles, written by one of the researchers: his first article and an article published a decade later. With respect to co-authorship, clarification is needed. In physics, teamwork is the norm, and it is customary for young researchers to publish their first articles with their supervisors. They generally start by writing parts of the article, which are then edited and often rewritten by supervisors. Once physics students have completed their PhD, they carry on working in research groups. However, within these highly collaborative settings, there are physicists who tend to work on their own and publish on their own. Alternatively, there are physicists who carry out the research work in collaboration with others, but tend to be the ones who end up writing the article. A distinction has thus to be made between the writer of an article, i.e. the one who actually puts into words what has been done, and its co-authors, i.e. the team of researchers who, by actively taking part in the research process, make the writing of the final article possible. In other words, articles in physics may have several authors, which does not necessarily mean that all of them have actually written the article. This is because physics requires both mathematics and words. The research process necessarily involves many different aspects such as detailed calculations, computational and laboratory work, results under the form of equations, tables and figures, decisions to be taken about which equations, tables or figures should be presented, how they should be presented, in what order, etc As one informant, working in theoretical physics, put it during an interview(personal transcription, slashes indicate pauses): physicists use mathematics and they couldnt not use mathematics/ but mathematics isnt all it

is either/ it is also the words//part of the difficulty of physics I think is precisely the whole balance between the verbal qualitative conceptual description in words/ and the precise mathematical quantitative description in terms of symbols/ hum/ well mathematical symbols because words are symbols too//all of us have the same problem / its actually often easier to just derive a bunch of equations and do equations as it were in your research/ but that isnt actually going to relate to any physics unless youve thought about what we call the physics/ and what is meant by the physics is a verbal conceptual description of whats going on/ Once the physics has been conceptualised, then comes the actual writing stage when, sometimes, only one of the co-authors writes the article. This can be due to many different factors, ranging from personal preferences to institutional constraints. Common scenarios for a first article might be when a physicist has finished his Ph.D. thesis and moves to a new research environment, but still has Ph.D. results to publish, and, for later articles, when a physicist is having to write an article alone because colleagues are travelling, or because the article is co-authored by visiting researchers who have travelled back to their own institutions, for instance. The reason for selecting articles written by one writer has obviously nothing to do with the quality of the scientific work. Physicists who tended to write on their own had to be found because of the aim of the present research: i.e. to detect changes in the representation of scientific knowledge in research articles with increased experience. Finding these lone writers was actually one of the difficulties in setting up the present study, because, as noted above, in physics working in a team is much more common than working alone.

2.2

The publishing context

Physics is a highly internationalised branch of research, with several hundreds of journals. The Journal Citation Report gives detailed information about their relative importance and, in particular, about their ranking sorted by Impact Parameter (IP). This parameter is the ratio between the number of published articles in a given journal and the number of citations referring to these articles, both within a period of two years. For instance, if a journal has an IP of 2, this means that its articles are cited twice on average in other ranked international journals within two years following publication. The higher the IP, the more frequently cited are the articles from a given journal, with fewer than 20 journals having an IP higher than 3. The general distribution of the articles that constitute the whole corpus as a function of the IP centers around high IP journals of about 2, indicating that the articles tend to come from relatively high ranked and prestigious publications. The two articles studied here in detail are no exception. The first article was published in Physica A (by North-Holland, officially endorsed by the European Physical Society) and the later one in Physical Review E (published by the American Physical Society). Both are highly specialized journals that publish research in statistical mechanics, aimed at an audience of statistical physicists.

The two articles were published within a decade of each other, a sufficiently long period of time for capturing significant changes in meaning-making as a researcher gains experience. A serious problem affecting longitudinal studies is that they tend to suffer case losses: all the more so in the case of extended time spans. In order to prevent such loss of information, the present analysis was designed as a retrospective longitudinal study where there was one data collection point, when the researcher was asked to furnish his first article and a later article of relevance.

Changes in representational practices over time

Another important consideration for such a study is the setting up of coding frames that will capture these changes in the representation of scientific knowledge with increased experience. An effective approach is offered by taking as a starting point Hallidays examination of grammatical metaphor (1993: 69-85, 1998: 196-206). Halliday looks at metaphor, not as a variation in the meaning of an expression, but as a variation in how a meaning is expressed. In science registers he distinguishes two different types of grammatical metaphor: a referring or taxonomising type and an expanding or reasoning type. He highlights the different roles both types have in scientific discourse because of the different things they enable writers to do. Type 1 (the referring or taxonomising metaphor, so-called because it refers via heavily nominalised technical classes) is concerned with the way scientists name their objects of study. Examples of Type 1 referring metaphors are technical terms such as the following that are found in the present corpus: The Boltzmann equation, The general solution, Numerical analysis, Reaction-diffusion systems, Global coupling, Internal deterministic noise etcType 1 metaphor has also been named distillation by Martin (1993) because it has compacted and changed the nature of familiar expressions: just as a vat of whisky is both less voluminous and different in kind from the ingredients that went to make it up. (1993: 172). Type 2 (the expanding or reasoning metaphor) is used for building up technical classes into flows of argument. Two examples taken form the present corpus are: A full understanding of the role of global coupling in the dynamics of extended complex systems and The question of the equivalence between these two sources of asymmetry where, in both cases, the scientist has nominalised reasoning processes of argumentation. Another way of considering Hallidays distinction between Type 1, referring/taxonomising metaphors, and Type 2, expanding/reasoning metaphors, is that the former is already part of the enduring technical jargon of a given field of research, whilst the second constructs new scientific representations. Halliday observes that there is a continuum between the two types since Type 2, expanding / reasoning metaphors, may become distilled into Type 1, referring / taxonomising metaphors, if they have become part of the language system. Hallidays continuum has to do with time. He distinguishes three different types of time. The first is the time of the unfolding of the text logogenetic time. The second is the time of the evolution of the language - phylogenetic time. The third

is the time of growth and maturation of the user of the language - ontogenetic time (cf. Halliday 1998: 222-223), the latter being the main concern of the present research. Writers can base their scientific representations on the readily accessible wordings conventionally used in their field. Alternately, writers may want to create tailored wordings that precisely fit into a particular stretch of discourse to convey complex and sometimes controversial reasoning processes. They are in a position to do so once they have deeply reflected upon and assimilated the substance with which they are working, and have made the material their own, as it were: hence the concepts of Conventional vs. Instantial representations that was set up and discussed in detail in previous works (Montemayor-Borsinger 2005, 2007). Conventional subjects are commonly used representations within the research field concerned, as in Example (1) from the present corpus (grammatical subject in bold). (1) Global coupling plays a relevant role in models of many real systems driven by longrange interactions.

In contrast, instantial subjects are expressions which have been especially composed to express new, sometimes controversial representations, as in Example (2) from the present corpus (grammatical subject in bold). (2) A full understanding of the role of global coupling in the dynamics of extended complex systems-to the levels already reached in the case of diffusive coupling- will require the study of other types of local dynamics.

The need for a new taxonomy originated from difficulties encountered in previous studies that examined changes in scientific knowledge construction (Montemayor-Borsinger 2001). It was found that most of the highly specialised terms used in physics articles were both phenomenal and epistemic in the sense given by Peck MacDonald (1992) because they identified both objects of study and knowledge making elements that push science forward. However, these highly specialised terms differ in the level of writer creativity involved. The Conventional versus Instantial distinction is an effective way of studying representational changes with increased knowledge related both to subjectmatter and to ways of writing about it. Writers can base their language choices on the readily accessible representations conventionally used in their field. On the other hand, writers may want to create tailored representations that represent new, complex and/or controversial issues. Hence the importance of distinguishing between these Conventional vs. Instantial representations that will be discussed in detail in the case study presented in the following section.

A discussion of the differences between Text 1 and Text 2

I shall now compare and contrast the representation of scientific knowledge in grammatical subjects in two articles written and published by the same researcher at different times. His first article was

published in 1988, and will hereafter be referred to as Text 1. The other was published in 1997, and will hereafter be referred to as Text 2. The researcher works within an area of theoretical physics: statistical mechanics. Work in this area of research is based on models for systems that can only be described in terms of statistical probabilities, because information concerning these systems is incomplete. As stated above, the two articles were published within a decade of each other in specialised journals aimed at an audience of statistical physicists.

4.1

Percentages of conventional and instantial subjects in each text

The relative distribution of grammatical subject choices in the two articles is shown in Table 8.1. Apart from the Conventional and Instantial representations proposed here, another class of grammatical subjects was necessary to account for all the subjects in the articles. These were Participant subjects, based on a taxonomy initially proposed by Davies (1988) and discussed in Gosden (1993). This type of subject representation is relatively straightforward to recognise on the basis of lexical clues. Participant subjects represent writers, and are mostly worded as we or our work, our results, etc.

Table 8.1 Text 1 2 Year 1988 1997

Subject representations in the two articles Participant 8% 3% Conventional 77% 63% Instantial 15% 34%

Table 8.1 shows appreciable differences between Text 1 and Text 2. In Text 2, the percentages of participant and conventional subjects are significantly lower than in Text 1, while those of instantial subjects are more than double. In Text 1 all participant subjects are worded as we as shown in Example (3) taken from Text 1. (3) (Text 1) We obtain exact solutions for inhomogeneous systems We have extended the analysis of the discrete two-velocity model We have found similar solitonic solutions etc.

In Text 2 participant subjects are both lower in quantity and expressed differently, with a particularly noticeable absence of we representations. When asked about this in an interview, the researcher pointed out that he had deliberately tried to avoid appearing at all by either using the impersonal one as shown in Example (4), or verbs in the imperative that enjoin the reader to consider or suppose as in Example (5): (4) (Text 2) One should be interested in characterizing the forms of collective evolution,

(5)

(Text 2) Consider a set of N identical elements Without loss of generality, suppose r>0

4.2

Relative proportions of conventional vs. instantial subjects

Another way of looking at differences between the two articles is to look at the relative proportion of conventional and instantial subjects in each one. These proportions are as follows. In Text 1 there are five times more conventional subjects than instantial ones, whereas in Text 2 there are only just over twice as many. Tables 8.2 and 8.3 respect these proportions, and show some of the wordings found in conventional and instantial subjects in each article. Hence, for each fifteen conventional subjects there are only three instantial subjects in Text 1, whereas there are seven instantial subjects in Text 2. Tables 8.2 and 8.3 show the first fifteen conventional subjects and the corresponding proportion of instantial subjects as each article unfolds. As a reminder, conventional subjects are technical terms that refer, via heavily distilled technical wordings, to methods, models and phenomena. Instantial subjects, on the other hand, are more complex realisations that have to do with particular reasoning and argumentation processes as the discourse unfolds. Table 8.2 The first fifteen conventional and corresponding three instantial subjects as Text 1 unfolds Instantial grammatical subjects The interest in this equation Simplified models for the considered systems The interaction between a two-velocity gas and a background for the spatially homogeneous case

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Conventional grammatical subjects The Boltzmann equation The Boltzmann equation The velocity of a one-dimensional gas molecule The general solution Numerical analysis Particular exact solutions The Boltzmann equation These processes Solitonic distribution functions The velocities for the one-dimensional model gas The Boltzmann equations The bilinear operator (2.2) The positive coefficients The 2x2 matrix A = (aii) The density n and the current j

Table 8.3

The first fifteen conventional and corresponding seven instantial subjects as Text 2 unfolds Instantial grammatical subjects The study of complex behavior in extended systems Other coupling mechanisms in particular, global coupling Forms of collective behavior produced by global coupling This kind of ordered entrained evolution which has been observed in systems formed by either identical or slightly different elements A full understanding of the role of global coupling in the dynamics of extended complex systems to the levels already reached in the case of diffusive coupling The same models, added with suitable harmonic forcing, The behavior of the coupled system for k = 1

1 2 3 4

Conventional grammatical subjects Reaction-diffusion systems Global coupling Long-range interactions This paper

Models of coupled bistable elements

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Internal deterministic noise The mathematical model A critical phenomenon Section III Results The individual dynamics The evolution of xi The solution to Eq. (1) Global coupling The coupling constant k

In a similar way to what was noticed for participant subjects, these quantitative differences are accompanied by qualitative ones. Instantial subjects increase both in number and in complexity in Text 2. The fourth and fifth instantial subjects found in this text and shown in Table 8.3 are two good instances of particularly complex representations. In Example (6), they are reproduced in bold, in the context of their respective clauses. (6) Fourth and fifth instantial subject found in Text 2 This kind of ordered entrained evolution which has been observed in systems formed by either identical or slightly different elements is part of a wide class of possible behaviors with nontrivial features, including clustering, chaotic collective dynamics, and desynchronization. [new paragraph] Although much attention has recently been paid to these sets of globally coupled oscillators, a full understanding of the role of global coupling in the dynamics of extended complex systems to the levels already reached in the case of diffusive coupling will require one to study other types of local dynamics.

These particularly complex instantial subjects are found throughout Text 2, and are much rarer in Text 1, as shown in the concluding paragraphs of each article in Examples (7) and (8). The grammatical subjects are in bold.

(7)

Concluding paragraphs of Text 1 For this Boltzmann equation, we have found similarity solitonic solutions, representing shape-preserving distribution functions moving along the spatial coordinate. These solutions were expanded in power series of the similarity variable, obtaining recursive algebraic equations for the coefficients. This scheme allows the calculation of the distribution function with an arbitrarily small error. The recursive equations can be solved in a closed form if remotion and regeneration processes are neglected. In this particular case, an acceleration in the relaxation to equilibrium is observed when the density of the background increases. This effect applies for each point, as the step soliton passes on it. Furthermore, the value of the equilibrium current depends on the background distribution, through eq. (2.3b). These results are the generalisation to the spatially inhomogeneous case of the main conclusions obtained for the homogeneous system [7]. They are expected to hold for more realistic gas models. (Zanette 1988: 617)

In the concluding paragraphs of Text 1, only one of the eight main grammatical subjects could be considered as being instantial, i.e. an acceleration in the relaxation to equilibrium, which may be justified on the basis of post-modification of acceleration. But even so the function of this subject is not one of argumentation, but merely the presentation of a certain type of acceleration. There is one participant subject we, and the remaining six subjects are all conventional wordings. In contrast, most of the subjects in the concluding paragraph of Text 2 are instantial in nature: (8) Concluding paragraph of Text 2 This interpretation of the model of globally coupled bistable elements inspires the proposal of several generalisations that are indeed worth considering. For instance, it would be interesting to analyze the effect of an asymmetry in the potential of Eq. (1), such that only one stationary state is truly stable whereas the other becomes metastable. This intrinsic preference for one of the states can be compared with the evolution in the bistable symmetric potential from an asymmetric initial condition, as described by Eq. (10). The question of the equivalence between these two sources of asymmetry--the potential or the initial condition--arises then quite naturally. A second generalisation, which is certainly relevant to the model of opinion formation, is to admit the possibility that the coupling constant is not the same for all the elements, but is chosen at random for each element from a prescribed distribution. In physical models, this form of quenched disorder would represent some kind of spatial inhomogeneity. To the author's knowledge, the effects of inhomogeneities in the coupling strength has not been considered, up to this moment, in the literature on globally coupled systems. (D.H. Zanette 1997: 3257)

Five of the eight subjects in the concluding paragraph of Text 2 are instantial wordings whose function is that of discussing results, i.e. This interpretation of ... , only one ..., This intrinsic preference for ..., The question of the equivalence between ..., A second generalisation, which is certainly relevant to .... Example (8) shows a much more sophisticated use of argumentation strategies where the writer does not overtly comment on the results, but rather hands over the agency to abstractions that combine ideational representations of content with interpersonal meanings of evaluation and negotiation. The function of such a combination is to account for the writers interpretations in ways that will be perceived as being more objective by fellow researchers.

Implications for pedagogy

This case study shows that, with experience, the researcher has been able to compose grammatical subjects that increasingly function as elements of negotiation and argumentation without overt authorial presence. This finding is in agreement with statistical results obtained from studying a wider corpus of thirty research articles by ten different writers, with the whole set of results having been discussed elsewhere (Montemayor-Borsinger 2005, 2007). This reinforces the findings of diachronic studies such as Bazerman (1984), who not only agrees with the traditional view that science is a rational, cumulative, corporate enterprise, but also points out that it is realised by linguistic, rhetorical and social means and choices, all with epistemological consequences (1984: 191, emphasis added). Bazerman further suggests that studies of scientific texts should consider the linguistic tools available to scientists, and the implications of those tools: Even as the conventions constrain a writer, they [the tools] may be mobilised and manipulated to the writers advantage. In whatever form the conventions make their presence felt, they are the basis of many writing choices. (Bazerman 1984: 191, square brackets added). One such linguistic tool of particular importance is the capacity of construing instantial representations that offer powerful means of packing strategic information in grammatical subject, thus enhancing text flow by concentrating complexity in unmarked Themes, which simultaneously function as the nub of the argument. Both instantial and conventional subjects are ideational in nature. The difference is in the complexity of instantial subjects, which by means of pre- and post-modification combine ideational meanings with interpersonal ones. For these interpersonal meanings, where writers interact with their readers by means of argumentation and evaluation, results show a shift from the overtly interactive participant subjects of the we type, which actually disappear in the present case study, to more subtle and complex instantial subjects that nearly double. In general, research has shown that interpersonal meanings are much more moveable to different parts of the sentence and can adapt to many different structures (Halliday 1994: 68-105; Martin 2000: 175; Martin and Rose 2003: 64; Thompson and Zhou 2000: 122). This accounts for the rise in instantial subjects, which offer the possibility of interweaving ideational meanings with interpersonal ones. The capacity of finding optimum ways of combining ideational and interpersonal meanings appears to be what established researchers have developed. An important incentive for studying representational practices by established writers is to help novice researchers in their attempts at successfully publishing their work. In my experience with academic writing workshops, young researchers often want to know how their published work compares with that of the leaders in their field, not only regarding results per se, but also regarding ways of presenting these results. Researchers publishing their first articles are acutely aware of the importance of mastering optimal writing strategies in a highly competitive publishing world. Rather

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than just seeking advice at the editing level, there comes a point when they want to discuss in more detail how to communicate and negotiate new meanings. A systemic functional perspective takes into consideration these fundamental questions on meaning-making and the different ways the language of science may regrammaticise experience by grammatical metaphor (Halliday and Martin 1993; Halliday 1998). It also considers simultaneously the discussion of content: i.e. ideational strands of meaning, the evaluation of content: i.e. interpersonal strands of meaning, and information flow organisation: i.e. textual strands of meaning. A greater focus on grammatical subject choice can be a very effective way of enhancing novice researchers awareness of how to communicate more effectively, especially when there is little time and heavy pressure to publish. The type of analysis presented here highlights possible options offered by grammatical subject to suit different communicative aims and to enhance effective discourse flow. Devising instantial subjects that are ideationally purposeful, interpersonally strategic and textually suitable is an important step towards improving the discussion of results, where the linguistic choices that scientists make affect the way in which findings are perceived by their respective research communities. References Bazerman C. 1984. Modern Evolution of the Experimental Report in Physics: Spectroscopic Articles in Physical Review, 1893-1980. Social Studies of Science 14: 163-196. Davies, F. 1988. Reading between the lines: Thematic choice as a device for presenting written viewpoint in academic discourse. The ESPecialist, 9(1/2), 173-200. Gosden, H. 1993. Discourse Functions of Subject in Scientific Research Articles. Applied Linguistics, 14/1, 56-75. Halliday M.A.K. 1993. Some Grammatical Problems in Scientific English In M.A.K. Halliday and J.R. Martin (Eds.), Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power (pp. 69-85). London: The Falmer Press. Halliday M.A.K. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold Publisher. Halliday, M.A.K. 1998. Things and Relations. In J.R. Martin and R. Veel (Eds.), Reading Science: Critical and functional perspectives on discourses of science (pp. 185-235). London: Routledge. Martin J.R. 1993. Literacy in science: Learning to handle text as technology. In M.A.K. Halliday and J.R. Martin (Eds.), Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power (pp. 166-202). London: The Falmer Press. Martin J.R. 2000. Beyond exchange: appraisal systems in English. In S. Hunston and G. Thompson (Eds.) Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse (pp. 142-175). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martin J.R. and Rose D. 2003. Working with Discourse: Meaning beyond the clause London and New York: Continuum. Montemayor-Borsinger A. 2001. Linguistic Choices in Two Research Articles in Physics: Study of an Authors Development. The ESPecialist, 22(1), 51-74. Montemayor-Borsinger A. 2005. Authorial Development in Research Writing: coding changes in grammatical subject The ESPecialist 26/2, 82-104. Montemayor-Borsinger A. (forthcoming) Text-type and Texture: the potential of Theme for the study of research writing development Text-type and Texture G. Thompson and G. Forey (Eds.) Equinox Publishing Ltd. Peck MacDonald S. 1992. A method for analyzing sentence-level differences in disciplinary knowledge making. Written Communication (9), 533-569.

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Thomspon G. and Zhou J. 2000. Evaluation and Organization in Text: The Structuring Role of Evaluative Disjuncts In S. Hunston and G. Thompson (2000) Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Corpus references Zanette, D. H. 1997. Dynamics of globally coupled bistable elements Physical Review E 55: 3247-3259. Zanette, D. H. 1988 Solitonic solutions for the generalised two-velocity Boltzmann equation Physica A 153: 612-618.

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