Different languages express meanings differently. Culturally and linguistically, English and Chinese are different. However, the international language of science and research is English, non-native science writers can benefit from understanding the historical origins of English science writing.
Some people describe English as a writer-responsible language, while Chinese is a reader-responsible language. For both grammar and style, the Chinese language requires many contextual clues to help the reader understand the writer’s message. English, on the other hand, requires grammatical transparency.
For example, although English and Chinese are both SVO type languages (unlike Japanese which is an SOV language), Chinese is a high-context language and so doesn’t require the grammatical Subject “S” to always be stated if it is clear from the context; English on the other hand is a low-context language and thus requires the Subject, except in certain very informal situations like “Looking for to seeing you soon”. Conjunctions, like “so” and “therefore”, are also necessary for English, but are not always necessary in Chinese; in fact, if they’re used too much, it would be seen as poor style.
So, when using English as a writer-responsible language, the English writer’s job is to make the reader’s job as easy as possible – especially for technical writing. The Chinese reader, in contrast, often requires more work and may depend on context clues and the active interpretation of how ideas relate to each other in the absence of conjunctions.
Other language differences may be more related to style preferences in communities within a culture. The writing style in the disciplines of humanities is very different than that in the sciences, and writing styles in the different sciences fields differ from each other. These caveats aside, Hyland and Milton’s (1997) research, for example, showed that Chinese and native speaking UK students in English academic writing use of hedges (e.g., may be due to, likely due to) and boosters (e.g., certainly, undoubtedly) in contrasting ways. The Chinese writers of English use noticeably more boosters as a persuasive strategy compared to the UK students who favor more reserved and hedged interpretations.
For example, in Hyland and Milton’s corpus comparison study, the UK native speakers used the hedge words ”appear” 33 times more often than the Chinese speakers, “apparent” 10 times more, and “perhaps” and “possible” four times more” (ibid.). And for modal verbs that express certainty, Chinese writers used “will” most at 2731 times compared to the UK writers who used the less certain “would” the most at 1344 times.
There are historical reasons for the preferred types of linguistic expression common in scientific writing, often described by scientists as “technical writing.”
The plain style of technical writing comes from early scientists from Francis Bacon (16th Century CE; image to the right) to Robert Boyle (17th Century CE) who promoted experimental philosophy. For these influential British empiricists, writing served to let facts speak for themselves in an impersonal, clear and undecorated style. Sprat’s (1667) prescriptive stylistic comments on science writing style are the earliest and best-known:
“reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style: to return back to the primitive purity, and shortness … a close, naked natural way of speaking … bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can: and preferring the languages of Artizans, countrymen, and Merchants before that of Wits, or Scholars”. (T. Sprat, 1667)
It is no coincidence that this form of communication and investigation of nature happened at the same time as the rise of Protestantism in England in the 16th Century, which “protested” Catholic practices. Protestants criticized Catholic corruption and beliefs, and also called for an austere work ethic and return to the Bible and its translations into plain English to make this knowledge more open to the public. Max Weber (2002 [1905]) in the early 20th Century argued that Protestantism’s values of tireless work ethic, separation of religion and work, smaller families, self-sacrifice, and deferred gratification led to capitalism and social modernity. It also influenced the development of English empiricism, or science, and the language used to communicate it.
Early scientists like Bacon protested the heavy influence of Aristotle during the Middle Ages, i.e., before the 16th Century. Aristotle’s philosophy had long dominated how the world was understood along with the belief that an individual human, with his reason and observation alone, were sufficient to know the truths of the world. Bacon, Kepler, Copernicus and other 16th Century scientists realized that individuals with self-mastery were incapable of accessing truths of the world without tools, like telescopes, to enhance their senses. Knowledge in this view is both cumulative but also corporate, requiring many to contribute to the knowledge of nature. Founded in 1660, the Royal Society of London similarly adopted a protestant-inspired latin motto, Nullius en verba, meaning ‘take nobody’s word for it’ and echoing the mission of scientific inquiry: to “withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment” (Royal Society, 2021).
This approach to investigating and understanding nature and communicating it in a plain and transparent style has continued through “style manual” writers from 19th to the 21st Centuries, who still define English technical writing as avoiding unnecessary decoration, irrelevancy, illogicality, and ambiguity.
Language is not a neutral medium and scientific procedure and English technical writing style has clear cultural and historic roots in Anglo-protestant worldview.
References
Hyland, K., & Milton, J. (1997). Qualification and certainty in L1 and L2 students’ writing. Journal of second language writing, 6(2), 183-205.
Royal Society. (2021). History of the Royal Society. https://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/#:~:text=The%20Royal%20Society’s%20motto%20’Nullius,to%20facts%20determined%20by%20experiment.
Sprat, T. (1958). History of the Royal Society (1667). na.
Weber, M. (2002). The Protestant ethic and the” spirit” of capitalism and other writings. Penguin.
