There are differences between scientific and non-scientific English indeed: a case study

Abstract

[Abstracts] This study considers the behaviour of one specific stance adverb, indeed. In a previous analysis of scientific texts, indeed was found to be one of the most frequently used adverbs in the expression of emphatic standpoint evincing authorial presence (Moskowich and Crespo 2014). Also noted was its differing use by male and female writers, as well as differences according to genre and the geographical provenance of authors. My aim in the present study is to see whether such behaviour of indeed is also found in non-scientific texts, and if so to what extent. The analysis will include both scientific and non-scientific texts from the nineteenth century, a period in which the general fixation of English in its contemporary form had already taken place. The initial hypothesis is that authors of scientific texts tended to express themselves with more caution, even tentativeness, in comparison to authors writing less “impersonal” texts. External factors might also lead to identifiable variations in use in scientific writing, these including the sex of the speaker, plus his or her self-confidence as a writer. Such factors will be used as variables in the analysis. Data for scientific writing will be drawn from the Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy (CETA) and the Corpus of History English Texts (CHET); the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English (PPCMBE) will be used for non-scientific texts.