Conditionals and their Functions in Women's Scientific Writing

Abstract

[Abstract] Despite socio-cultural gender-based prejudice, women have played a role in the advancement of scientific knowledge for as long as science exists. However, their effort, but for a few exceptions, has been historically hidden from public recognition and frequently shadowed behind the figures of their male relatives or husbands. Women who still decided to fight against this state of affairs and kept writing scientific texts used several strategies to overcome resistance from their male counterparts. One of such strategies was the use of conditionals, as the latter not only play a significant role in logical argumentation, but can also act as downtoning devices or hedges. The aim of this study is to describe the functions of conditionals in the works of English-speaking women scientists whose works were published along the 18th and 19th centuries. Our intention is to focus on the different varieties of conditionals and their pragmatic functions in each text as well as in the construction of scientific discourse. The diachronic evolution of the different functions of conditionals and their relationship with the ever-evolving scientific world, as well as the possible correlations between the use of the different conditional subordinators and their functions will be analysed. This research is carried out using the Coruña Corpus of Scientific Writing with the help of the Coruña Corpus Tool.