Models of interaction between the established and the new knowledge in popular science texts

Abstract

The article is based on the concept of knowledge as a unit of linguistic analysis of the popular science text and is focused on scientific knowledge which results from purposeful cognitive activity and encompasses various concepts about reality. In the popular science text, knowledge can either be borrowed from previous texts in the form of concepts, facts, results of previous studies, which we consider established knowledge, or be verbalized as results of new studies or new concepts. The purpose of the research is to reveal and describe the main patterns of interaction between the old and the new knowledge within the framework of the popular science media text. The scientific knowledge in this text type functions as a dialectal unity of the established and the new knowledge which are interrelated within the semantic structure of the text type under study. The research has been carried out on the material of 100 articles of British and American newspapers (The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Independent, The Sunday Times, USA Today). The methodology of the research is based on the previous studies of the popular science text as a unity of semantic components which make up its conventional structure typical of this text type (superstructure) and establish a virtual dialogue between the author and the reader. Contextual analysis and statistical methods are used in determining the fragments of the text which contain the established and the new knowledge. The research shows that the new scientific knowledge appears in a popular science text through the dynamics of the interchange between the established and the new knowledge. In most English articles, the development of the new knowledge begins with the direct report of research results or with stories about patients, participants of scientific research. It can also be stated that the interaction of the established and the new scientific knowledge occurs in the form of three patterns: a statement about the results of earlier studies followed by a report on the results of recent studies (or the reverse sequence); a statement about the volume of available information on the scientific problem, followed by a piece of information about a new scientific discovery and its practical significance (or the reverse sequence); and, finally, a statement about established ideas and concepts followed by information about elaboration or updating of the established knowledge, and the addition of new pieces of knowledge. All three models imply the opposition between the established and the new, which illustrates the continuity of the scientific knowledge.