ThePhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1675–1975: A sociohistorical discourse analysis

This study traces the evolution of scientific research writing in English from 1675 to 1975. Two separate methods of discourse analysis – rhetorical analysis focusing on broad genre characteristics, and sociolinguistic register analysis – are applied to a large corpus of articles from thePhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. The two sets of results are then interpreted vis-à-vis the Royal Society's social history to yield an integrated description. Findings indicate that: (a) research writing in the 17th – 18th centuries was substantially influenced by communicative norms of author-centered genteel conduct; (b) greater attention to methodology and precision in the interest of scientific specialization brought about pronounced textual changes in the 19th century, although gentlemanly norms were still in evidence; and (c) by the late 20th century, expanded theoretical description/discussions appear to have replaced experiments and methods as the rhetorical centerpiece of the research article. (Discourse analysis, rhetorical analysis, register, social studies of science, scientific writing, corpus linguistics)