Instituto Superior del Profesorado “Dr. Joaquín V.

González”

Departamento de Inglés

Objectivity in Academic Writing: A Study of Some of the Most Salient

Linguistic Rhetorical Devices Employed in Radford’s Textbooks
with the Aim of Construing a De-agentivized Prose.

Fernando Damián Mortoro

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 ABSTRACT

Linguists in the field of generative grammar make use of the scientific or hypothetico-
deductive method of inquiry. Such method of inquiry requires generative grammarians to
employ a number of rhetorical devices in order to present their theories in an elegant and
objectified fashion. To that end, generative linguists should make use of a number of lexico-
grammatical devices aimed at de-agentivizing the prose of the texts they employ in order to
communicate their findings to the rest of their linguistic community.
This paper explores some of the most salient objectifying rhetorical devices employed in
Radford’s textbooks, more specifically Radford’s Syntactic Theory and the Structure of
English (1997) and Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English (2004). Such
objectifying lexico-grammatical devices include: (a) the employment of abstract rhetors, (b)
nominalizations, (c) the use of non-finite forms of the verb, (d) passivization, and (e) the
employment of the historic present tense. Such devices are mostly employed in the description
of the technical aspects of the theory.
It is important to point out here that this study is by no means representative of each and
every sentence employed in either Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English (570 pages) or
Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English (526 pages). Only some passages and
sentences thought to be representative of Radford’s prose have been selected for the purpose of
linguistic analysis. Last but not least, it is worth noting here that Radford’s prose, like any other
text, is neither completely and thoroughly objective nor subjective: apart from the objectifying
devices mentioned above, Radford’s prose contains modalizations, evaluative statements,
hedges and the other agentivizing devices that clearly point to the presence of the writer’s
subjectivity in his text. The study of how and to what extent the writer is present in his text
would deserve a paper of its own right. This paper explores the writer’s employment of the
linguistic devices that are used in the production of an objectified, de-agentivized and
thingified prose.

1. Introduction

Scientific discourse is believed to simply report or describe facts with almost no

human intervention (Hyland, 1998:14): “In a strictly empiricist view, a scientific text is
regarded as a neutral descriptive medium which allows a scientist to act simply as “a

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messenger relaying the truth from nature” (Gilbert, 1976:285). However, as will be
clear from our unfolding argument, writers of scientific papers do intervene in their
texts: to begin with, they are the “linguistic creators” of the texts they produce in order
to communicate their findings to the rest of their scientific communities. The methods,
results, and interpretations of their scientific findings are represented by propositions
which are expressed in ordinary human language. In other words, language is always
mediating between reality and the cognitive entities it represents, as illustrated by
Klimovsky’s quotation (2001:33):

“…[L]a captación de entidades no es un fenómeno de nuestra conducta que

se ofrezca a nuestro conocimiento sin el auxilio de algunos dispositivos,
entre los cuales el principal con que contamos es el lenguaje ordinario. Los
términos y vocabulario de este nos permiten una primera conceptuación de
la realidad…”

The idea that language is always mediating between cognition and reality has a
long standing tradition in western scientific philosophy:

“…[El] concepto aristotélico de verdad […] se funda en el vínculo que

existe entre nuestro pensamiento, expresado a través del lenguaje, y lo que
ocurre fuera del lenguaje, en la realidad. Aristóteles se refiere a esta relación
como “adecuación” o “correspondencia” entre pensamiento y realidad. De
allí que a la noción aristotélica se la denomina también “concepción
semántica” de la verdad, pues la semántica, como es sabido, se ocupa de las
relaciones del lenguaje con la realidad, que está más allá del lenguaje.”
(Klimovsky, 2001:24).

Given the primacy of linguistic considerations in the creation of scientific

knowledge, it is only natural that writers of scientific papers should make use of
elaborate rhetorical devices in order to persuade their audiences of the truthness of their
propositions. Moreover, as Hyland (1998:16) claims, one of the most important
rhetorical objectives involves “persuading readers that a particular observation actually
lies beyond questions of persuasion and is situated within the realm of fact.”
Linguistically, there are a number of strategies standardly employed in the creation of
an objectified, impersonalized and de-agentivized prose. These include (a) the use of
abstract rhetors (Hyland, 1998:172), nominalizations, the employment of non-finite
forms, passivization, and the employment of the historic present tense.

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 Therefore, one may confidently claim that academic writing is the objectified
presentation of a subjective and linguistically mediated perspective, in accordance with
the requirements of the scientific community. According to Hyland (1998:16) scientific
discourse is “grounded in disciplinary […] practices transmitted through socialization
and secured via a system of peer review. In other words, scientific knowledge is seen to
be socially contingent and scientific discourse to be a rhetorical artifact.” Writers of
academic texts belong to well-defined discourse communities, which possess common
goals and participatory mechanisms, and whose information exchange is conducted in
accordance with community specific genres and a highly specialized terminology
(Swales, 1990:29).

2. Purpose

The purpose of this paper, the final ‘tesina’ dissertation, a requirement for my
specialization course in Linguistics at I. S. P. Dr. Joaquín V. González, is to make a
small and modest, though I hope valuable, contribution to the understanding of the
rhetorical aspects of the language of scientific English. More specifically, I will be
dealing with the language employed in the field of Linguistics by writer Andrew
Radford in his textbooks Syntactic theory and the structure of English: A Minimalist
Approach (1997) and Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English (2004)1.
Given the overwhelming nature of this enterprise and considering the fact that this paper
focuses on qualitative rather than quantitative aspects of language, I have deemed it
sensible to illustrate my points with only some passages from MS and STSE which, I
believe, are representative of their prose. The reason for choosing passages from
Radford’s textbooks as the corpus for my investigation is two-fold: firstly, Radford’s
prose contains the rhetorical features I am interested in investigating, namely
objectifying rhetorical devices such as the employment of abstract rhetors,
nominalizations, the employment of non-finite verbs, passivization and the employment
of the historic present tense. Secondly, given the fact that Radford’s textbooks have
been employed by teachers of Linguistics at Teacher Training Colleges in Buenos Aires
City2 for at least the last ten years, and considering that tesina dissertations are often
included in teachers’ syllabuses as either compulsory or suggested reading material, this
1
From now onwards, I will use the short-hands STSE and MS.
2
Namely, I.S.P. Dr. Joaquín V. González, I.E.S. en Lenguas Vivas Juan Ramón Fernández and Escuela
Nacional Superior en Lenguas Vivas Sofía E. B. de Spangenberg.

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paper could be of interest to teachers and students of linguistics at undergraduate level.
Moreover, given the fact that Teacher Training College students are presently being
required to write papers in classes such as Linguistics & Discourse Analysis, a paper
that concentrates on the lexico-grammatical manifestation of some of the rhetorical
devices employed in academic texts should undoubtedly be of interest to undergraduate
students at Teacher Training College, since reflecting upon the mechanisms employed
in the production of academic texts should help students become better and more critical
readers and writers of research papers themselves. Moreover, there is evidence that lack
of knowledge regarding the rhetorical features of scientific writing leads to lower
efficiency in the production of academic writing (Gosden, 1992, in Hyland, 1998:8).
Swales (1985:42, in Hyland, 1998:8) claims that “such demands [linguistic and
rhetorical fluency in a second language] may be responsible for the low level of NNS 3
contributions to the scientific literature in English.”

3. 1. The Representational Function of Language

Halliday (1994:106) claims that speakers make use of the lexico-grammatical

resources available to them in the language in order to linguistically construe their view
of their inner and outer experience:

“There is a basic difference […] between inner and outer experience:

between what we experience as going on ‘out there’, in the world around us,
and what we experience as going on inside ourselves, in the world of
consciousness and imagination.”

Our inner and outer experiences can be construed grammatically by means of the
realization of the system of transitivity. The transitivity system (Halliday, 1994:107)
construes experience by means of a set of processes, participants and accompanying
circumstances. There are six such processes and have come to be known in the literature
(Halliday, 1994:107) as relational, existential, material, mental, verbal and behavioral.
Here I will briefly review relational identifying, mental and verbal processes, given the
fact that these are the process types that are directly relevant to our discussion of
objectivity.
Relational identifying processes involve the use of copular verbs, such as be or

3
NNS stands for Non-Native Speakers of English.

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seem, which establish a relationship of equality between the two participants in the
clause:

(1) “The only structural learning which children face in acquiring their native language is
the task of determining the appropriate value for each of the relevant structural
parameters along which languages vary.”(Radford, 1997:21)

However, the two participants conjoined by is have very different functions. In (1) the
participant The only structural learning which children face in acquiring their native
language has the role of Identifier and the participant the task of determining the
appropriate value for each of the relevant structural parameters along which languages
vary has the role of identified (Halliday, 1994:122). Therefore, identifying relational
processes (be, seem) establish an Identifier/Identified (or signifier/signified) relationship
between the two participants in the clause. Let us take another example in order to
illustrate our point: in sentences such as John is a brave man, John is Identifier (or
Signifier) and a brave man is Identified (or Signified), given the fact that the participant
a brave man assigns some “value” to the participant John, which, in turn, has a
referential function: in other words, the term that has reference, the Identifier/Signifier,
is assigned some value by the phrase that functions as Identified/Signified. (Identifying
relational clauses will be further dealt with in section 4 on nominalizations below)
Mental processes construe inner experience and are related to three possible
subcategories: cognition (“…the goal of the linguist is to determine what it is that native
speakers know about their native language…” (Radford, 2004:6), volition (“an
important question which we want our theory of UG to answer is …” (Radford,
2004:8), or perception (“how is it when we see a sort of irregular figure drawn in front
of us we see it as a triangle?” (Radford, 2004:12); verbal processes are related to the
metalinguistic function of language since verbs such as suggest or maintain describe the
speech acts that are being performed by the locutions that contain them (“Chomsky
maintains that the ability to speak and acquire language is unique to human beings”
(Radford, 2004:11). As is clear from the examples just given, verbal processes and
mental verbs of cognition, volition and perception can project a clause, the projected
clause, as the complement of the verbal or mental predicate, housed in the projecting
clause. Such projections are known in the Hallidayian literature as “Metaphenomena”:

“The projected clause […] stands for a ‘wording’: that is, the phenomenon it

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 represents is a lexicogrammatical one. Take for example ‘I’m not so sure,’
replied the Fat Controller. While the projecting clause replied the Fat
Controller represents an ordinary phenomenon of experience, the projected
clause I’m not sure represents a second-order phenomenon, something that
is itself a representation. We will refer to this as a ‘metaphenomenon’. If we
want to argue, the issue is not ‘is he, or is he not, so sure?’ – that is a
separate question; it is ‘did he, or did he not, say these words?’” (Halliday,
1994:254)

It is important to clarify here that this is an abstract and idealized picture of the way we
humans construe experiential reality through language: there will be in-between or
borderline cases. As Halliday (1994:107) points out:

“There is no priority of one kind of process over another […] in our

concrete visual metaphor, they form a circle and not a line. That is to say,
our model of experience, as interpreted through the grammatical system of
transitivity, is one of regions within a continuous space; but the continuity is
not between two poles, it is round in a loop. To use the analogy of colour:
the grammar construes experience like a colour chart, with red blue and
yellow as primary colours and purple, green and orange along the borders;
not like a physical spectrum, with red at one end and violet at the other.”

Since this is the way in which speakers make use of the lexicogrammatical resources of
the language in order to construe experience, Halliday has coined the expression
“experiential metafunction” to refer to the representational function of language.
In the lines that follow special attention will be given to both mental and verbal
processes. As we will see, these two processes are strategically used in the creation of
an objectified prose in both MS and STSE.

3.2 Abstract Rhetors

It is to be expected that mental and verbal process types require the presence of a
human being functioning as the participant experiencing the mental state (e.g. ‘We
thought that she was on her way’) or performing the verbal action (e.g. ‘We told him
that she was on her way’). Halliday (1994:112) has coined the terms Senser and Sayer
for the participants “experiencing the thinking” and “doing the speaking” respectively.
Radford (1997:326) employs the terms Experiencer and Agent to refer to these two
arguments of the verb. Leaving these terminological discrepancies aside, it is important
to note here that the participants in question, which in the unmarked case occupy the

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position of both logical and grammatical subject4, are expected to be animate entities
capable of rational thinking. However, in MS and STSE we find mental and verbal
clauses that contain abstract inanimate entities functioning as the syntactic subjects of
such clauses. These inanimate participants occupying the subject position within the
clause are known in the literature as abstract rhetors (Hyland, 1998:172) and are
strategically employed in MS and STSE with the aim of objectifying the propositions or
nominalizations introduced by such abstract rhetors, as the following examples (2-9)
illustrate5:

(2) “[A] traditional grammar of English would tell us that the simplest type
of finite declarative clause found in English is a sentence like (1) in which a
nominal subject is followed by a verbal predicate.” (Radford, 2004:2)

(3) “This [experiment] suggests that the acquisition of grammatical

inflections involves the creation of a set of hypotheses about how such
inflections are used.” (Radford, 1997:11)

(4) “…such an analysis relies crucially on the assumption that moved

constituents leave behind full copies of themselves. It also assumes the
possibility of split spellout/discontinuous spellout, in the sense that (in
sentences like (15) and (16) above) a PP or CP which is the complement of a
particular type of moved constituent can be spelled out in one position (in
the position where it originated), and the remainder of the constituent
spelled out in another (in the position where it ends up). More generally, it
suggests that (in certain structures) there a choice regarding which part of a
movement chain gets deleted…” (Radford, 2004:194)

(5) “Icelandic data like (4) suggest that there is a systematic relationship
between nominative case assignment and T-agreement.” (Radford,
2004:283)

(6) “The requirement that a theory should explain why grammars have the
properties they do is conventionally referred to as the criterion of
explanatory adequacy.” (Radford, 2004:8)

(7) “What [sentence] (4) tells us is that the overall phrase privatize hospitals
is a verb phrase/VP, and that it comprises the verb/V privatize and the
noun/N hospitals.” (Radford, 1997:87)

(8) “Principle (29) claims that all non-terminal nodes branch into two and
only two immediate constituents, never more than two, and never fewer than
two.” (Radford, 1997:98)

4
Following Halliday (1994: 31), we will define ‘grammatical subject’ as the entity “of which something
is predicated” and ‘logical subject’ as “the doer of the action”. The expression ‘grammatical subject’
makes reference to the ‘syntactic subject of the sentence’, and the expression ‘logical subject’ makes
reference the ‘semantic subject of the sentence’, that is the actual does of the action or experiencer of the
psychological state predicated in the sentence.
5
In examples 1-8 the use of brackets and underlining is mine.

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 (9) “The tree diagrams […] make specific claims about how sentences are
structured out of successive layers of constituents.” (Radford, 1997:102)

The underlined words and expressions in 2-9 above represent either mental or verbal
processes that contain some inanimate participant in the role of Senser or Sayer. So, for
example, in (4) above, we learn that an “analysis” is capable of undergoing a mental
process (“assume”) or performing a verbal action (“suggest”); in (2), we learn that a
“grammar” of a language is capable of performing a verbal action (“tell”); and in (6) we
are told that a “theory” should be capable of performing a verbal action (“explain”). But
we know that these are not the congruent (i.e. non-metaphorical or unmarked)
realizations of such clauses: in fact, it is linguists and researchers that are capable of
“assuming”, “suggesting”, “telling” and “explaining”, not “analyses”, “grammars” and
“theories”. However, as sentences 2-9 above illustrate, in MS and STSE we do find
sentences in which inanimate abstract entities function as the participants performing
the verbal action or experiencing the mental state. An interesting question for the type
of analysis we are adopting here is “what is the rhetorical effect caused by the
employment of abstract rhetors?” Given the fact that the notional, animate subjects in
sentences 2-9 have been replaced by abstract, inanimate rhetors, one must conclude
that the desired effect is one of objectification (via de-agentivization). So, instead of
sentences such as “I (the linguist) am concerned with grammatical competence rather
grammatical performance,” in which the grammatical and notional subjects of the
sentence coincide, we get metaphorical, objectified sentences such as “Grammar is
concerned with competence rather than performance,” in which the position of syntactic
subject is occupied by the inanimate, abstract noun “grammar”. Thus, the “theory” (in
this case, the theory of internalized (vs. externalized) language) and the “text” that
linguistically construes such a theory become de-agentivized, objectified, or
“thingified” (Thompson, 1996:172), that is, a thing, an entity with an existence of its
own right, autonomous from human agency. Thus, the employment of an objectifying
prose is coherent with generative grammarians’ claim that generative grammar has the
status of a “serious (i.e. scientific)6 field of enquiry”:

“Why do we need to invoke the formal properties of tree structures? Well,

any adequate description of any phenomenon in any field of enquiry (in our
present case, syntax) must be fully explicit, and to be explicit, it must be
formal – i.e. make use only of theoretical constructs which have definable
formal properties. The use of a formal apparatus (involving a certain amount
6
The brackets are mine.

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 of technical terminology) may seem confusing at first to the beginner, but as
in any other serious field of enquiry (e.g. molecular biology) no real
progress can be made unless we try to construct formal models of the
phenomena we are studying. It would clearly be irrational to accept the use
of formalism in one field of enquiry (e.g. molecular biology) while rejecting
it in another (e.g. linguistics)” (Radford, 1997: 99)

Halloran (1984 in Hyland 1998) makes a very interesting reflection on the

impersonalizing effect of the use of abstract rhetors:

“Writers can distance themselves from their propositions through the

manufacture of “abstract rhetors” (Halloran, 1984) which implies that
rhetorical acts can be accomplished without human volition […] this
convention of scientific discourse [the employment of “abstract rhetors”]
allows the writer to employ verbs such as indicate and imply which
contribute to the impersonalisation of the discourse by appearing to make
the text or the data the source of epistemic judgments. These represent a
linguistic sleight of hand by implying that any reasonable and informed
reader would draw the same conclusions. Such forms obscure the
functioning of verbal and mental processes by nominalizing a personal
projection, thereby encouraging and interpretation close to ‘makes us think
that X’, or ‘leads us to the conclusion that X’, rather than ‘my interpretation
is that X’.” (Hyland, 1998: 123-4)

It is interesting to note that clauses employing abstract rhetors are instances of

experiential grammatical metaphors (Halliday, 1994:343-353), since they display a
mismatch between the actual representation of the world (in which the linguist does the
“thinking” and the “saying”) and the representation construed by the linguist in the text,
in which “abstract entities” performs such human actions. In the next section, on “non-
negotiability”, I will discuss other lexico-grammatical resources that are commonly
employed in the creation of an objectified prose: namely, the employment of
nominalization and the use of non-finite clauses.

4. Non-Negotiability
4. 1 Nominalization

Another factor contributing to the construing of an objectified prose is

nominalization. According to Halliday (1994:352), nominalizing is a device by means
of which processes and properties, the former being typically worded as verbs and the
latter as adjectives, are reworded metaphorically as noun-like expressions. The
advantage of nominalization is that it enables speakers and writers to construe processes

10
and properties as participants in relational processes of identification or attribution
(Halliday, 1994:119-138). In order to illustrate this point, let us see how nominalization
works in the following passage from MS:

(10) “[Very often, performance is an imperfect reflection of competence] a:

[we all make occasional slips of the tongue] b, or [occasionally misinterpret
something which someone else says to us] c. However, [this doesn’t mean
that we don’t know our native language or that we don’t have competence in
it] d. [Misproductions and misinterpretations are performance errors] e,
[attributable to a variety of performance factors like tiredness, boredom,
drunkenness, drugs, external distractions and so forth.] f7”(Radford, 2004: 7)

In (10), clause (b) contains the predication we all make occasional slips of the tongue,
and clause (c) contains the predication we misinterpret something which someone else
says to us. Further below, in clause (e), these two processes (make slips of the tongue
and misinterpret something) are realized as two nominalizations in coordination:
namely misproductions and misinterpretations. Such nominalizations represent the
objectified or thingified versions of the processes for which they stand, since they
function as participants in identifying relational clauses. Clause (b) realizes a material
(Halliday, 1994:109-112) representation of the outer reality it stands for; clause (c)
realizes a mental representation of the inner reality it stands for; clause (e) is realized as
an identifying relational clause in which the nominalizations misproductions and
misinterpretations function as the Identifier participant in the clause, and the nominal
group performance errors functions as the Value participant in the clause.8
Nominalizations are essential in academic writing in that they enable speakers to
pack a lot of information in a simple sentence: as we have just seen, the nominalizations
misproductions and misinterpretations are the compressed versions of two main clauses
in coordination. This grammatical packing and compressing of information is known in
the literature as “meaning condensation.” (Thompson, 1996:171)
From a textual perspective, meaning condensation enables writers and speakers
to thematize information that has previously occupied rhematic position in the clause:
the strings make slips of the tongue and misinterpret something are rhematic in clauses
(b) and (c) respectively. In clause (e) they become thematic. Also, by condensing

7
I have bracketed and numbered all ranking (not down-ranked) clauses in passage (9) for clarity of
exposition. (For an interesting account of ranking and down-ranked clauses, see Halliday, 1994:218-225
& 242.)
8
For processes types (material, mental, relational, verbal, existential and behavioural) see section 3
above, page 4. For a fully-fledged discussion of process types, see Halliday (1994:109-149)

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information into nominalizations, the content of such clauses acquires the status of a
presupposition, i.e. information presented as given and non-negotiable (Levinson, 1983:
177). In addition, in condensation, the doer of the process gets reduced or lost: in clause
(b) the doer of the action (we) appears in subject position as unmarked topical theme; in
clause (c), the subject is again (we), in its elliptical guise. Two clauses further down the
text, the subject we has disappeared and has been replaced by the nominalizations
misproductions and misinterpretations. This “vanishing” of the logical subject produces
an effect of objectivity, since the process has now been deprived of its agency: it is non-
negotiable, objectified, thingified. In Thomson’s terms:

“One reason why nominalization is in harmony with the ideology of science,

and of academic, formal writing in general is that it allows processes to be
objectified, to be expressed without the human doer […] Nominalized
processes are non-finite: they are not tied to any specific time in relation to
the time of speaking. Thus a nominalized process is detached from the here-
and-now in a way that is not normally possible for a process expressed by a
verb. It is therefore inherently generalized – again in harmony with the aim
of science to establish general truths not tied to specific conditions of time
or observer. If we go a step further, we can see that, by removing the option
of a Mood, a nominalized process has been made non-negotiable. This is
also intimately connected with the fact that it has been ‘thingified’ by being
expressed as a noun. Science aims to establish not only general truths, but
unassailable, certain truths.” (Thompson, 1996: 172)

4.2 Non-finite forms

There is a halfway house type of lexico-grammatical structure between the

nominalization and the fully-fledged finite verb: the non-finite forms of the verb,
namely infinitival, present participial, past participial and gerundial forms of the verb:
in MS section 1.2, for instance, out of 237 verbal forms (i.e. both finite and non-finite),
non-finite forms of the verb amount to 61: 21 infinitival forms; 16 present participial
forms; 12 past participial forms; 12 gerundial forms. These non-finite forms of the verb
share some features with nominalizations: in both nominalizations and non-finite verb
forms, the doer of the action is not present, which makes the non-finite clause less
accessible for negotiation. As Martin (1997:64) points out, the subject is an
interpersonal element, given the fact that it is the element that bears the modal
responsibility of the proposition (or proposal) in question.
In addition, non-finite forms of the verb are not anchored in time, which makes
them suitable for the generation of generalized, impersonal, objectified statements.

12
Finite forms of the verb, on the other hand, are interpersonal elements by virtue of the
fact that speakers use them to present their statements from different temporal
perspectives. Moreover, finite verbs usually carry aspectual information regarding the
duration, completion or iteration of an action, features which are also dependent on the
speaker’s subjective viewpoint. Therefore one must conclude that subject and finite
constituents are interpersonal elements. As Martin (1997:62) points out:

“…The Mood element makes the clause ‘negotiable’ and consists of Finite,
Subject and (sometimes) modal Adjunct(s). The finite makes a clause
negotiable by coding it as positive or negative and by grounding it, either in
terms of time (it is/it isn’t: it was/it wasn’t: it will/it won’t) or in terms of
modality (it may/it will/it must, etc.) The subject is the element in terms of
which the subject can be negotiated. Consequently, the absence of the
subject and the finite element in the non-finite clause makes them ideal for
the presentation of propositional content in an objectified and impersonal
style…”

To put our discussion under a more concrete footing, let us consider the
following two clauses (11) and (12):

(11) “Complementizers can’t be used to introduce main clauses in English.” (Radford,

1997:148)
(12) “Having arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs, we now turn our attention to
the syntax of nominal structures.” (Radford, 1997:151)

Clause (11) is a fully-fledged finite clause consisting of a subject Complementizers, a

modalized, passivized verb can’t be used, and an infinitival complement to introduce
main clauses in English. The fact that clauses such as (11) contain a subject and a finite
form of the verb makes them “arguable” and “negotiable”. This is clear from the fact
that such clauses can be tagged, i.e. they can be questioned, as (11b) below illustrates:

(11b) Complementizers can’t be used to introduce main clauses in English, can they?

In (12), the picture is quite different. Sentence (12) is made up of a subordinate present
participial clause Having arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs and a
main clause we now turn our attention to the syntax of nominal structures. In turn the
subordinate clause Having arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs is
made up of a present participial verb phrase Having arrived and its prepositional

13
complement at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs. Notice that the lack of
subject and finite in the thematized present participial clause in (12) deprives the
subordinate clause of “negotiability” and “arguability”, as illustrated in (12b):

(12b) ***Having arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs, we now turn our
attention to the syntax of nominal structures, have we?

The fact that (12b) cannot be tagged in the way shown in (12b) above lends evidence to
the claim that subjectless non-finite clauses are less arguable and less negotiable than
their fully-fledged counterparts:

(13a) We have arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs, haven’t we?

(13b) A: We have arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs.
B: Have we?

Functionally, in (13a) the tag is interpreted either as an invitation to confirm the

information contained in the main clause or as an interrogative whose job is to demand
information (in this case ‘yes’ or ‘no’) from the interlocutor. In either case, the job of
the tag is to invite the interlocutor to take part in the interaction. In (13b), on the other
hand, it is the interlocutor who “takes the reins of the conversation” and questions the
validity of the propositional content of A’s statement. What is important to note here is
that, in both (13a) and (13b), there is room for interaction between the participants in
the conversation. Finally, it is interesting to note that in sentence (12) the subordinate
present participial clause Having arrived at a unitary characterization of clauses as IPs
is in thematic position, which makes it even less accessible for negotiation. As Grundy
(2000:120) points out, subordinate clauses occupying thematic position usually carry
presuppositional content, and presuppositional content is regarded as “non-negotiable”,
“taken-for-granted” information.
Our arguments regarding the non-negotiability and non-arguability of
nominalizations and non-finite forms lead to the conclusion that the employment of
both nominalizations and non-finite forms of verbs makes a contribution to the creation
of the objectified and impersonalized prose in MS and STSE.

14
5. Passivization

The objectivized prose in MS and STSE is also the result of the employment of
the passive construction. As Hyland (1998:77) points out: “The use of the passive voice
without an agent is a further impersonating technique, allowing writers to withhold full
commitment.” The extract below, from MS, contains passivized mental processes (e.g.
“is concerned”), passivized material processes (e.g. “is subdivided”, “are combined”,
“are formed”, “are structured”) and passivized verbal processes (e.g. “called”, which is
in fact occupying the blurry middle ground area between relational and verbal). The
active counterparts of the passivized forms of such verbs typically require an
Agent/Actor or Senser/Experiencer participant in subject position. However,
functionality requirements dictate that such participants be absent if the sentence is to
acquire the objectified, impersonal presentation commonly used in academic writing, as
illustrated in (14) below:

(14) “In broad terms, this book is concerned with aspects of grammar.
Grammar is traditionally subdivided into two different but inter-related
areas of study – morphology and syntax. Morphology is the study of how
words are formed out of smaller units (called morphemes), and so
addresses questions such as ‘What are the component morphemes of a word
like antidisestablishmentarianism, and what is the nature of the
morphological operations by which they are combined together to form the
overall word?’ Syntax is the study of the way in which phrases and
sentences are structured out of words, and so addresses questions like
‘What is the structure of a sentence like What’s the president doing’ and
what is the nature of the grammatical operations by which its component
words are combined together to form the overall sentence structure?’ In this
chapter, we take a look at the approach to syntax adopted by Chomsky.”
(Radford, 2004:1)

Although there sure is a slight variation in the number of passivized verbs found in
different sections in MS and STSE, the passage cited above is no doubt representative of
the objectified prose in MS and STSE. This claim is borne out by statistic evidence from
different sections in different chapters of MS and STSE. In section 1.2 of MS, for
instance, 25 out of the 188 finite verb forms are passivized.
Passivized prose has constituted a feature of scientific writing since the
beginning of its establishment as an academic genre. This claim is supported by
evidence from scientific texts belonging to previous stages in the development of

15
scientific writing in English. The following examples have been taken from Chaucer’s
Treatise on the Astrolabe, written in 1391 and 1392, and regarded as “the oldest English
‘technical manual’, i.e. a description of a scientific device – the astrolabe”9:

(15) “…Under the compas of thilke degrees ben writen the names of the 12
Signes: as Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio,
Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, Piscis. And the nombres of the degrees
of thoo signes be writen in augrym above, and with longe divisiouns fro 5 to
5, dyvidid fro the tyme that the signe entrith unto the last
ende…”

(16) “…Next this folewith the cercle of the daies, that ben figured in manere
of degres, that contenen in nombre 365, dividid also with longe strikes fro 5
to 5, and the nombre in augrym writen under that cercle…”

(17) “…The names of these monthes were clepid somme for her propirtees
and somme by statutes of Arabiens, somme by othre lordes of Rome. Eke of
these monthes, as liked to Julius Cesar and to Cesar Augustus, somme were
compouned of diverse nombres of daies, as Julie and August….”

The Treatise was a translation of a compilation of other astronomical works, and

since most scientific writing was done in Latin at that time, Chaucer was translating this
text for his 10-year-old son. This is why, apart from the passivized prose illustrated by
passages (15) – (17), we also find imperative mood sentences, such as those underlined
in (18) below, which mark the overt dialogic nature of Chaucer’s text:

(18) “…But understond wel that these degres of signes ben everich of hem
considred of 60 mynutes, and every mynute of 60 secundes, and so furth
into smale fraccions infinite, as saith Alkabucius. And therfore knowe wel
that a degre of the bordure contenith 4 minutes, and a degre of a signe
conteneth 60 minutes, and have this in mynde…”

It is interesting to note in passing that these imperative mood verbs (i.e.

“undestond”, “knowe”, “have this in mynde”) are all mental processes of cognition.
Given the linguistic and discoursal context in (18), one must conclude that Chaucer was
using these processes as “intensifiers”, i.e. expressions that are used to highlight the
truthfulness of the propositions being made (Grundy, 2000:125)
Last but not least, it is important to note that Chaucer also makes use of verbs in
the active, past form in order to describe the way in which an “agent” carries out an
action. This is evident from the verb forms “toke,” “putte,” “clepid,” and “ordained” in
(19) below:
9
http://www.astrolabe.vidmo.net/treatise.html

16
 (19) “…all though that Julius Cesar toke 2 daies out of Feverer and putte
hem in his month of Juyll, and Augustus Cesar clepid the month of August after his
name and ordained daies, yit truste wel that the sonne dwellith therfore nevere the more
ne lasse in oon signe than in another.”

With Newton, we see the birth of scientific English as an academic genre. In

order to explore the prose adopted by Newton, which, like Chaucer’s, is representative
of his time, we will examine extracts from Newton’s Opticks. Newton’s prose in his
Opticks often contains instances of passivization, as the following extract clearly
illustrates:

(20) “…the Light […] made an Angle with the Paper, equal to that Angle
which was made with the same Paper by the Light reflected from it to the
Eye. Beyond the Prism was the Wall of the Chamber under the Window
covered over with black Cloth, and the Cloth was involved in Darkness that
no Light might be reflected […] These things being thus ordered, I found
that if the refracting Angle of the Prism be turned upwards, so that the Paper
may seem to be lifted upwards by the Refraction, its blue half will be lifted
higher by the Refraction than its red half. But if the refracting Angle of the
Prism be turned downward, so that the Paper may seem to be carried lower
by the Refraction, its blue half will be carried something lower thereby than
its red half.”10

However, as Halliday and Martin (1993:58) point out, these instances of passivization
employed by Newton in his prose have nothing to do with the impersonal passive
typically adopted by modern scientific writers. Newton’s passivized clauses display the
typical function of the passive in English, that of achieving “the balance of information
the speaker or writer intends – often describing the result of an experimental step, where
the Theme is other than the Actor in the process” (Halliday & Martin, 1993:58), as
illustrated by extract (17) below:

(21) “[1 …under the Window covered over with black Cloth], and [2 the Cloth was
involved in Darkness…]”

In (21.1), the circumstantial with black cloth occupies rhematic position in the clause,
and in (21.2) the noun phrase the Cloth is in thematic position. So, by thematizing
information that was initially rhematic, we are making a contribution to the flow of
10
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Opticks_%282nd_Ed%29/The_First_Book/Part_I#Propositions

17
information in the text. This thematic pattern is known in the literature (of Systemic
Functional Linguistics) as the zig-zag pattern (Eggins, 2004:324).
However, Newton’s clauses are very often agentive since “his discourse is one
of experimentation” (Halliday & Martin: 57-58). Consequently, we get descriptions of
material processes (“I took a black oblong stiff paper”; “One of these parts I painted
with a red colour and the other with a blue”), intended to construe a world in which
scientific processes do not simply occur but are the result of human intervention and
experimentation. In addition, we get mental processes of perception (“I view'd through
a Prism of solid Glass”) or cognition (“I found that if the refracting Angle of the Prism
be turned upwards”), intended to display the observations of the scientist’s
experimentations. Therefore, as Halliday claims: “if the discourse context requires
Actor as Theme Newton displays no coyness about using I” (Halliday & Martin,
1993:58)
In Radford’s prose, passivization is also employed as a resource for the flow of
information in the text:

(22) “(a) This book is concerned with aspects of grammar. (b) Grammar is typically
subdivided into two typical but interrelated areas of study – morphology and syntax. (c)
Morphology is the study of how words are formed […] (d) Syntax is the study of the
way in which phrases […]” (Radford, 2004:1)

Clause (22a) presents “grammar” as rhematic; in clause (22b), “grammar” becomes

thematic, thus forming a zig-zag pattern. Clause (22b) presents “morphology” and
“syntax” as rhematic. These two elements are then thematized in the two subsequent
clauses, (22c) and (22d), thus rendering a multiple-rheme pattern (Eggins, 2004:325), in
which more than one element is introduced in the rheme to then become thematic in
subsequent sentences or paragraphs. These textual resources make a contribution to the
text’s method of development and are materializations of the textual metafunction.
Therefore, by application of either the zig-zag pattern or the multiple-rheme pattern,
information that is ‘rhematic’ and ‘new’ in one clause is presented as ‘thematic’ and
‘given’ in the following clause. As shown (22), passivization can make a contribution to
the text’s flow of information as well as the textual organization of the prose into
cohesive patterns.
However, we also find clauses in MS and STSE in which the use of passivization
seems to be motivated not only by the writer’s desire to organize the text’s flow of
information into cohesive patterns but also by his intention to conceal the expression of

18
subjectivity in the text’s prose. This is evident from clauses such as (22a) above: “This
book is concerned with aspects of grammar.” The verb “concern” represents a mental
process and it is therefore to be expected that such predicates select an Experiencer (or
Senser) subject, that is, an entity capable of human thinking, as illustrated in (23b&c):

(23b) I am concerned with aspects of grammar.

(23c) Linguists are concerned with aspects of grammar.

The difference between 22a, on the one hand, and 23b&c, on the other hand, is related
to the degree of objectivity or subjectivity displayed by the different lexico-grammatical
realizations, (22a) being an objectivized presentation of the sentence, (23b) being the
most agentivized version, and (23c) being a halfway house between the two.

6. Use of the Historic Present Tense

The choice of tense in MS and STSE is in keeping with writer’s attempt at

creating an ‘objectified’ presentation of his theory, as illustrated by the following
examples, (24)-(26), which are representative of most of the prose in MS and STSE:

(24) “Auxiliaries differ from main verbs in a number of ways” (Radford, 2004:47)
(25) “Traditional grammarians use this term [auxiliary] to denote a special
class of items...” (Radford, 2004:47)
(26) “Since we and you in (32a) modify the nouns republicans/democrats
and since determiners like the are typically used to modify nouns, it
seems reasonable to suppose that we/you function as pronominal
determiners in (32a)” (Radford, 2004:46)

The term “historic present” illustrates the fact that the present tense
“occasionally occurs in fiction to produce a more vivid description, as if the events were
being enacted at the time of speech” (Biber et al, 1999:456). Also, the historic present
tense is said to be “especially common in jokes, which are also told entirely in the
historic present” (Biber et al, 1999:456). These uses of the historic present tense can be
regarded as discrete and local. What all uses of this tense seem to have in common,
however, is the fact that, as Biber et al (1999:457) claim “[p]resent tense is the verb
form of “all-inclusive time reference” and “can be considered the unmarked form […]
expressing a wide range of meanings. […] [It] can be used to refer to events in the past,
to present states, to present habitual behavior, or future events.” Such pervasiveness and

19
versatility is indicative of the fact that the historic present tense is the verb form used to
expresses a-temporality: it is typically used to refer to an all-encompassing time, typical
of generic, impersonal prose. In this respect, Biber et al (1999:457) claim that “[h]ere
and elsewhere in academic writing, the present tense is used to convey the idea that
these propositions are true, regardless of time.”
If our observations are along the right lines, we can be confident in claiming that
language is endowed with a two-tense system: one realized by tenses such as the
historic present tense, which is a-temporal, impersonal and generic, and the other
realized by tenses such as the present perfect tense, which is anchored to the here-and-
now of discourse. This distinction was first drawn by Benveniste, who claims that “los
tiempos de un verbo francés no se emplean como miembros de un sistema único, sino
que se distribuyen en dos sistemas distintos y complementarios […] y que corresponden
a dos planos de enunciación diferentes”: “discurso” and “historia” (Maingueneau,
1989:118). The system of discourse is related to the ‘here-and-now’ of the
communicative event, as illustrated by the use of the present perfect tense in (27):

(27) “Although the D-pronoun analysis has become the ‘standard’ analysis
of personal pronouns over the past three decades, it is not entirely without posing
problems”

The other system, which, following Benveniste we will call “history”, has, as one of its
most salient representatives, the historic present tense, which is used for the expression
of modality of cognition, since it is employed to express “facts” or “propositions that are
true all the time” rather than to refer to events that take place at a certain deictic point
along the time-line. Such statements of fact construe texts whose events stand on their
own, i.e. they are objectified or thingified.
It is interesting to relate the choice of the historic present tense to the choice of
personal pronoun. In that respect, it is important to note that, apart from employing the
historic present tense, most propositions related to the theory or meta-theory in MS and
STSE take either the third person singular or the third person plural. In reference to this,
it is interesting to take note of the distinction drawn by Benveniste between first and
second person pronouns, on the one hand, and the third person pronoun, on the other
hand:

20
 En las dos primeras personas hay a la vez una persona implicada y un discurso sobre
esta persona. “Yo” designa al que habla y designa a la vez un enunciado a cuenta de “yo” […]
En la 2ª persona, “tú” es necesariamente designado por “yo” y no puede ser pensado fuera de
una situación planteada a partir de “yo”; y, al mismo tiempo, “yo” enuncia algo como predicado
de “tú”. Pero de la 3ª persona, un predicado es enunciado, sí, sólo que fuera de “yo-tú”; de esta
suerte tal forma queda exceptuada de la relación por la que “yo” y “tú” se especifican. En este
punto y hora la legitimidad de esta forma como “persona” queda en tela de juicio […] Se trata
en efecto del “ausente” […] La diferencia debe ser formulada netamente: la “3ª persona” no es
una “persona”; es incluso la forma verbal que tiene por función expresar la no-
persona.”(Benveniste, 1974:164)11

Notice then that there is an interesting correlation between choice of third person
and choice of historic present tense: given the fact that academic discourse is objectified
and thingified, it is only natural to expect that writers of academic texts should typically
choose the third person and the historic present tense: these are the least agentivized
choices available in the pronoun and the tense systems respectively.

7. Conclusion

This paper has explored some of the different objectifying devices employed in
MS and STSE, namely the use of abstract rhetors, passivization, the nominalization of
processes, the use of non-finite clauses, and the employment of the historic present
tense. As has been mentioned above, only some passages regarded as representative of
Radford’s prose have been selected for the purpose of linguistic analysis. These
passages bore witness to the fact that Radford’s prose in MS and STSE is highly
objectified, de-agentivized and thingified. However, our focus on objectivization should
not blind us to the fact that texts are the creation of individuals, and as such, inevitably
contain elements of subjectivity. Radford’s prose is, in this respect, no exception: in his
texts one will find ‘hedges’, ‘modalizations’, and other ‘evaluative’ devices that clearly
point to the presence of the writer’s intervention in his text. Needless to say, a study of
the expression of subjectivity in Radford’s prose has not been the focus of this paper
and would deserve a paper of its own right. Here we have placed our attention on some
of the devices employed by the writer in the creation of an objectified prose, which,
paradoxically, points to the writer’s intervention in the process of production of his text.
11
It is important to clarify here that by using the term “no person” Benveniste is referring not referring to
a possible empirical individual but to that entity 8or entities) that fall(s) outside the “I-You” of the “here-
and-now” of discourse. Notice also in passing that the third person is the only person that is made up of
three entities (he, she, it) in singular, and one form (they) in its plural, though notice that ‘they can be
used to refer to people or things. On the other hand, notice that none of the other personal pronouns can
be used to refer to objects or things.

21
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23