Engendering Linguistic Variation in Literary Prose via Scientific Discourse

Abstract

Scientific discourse is characterized by the prevalence of assertive linguistic acts denoting facts devoid of fiction. It is mainly used in scholarly writings to serve scientific, technical or didactic objectives. Nevertheless, it may be found in literary works in their distinct genres including scientific and non-scientific fiction. Consequently, the present article aims at depicting the role and implication of the language of science in literature. It attempts to reveal the authors’ manipulation of scientific discourse to denote a sort of linguistic variation within their writings. Various examples were extracted from literary works to illustrate the functional and stylistic variation crafted through the use of the language of science. Discourse analysis was applied to study the functions of scientific language in literary texts. The scrutiny of the mined examples has unveiled that the insertion of scientific discourse in literary prose helps to divulge the characters’ register and the writers’ stylistic craft.