M. A. K. Halliday's Continuum of Prose Styles and the Stylistic Analysis of Scientific Texts

TLDR: Halliday's Continuum of Prose Styles as mentioned in this paper describes the tools that M A K Halliday commonly uses to analyze prose styles, review a study that applies these tools to scientific texts, and describe some stylistic investigations that research based on Halliday's tools of analysis can open up.

Abstract: In this article, I describe the tools that M A K Halliday commonly uses to analyze prose styles, review a study that applies these tools to scientific texts, and describe some stylistic investigations that research based on Halliday's tools of analysis can open up Going through these processes should lead to useful insights about all of the following: the general study of style, the ways in which particular styles represent the world and perhaps correspond to modes of cognition, the nature of much scientific prose, the social and epistemological contexts that such prose depends on and fosters, and the history of endeavor in at least one specific field of science Halliday's Continuum of Prose Styles When Halliday analyzes prose styles, he usually works with a continuum (For related work, see Wells on nominal and verbal styles) At one pole of this continuum is a style that he calls attic or synoptic As represented in this style, "the world is a world of things, rather than of happenings; of product, rather than of process; of being rather than becoming" (Halliday, "Language" 146-47) With the synoptic style, people can freeze what they write about and "take it in as a whole" (Spoken 97) The synoptic style is usually associated with carefully planned, formal writing, but it can sometimes be found in speech A written text is a thing or a product Thus, as Halliday would say, when a text pervasively displays the synoptic style, it makes the world look like itself The chief characteristic of the synoptic style is lexical density, which is "the proportion of lexical [content] words to the total discourse" (Halliday, "Spoken" 60) I calculate lexical density as Halliday commonly does: in terms of the number of lexical words per unembedded clauses If you do not proceed in terms of unembedded clauses, you have to count some words twice, once for the overarching or matrix clause and once for the embedded clause Halliday takes one example of prose with a fairly high degree of lexical density from Scientific American: Private civil actions at law have a special significance in that they provide an outlet for efforts by independent citizens Such actions offer a means whereby the multiple initiatives of private citizens, individually or in groups, can be brought to bear on technology assessment, the internalization of costs and environmental protection They constitute a channel through which the diverse interests, outlooks and moods of the general public can be given expression The current popular concern over the environment has stimulated private civil actions of two main types (61) Halliday calculates the lexical density for this extract at 96 (lexical words) to 1 (unembedded clause) At the other end of Halliday's continuum is a style that he calls done or dynamic This style, which is often associated with spontaneous and unselfconscious speech but which can sometimes be found in writing, represents the world in terms of happenings, processes, and becomings Speech is an action or a process Thus, as Halliday would say, when speech pervasively manifests the dynamic style, it makes the world look like itself The chief characteristic of the dynamic style is grammatical or clausal intricacy Sentences in the dynamic style typically include many clauses, some hypotactically and some paratactically related to others In Halliday's terms, hypotaxis "is the relation between a dependent element and its dominant," and parataxis "is the relation between two like elements of equal status" (Introduction 218) Sentences in the dynamic style can include so many clauses that sometimes those who utter them, on hearing them replayed, refuse to acknowledge that they did say them or even could have said them Here is an example that Halliday gives of a sentence in the dynamic style; this one was recorded in the conversation of a dog-breeder: I had to wait, I had to wait till it was born and till it got to about eight or ten weeks of age, then I bought my first dachshund, a black-and-tan bitch puppy, as they told me I should have bought a bitch puppy to start off with, because if she wasn't a hundred percent good I could choose a top champion dog to mate her to, and then produce something that was good, which would be in my own kennel prefix …