Study On Nominalization In Scientific English Under Adaptation Theory

Scientific English, as a special register, has its unique stylistic features, and the most typical one is the frequent use of nominalization. Different linguists try to account for the phenomenon from various perspectives, arriving at different conclusions. However, there is no agreement on what nominalization actually is, and the vagueness of nominalization still exists. What’s more, there has been little work done in analyzing the deep mechanism behind nominalization use in scientific English, and even less study from the Adaptation Theory.Adaptation Theory is a perspective on language, proposed by Jet Verschueren, which takes linguistic, social-cultural and cognitive factors into account. Furthermore, it claims that language use is continuously making linguistic choices both on communicative strategy and linguistic forms. The choice is feasible owing to the three properties of natural language: variability, negotiability and adaptability. In the present thesis, based on Adaptation Theory, it aims at giving a detailed account on the deep mechanism of nominalization, that is to say, in order to satisfy the communicative goals, as the most proper linguistic strategy, nominalization is chosen by the writer from a variable range of linguistic forms under some specific principles. Moreover, it builds a tentative Adaptation Model on Nominalization (AMN) from the writer’s perspective, and claims that as a dynamic and complicated process, the employment of nominalization adapts to linguistic context and communicative context. And the writer’s deliberate and strategic use of nominalization in scientific English adapts to contextual cohesion, intertexturality and stylistic features. On the other hand, the mental world of the writer and the reader constitutes another contextual variables to which nominalization adapts. This model attempts to dig out all the potential contextual factors that prompt the writer’s use of nominalization in scientific English and hopes to provide a comprehensive theoretical account, and meanwhile, it further proves the validity of the Adaptation Theory.In this paper, random sampling was adopted and totally40academic articles, collected from52issues ranging from January to June in2012from Nature and Science, were obtained as the source of examples and for further research.It is organized as follows:Part one of this thesis is a brief introduction. It demonstrates the objectives, the data collection and the rationale of the research.Part two is a literature review, concisely introducing the definitions of scientific English and nominalization, and an overview of the previous studies from different approaches.Part three elaborates on the theoretical framework for the present study, in which Verschueren’s linguistic Adaptation Theory and its implications to nominalization are discussed. Then a tentative theoretical modei for the analysis of nominalization is described.Part four is the center of this thesis. In accordance with the Adaptation Model, nominalization in scientific English is realized as an effective linguistic strategy through adaptation to the linguistic context and communicative context.Part five is a conclusion which includes the major findings, the implications and limitations of the present study. It also provides some suggestions for further research.