The Birth of the Academic Article - Le Journal des Sçavans and the Philosophical Transactions 1665-1700 - David Banks
Thematic structure: a starting point
The Birth of the Academic Article - Le Journal des Sçavans and the Philosophical Transactions 1665-1700 - David Banks
David Banks [+]
Universite de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France
David Banks is Emeritus Professor of English Linguistics at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France. He is a past Director of ERLA (Equipe de Recherche en Linguistique Appliquée) and a past Chairman of AFLSF (Association Française de la Linguistique Systémique Fonctionnelle). His research interests include the synchronic and diachronic analysis of scientific text, and the application of systemic functional linguistics to French. He has published over 80 academic articles and authored or edited over 20 books. His book The Development of Scientific Writing (2008) won the ESSE (European Society for the Study of English) Language and Linguistics Book Award in 2010.
Description
In this section the thematic structure in each of the journals is analysed. The grammatical functions of topical themes are studied, as is the incidence of textual and interpersonal themes. Thematic progression is analysed and a semantic categorization of themes is given. In the case of the Journal des Sçavans, this gives rise to more detailed comments on humans other than the author functioning as theme, objects of study, other texts, and the position of the reviewer. The results for the two periodicals are compared.