Scientific innovation and the phraseology of rhetoric: posture, reformulation and collocation in cancer research articles

salient lexical items are largely diseaserelated entities (mammary, tumor) or cellular processes (expression, induced). In particular, imp ortant processes involving tumor growth appear to be the most frequent items in the abstract (hete rozygocity, growth, expression, active, cancer). Not represented in the top ten but equally relevant from the first 100 significant lexical words are items indicating a general description of the shape of the data rather than the methods (correlated, decreased, increased, interval, level) and verbs th at report past research (studied, suggest) and this tendency is borne out by the phraseology. 11.41 Abstract salient item 1: But The very high significance of but (compared with ot er grammatical items in abstracts) suggests that the reporting of negative results is a fundame ntal characteristic of abstracts. On can assume that positive results are announed in a first claus e and then qualified. In particular ‘but’ is an explicit signal of reversal and evaluation of the d irection of quantifiable results (up, down or stable): but displayed no significant reduction... but this also fell... but decreased sharply... but restabilized... but adjusted to milder in vitro expression... Subjects of clauses introduced by but are all relat ed to the measurement of the efficiency of drugs (items include resistance, efficacy, immun e response). In results sections on the other hand, we find that the tendency is to explain negat ive results or to state negative empirical processes rather than quantify them (however...X di d not correspond, although this did not result in...). To summarise, in abstracts negative data is quantified whereas in results sections negative data can be seen to be ‘qualified’. 11.42 Abstract salient item 2:These As we have seen in Chapter 10, ‘this’ functions to signal a refocussing and rephrasing reformulation. This function is shar ed by Discussion sections and a more detailed analysis is seen in our discussion of ‘thi s’ in section 11.7. We note here that ‘these’ diffe rs from ’this’ (in discussion sections) in that almost half of the occurrences of these are as pronouns introduced by of, while ‘this’ is mostly a determin er. The referents of these tend to be very specific disease-related items (carcinogenic factors, leucoc ytes, oncogenes, metastases) and items that introduce of are items of measurement (half of thes e, the majority of these, concentrations of these) a pattern that coincides with similar (but infreque nt) patterns for of (see below). This indicates a correlation with our earlier finding that abstracts tend to favour the use of deictic refocussing encapsulation. The high significance of these (acc ording to Appendix C2) here also coincides with Nwogu and Bloor’s (1991) observation that abstracts tend to employ simple thematic progression, linearly converting rheme to theme. 11.43 Abstract salient item 3:Of In the control corpus of titles (as seen above), of was seen to play a key role in nominal groups with a typical treatment-of-disease pattern. Such a symmetrical solution-problem pattern is expanded in the abstract, the major difference bein g that while items in the title corpus tend to predict of with no strong right-collocates, in the abstract there are just as many significant rightcollocates, such as human, these, was. Another diff erence from Titles is that Abstracts involve the quantification or description of disease, where of introduces semantic ‘support’ (not necessarily ‘head’): number, concentration, levels, incidence, fr quency, majority, presence ... of... cancer, tumour, oncogene, growth, expression, patients, mic e, human. A second pattern tends to introduce either empirical or biochemical items that explain the potential treatment of the disease (effect, role, mechanism, treatment / inhibition, synthesis. .. of.. drug X, doxorubicin, compounds, [disease Y]). As the first element becomes more necessary to the interpretation of the next item, the phrase introduced by of in the second group can be seen, i n Sinclair’s terms (1991:82-83) as ‘focus’ rather than support. The ‘treatment-of-disease’ pattern can be seen as a n overriding pattern, but within this there is considerable phraseological change. We have identif ied four different problem-solution patterns of complex stereotypical phraseology with of for some of the most frequent left-collocates of of in the Abstract: (effect, loss, number, presence) and the re does not seem to be any evidence to suggest that any such middle frequency item (often termed s ub-technical items: Francis 1993) shares the same phraseology as any other. In particular, the s olutionproblem / treatmentdisease pattern seen in the title does not appear to be fixed for each i tem in the abstract. For example, presence of has a specific pattern if post-modified: the role/ presen c of (drug X) in (illness Y). Other items require more explicit modification. Effects and effect are usually in subject position and are almost always pre-modified by a treatment-oriented item (growth-i n ibitory, antitumour, chemopreventive, protective) or an a research-obser vation item indicating some problem (adverse, side-effect, toxic). On the other hand, presence is often used in a prepositional phrase functioning as qualifier, (preceded by in, for, on) or in a sub ordinate clause where there is no explicit statemen t of problem or solution, and where presence of signa ls an illness-related specific item where a possible link with cancer is being explored: retr ovirus, ras proto-oncogenes, maternal toxicity. In addition, the expression use of represents one o f the most stereotypical patterns of the abstract. It is always preceded by some degr ee of measure or a methodsoriented specification of use (daily, widespread, r egular, intensive, combined, clinical, potential) and followed by a specific dru g X(1) and an expansion of the treatment and illness (with drug X(2), in the study of illness Y, in the treatment of, in the evaluation of Y) and finally followed by some degree of evaluation o r a research process: resulted in..., should be considered, is discouraged, is discussed. In a different kind of distribution, the significan t collocate loss appears to have become terminologised in the fixed expression loss of heterozygocity. Loss also appears in thematic position where a research statement is phrased in the passive or placed after the term (loss of X...was found, occurred, occurring), altho ugh there are reporting instances such as suggest that .... which form a separate pattern. The patter n occurs more regularly with effect/s where specific reporting items are sometimes placed as he dges: (effect/s of X... were found, reduced, appeared to be.., as shown..., and seem to...). Int erestingly, among most of the measurement-illness phrases mentioned above, the reporting verb precede s the expression (shows/ confirms/ indicates ...the presence of, incidence of, absence of). A fo urth pattern is represented by the expression number of which is not immediately preceded or foll owed by a reporting discourse item. It may be that there is a differentiated pattern of phraseolo gy in which of has a role as constructor of nominalisations of measurement and qualification (i .e. the first use mentioned above), in conjunction with expressions of research reporting a d evaluation (the second use). The writer can thus choose to emphasise the ‘self evidence’ of the data by evoking phrases involving number of, or may wish to thematicise the study and be required to use stereotypical measurement-disease phrases, or alter natively thematicise the results and use an expression with items such as effects. 11.44 Abstract salient item 4:There. ‘There’ reveals a prevalence of existential process clauses in the Abstract, most often expressing explicit evaluation of the shape of research articl es’ results (up, down or no change). In the abstracts subcorpus, the dummy pronoun there is uni quely followed by was and were and occurs in thematic position after a statement of methodology. The (quantitative) empirical concern for the overall direction of the data in the abstract is va riably explicitly evaluated: Existential process: Evaluated quantification: there was/ were... no difference, no significant d ifference, a reduction in the percentage of, considerable variation, a transiently increased number of correlations, strong correlation, no change, pronounced distribution decreased hepatocyte labelling, a high degree of similarity These expressions typically precede the highly sign ifica t items within the subcorpus that deal with statistical direction or relation (as indicate d by the right-collocates of there: increased, decreased, interval, correlated). There are one or tw exceptions to the pattern, where empirical items are qualitative rather than quantitative, for example: there were/ was... pronounced effects no complete response clearly a strong genetic predisposition... 11.45 Abstract salient item 5:In ‘In’ is used most frequently in three patterns: 1) to modify nominal expressions of measurement (si gnificant increase in toxicity, reduction in levels, differences in cytotoxicity, decrease in uptake) 2) as an particle in attributive or relational clau ses (accumulates in, is low in, resistance was narrower in the cell), or as a phrasal element i research processes (observed, detected) 3) introduced by chemical or causal empirical proce sses (role, resulted, used). 4) introducing research with this (in this study/ trial/ phase 1 study/ report...). In Abstracts, ‘in’ also introduces non-finite ranks hifted clauses where given information on a chemical process is bundled in with the original in formation by explicative verbs such as introduced, involved, implied (as in: this is a novel approach to adaptive resistance involved in the expression of ras oncogene). In other sections, f r example in titles, the most frequent use of ‘in’ is its spati