What Written Knowledge Does: Three Examples of Academic Discourse

Knowledge produced by the academy is cast primarily in written language-now usually a national language augmented by mathematical and other specialized international notations.' Language, however, is not an inert vessel. The ancient philosophic and aesthetic debate over the relationship of form and content should caution us to consider the influences the languages of knowledge might have on the shaping of knowledge.* Recently linguistic interest in scientific language has produced several descriptions of the syntax of scientific prose in English (Huddleston; Gopnik; Lee).3 Syntactical studies, however, are concerned only with the patterns of symbols stripped of context and meaning. To understand what language conveys we must look to the contexts in which language operates and to which language refers, Statements do things and talk about things. To put it more formally, we may say that documents serve specific functions within historical and social situations to continue, add to, and transform a group interaction.' In carrying on the interaction, nevertheless,