A REGISTER APPROACH TO ANALOGY IN SCIENCE TEXTS: POPUPLAR VS. SPECIALIZED TEXT TYPES
A REGISTER APPROACH TO ANALOGY IN SCIENCE TEXTS: POPUPLAR VS. SPECIALIZED TEXT TYPES

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, a comparative approach was pursued to show differences but also remarkable similarities between the application of analogy in popular science texts and in specialized science texts. Setting out from an initial hypothesis that popular texts use forms of analogy that lend themselves to direct interpretation and high accessibility, we try to show that actual specialized science discourse could benefit from simpler and more versatile analogy. For this end, the current state of the art in analogy research was evaluated and a corpus of academic texts was queried. Further, a number of approaches and findings could be contributed as a direct outcome of the international Analogy – Copy – Representation workshop held at Bielefeld University in November 2014, which was co-organized by the author. In consequence, a more comprehensive picture of analogy in cognition, language and scientific discourse is sketched in this contribution. Especially the domain-dependence of the use of analogies showed surprising results.

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