A comparative analysis of word use in popular science and research articles in the natural sciences: A corpus linguistic investigation

Abstract: Within the realm of the natural sciences there are different written genres for interested readers to explore. Popular science articles aim to explain advanced scientific research to a non-expert audience while research articles target the science experts themselves. This study explores these genres in some detail in order to identify linguistic differences between them. Using two corpora consisting of over 200 000 words each, a corpus linguistic analysis was used to perform both quantitative and qualitative examinations of the two genres. The methods of analysis included word frequency, keyword, concordance, cluster and collocation analyses. Also, part-of-speech tagging was used as a complement to distinguish word class use between the two genres. The results show that popular science articles feature personal pronouns to a much greater extent compared to research articles, which contain more noun repetition and specific terminology overall. In addition, the keywords proved to be significant for the respective genres, both in and out of their original context as well as in word clusters, forming word constructions typical of each genre. Overall, the study showed that while both genres are very much related through their roots in natural science research they accomplish the task of disseminating scientific information using different linguistic approaches.