Grammar and Pragmatic Interrelations in the Construction of Popular Science Texts for Children

Abstract

Aims: To study in popular science books for children the stylistic selections that facilitate the passage from common sense to scientific knowledge. To provide a pragmatic explanation of the syntactic restrictions that characterises the scientific language of the texts. Methodology: The work articulates the Hallydayan approach of Sydney School studies of science textbooks and the pragmatic perspective of Leech’s “Principles of Textual Rhetoric”. Materials: Popular science books that cover physics and biology subjects’. Results: The description and analysis of the stylistic options at the grammatical level supply a list of the syntactic restrictions constraint by the pragmatic features of this specific communicative context. Conclusion: The analysis draws attention to the needs of the teachers that intervene in the learning process of scientific knowledge in order to develop the skills required for the purposes of school literacy of science. These include the mastering not only of field-specific terms but also of the grammar resources that structure scientific knowledge. On account of this, the work stresses the importance of the implementation, in science teachers’ syllabus, of courses or tutorial sessions of scientific language in order to instruct future science educators in its linguistic skills and, in so doing, complement their professional literacy.