Amelia Gandhi - Scientific Language
By: Amelia Gandhi
Nominator: Dr. Velda Khoo
Course: ANTH 4800: Language and Culture
Learning science is a rewarding yet frustrating process. Many budding scientists struggle to grasp scientific concepts and ways of thinking, something that often leads to miscommunication between the scientific community and the general public. In my experience as an early career space scientist, this clash is not from the average layperson lacking knowledge that scientists have. Instead, miscommunication often results from the general public and scientists having different styles of communication in the first place. These two different styles of communication can be viewed as specific linguistic registers (Agha, 2005). In this online ethnography research project, I describe the communication barriers between scientists and the general public and investigate how social media platforms run by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are able to bridge this linguistic gap.
Scientific language is different from everyday language in three specific ways. First, scientific language is more information dense, with less filler words. Second, scientific language loves to turn verbs into adjectives or nouns, for example, scientists would refer to the phenomenon of birth rates rising as “the rising birth rate.” Everyday language deals with more “direct” and less confusing language. Finally, scientific language is often positioned as objective. Scientists are encouraged to avoid talking in first person, and words of emotion are frowned upon. This difference from everyday language might be the most damaging because everyday people often depend on emotional investment to engage and interact. Yet in the scientific language, there is none.
I visualize this situation as a “linguistic space” where all different registers of language exist, yet everyday people and scientists communicate on separate “planes” of linguistic space that never cross each other. This “empty space” between these planes represents the “linguistic gap” between these two communities, a communicative chasm that can cause miscommunication, and have substantial impact especially in our current politically polarized climate.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, has been able to successfully bridge the linguistic gap in ways that no one has been able to do before. I argue that NASA’s social media posts take aspects from both scientific and everyday registers to create its own unique NASA register that is broadly accessible. For example, NASA’s posts always begin with a socially savvy and comical headline that everyday audiences would recognize, such as “take life at your own pace” and even a memeable “Oh my glob you guys” from the popular AdventureTime TV series. Reentextualizing photos of space with a comical context gives NASA followers an emotional attachment to science that the scientific linguistic register lacks. These pratices also defy the stereotype that scientists are not socially savvy. With each headline, NASA tries to say, “we can relate to you!”
Another strategy NASA employs to bridge the linguistic gap is to use a “show and tell” discourse style reminiscent of elementary school when reporting space news. That said, NASA is not showing off their favorite childhood blankie, they “show and tell” shockwaves captured by a special camera, an aurora on Jupiter, planets around other stars, rocket launches, and more. This posting style also attaches emotion, specifically national pride, to NASA’s science. Their “show and tell” is also accommodating, providing descriptions of every image, converting distances from miles to kilometers, and giving context for scientific abstractions. These accommodations lower the density of information and therefore help readers better follow the science being explained.
However, what is most successful about NASA social media is not just its stellar Instagram posts but how they impact public’s response to space science. Its social media team holds social events that invite up to 50 laypeople from different backgrounds for behind-the-scenes tours of NASA facilities and casual conversations with NASA scientists. These regular folk then go on to continue to share NASA’s stories, in linguistic patterns approaching the NASA register. During a government shutdown, the hashtag #ThingsNASAMightTweet went viral, encouraged by social media users looking to continue NASA’s story while they couldn’t. Ultimately, these users learned and adopted the NASA linguistic register to form their own communities surrounding space science.
With recent budget proposals that want to cut space science research at NASA in half by cancelling 19 current space missions, the general public and scientific community have been forced to question if learning about space science is worth the struggle. Is it important enough that the government should give 25 billion dollars to fund research about space? In truth, the debate surrounding NASA funding stems from deep misunderstandings due to decades of communication barriers between scientists and the general public. Platforms like NASA social media offer a powerful way to “bridge the linguistic gap” and humanize scientists, giving me hope that everyday people and scientists will be able to work together and understand each other more in the future.
References
Agha, A. (2005). Registers of language. In A. Duranti (Ed.) A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. (pp. 23–45). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Fang, Zhihui. "Scientific Literacy: A Systemic Functional Linguistics Perspective." Science Education, vol. 88, no. 3, 2004, pp. 335–347. Wiley Online Library, https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.10113.