Dissertation Information for Ronald E. WyllysNAME:
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SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: MPACT Status: Fully Complete Title: THE MEASUREMENT OF JARGON STANDARDIZATION IN SCIENTIFIC WRITING USING RANK-FREQUENCY ("ZIPF") CURVES Abstract: The jargon of a scientific discipline is taken to consist of the words in writings in the discipline. At any given time, the jargon contains expressions for (1) concepts that are already well defined and generally accepted in the discipline, and (2) concepts that are not yet well defined or fully accepted. A well defined concept will tend to have one standard expression; an incompletely defined concept will tend to be expressed in a variety of ways. The study investigated two kinds of hypothesized effects of the mix of standardized and nonstandardized expressions in the jargon of a discipline. The first set of hypothesized effects dealt with changes over time in the mix. As time passes, the number of well defined concepts in a discipline increases, and hence so does the number of standardized expressions in the jargon of the discipline. It was hypothesized that this increase would be reflected in a steepening of the slope of a certain curve formed from a frequency count of the words in writings in the discipline. This was the “Zipf” curve, the curve formed by plotting the logarithms of the frequencies of the words against the logarithms of the ranks of the words, after the words had been arranged in order of decreasing frequency. Experiments with eight corpora drawn from 1921 and 1969 writings in four disciplines – ecology, mathematics, physics, and psychology – failed to support the hypothesis that later writings in the discipline would have steeper slopes for their Zipf curves than earlier writings. The second set of hypothesized effects dealt with comparisons of the mix of standardized and nonstandardized expressions between the so-called hard and soft sciences. It seemed possible that part of the hardness of a hard discipline consists in its having a higher proportion of standardized expressions in its jargon than a soft discipline has. It was hypothesized that this higher proportion would be reflected in a steeper slope for the Zipf curve of writings in a hard discipline than for the Zipf curve of coeval writings in a soft discipline. Experiments with the eight corpora, treating mathematics and physics as hard disciplines and the other two as soft, supported this hypothesis. |
MPACT Scores for Ronald E. WyllysA = 5 Advisors and Advisees Graph |