Культура отказа в научной коммуникации: семантика и прагматика отрицательной оценки в экспертизе

Valeria E. Chernyavskaya

doi:10.21638/spbu09.2024.411

Authors

Valeria E. Chernyavskaya Peter the Great Saint Petersburg Polytechnic University, 29, Politechnicheskaya, St. Petersburg, 196135, Russia Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, 14, ul. Aleksandra Nevskogo, Kaliningrad, 236041, Russia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu09.2024.411

Abstract

The notion of “culture of rejection” is used to identify the social and professional interaction between actors in the scientific community in the framework of visible scientific competition and experienced multiple rejection with submitting papers and grant proposals. The paper examines the practice of academic rejection, relying on the linguistic features of the evaluation, expressed in the peer-review texts after submitting a manuscript to a scientific journal. Peer-review is considered as the text genre with the most explicit appraisal. Open review and
publishing peer-review history of a submission is becoming a common way of scientific expert activity and interaction between specialists in the professional community. Studying the culture of rejection from a linguistic perspective presupposes professional reflection regarding the peer’s choice of means and forms of scientific criticism, focusing its constructive nature and reducing some of the negative emotions associated with rejection. The analysis is based on English-language peer-revies on manuscripts, available on the websites of international
scientific journals presenting new results in the natural sciences in the peer-review history supplements. Scientific criticism is considered as making a negative judgment, disagreement with the presented position. The research question is related to how the peer shapes the evaluative position towards the subject of the reviewed study and towards peer’s own statements for their justification and argumentation. The examined corpus included critical texts with peer’s recommendations “Decline with option of resubmission” and “Major revision”. The linguistically
significant findings reveal negative evaluation as associated, firstly, with the explicit authorization of peer’s judgments. This reveals the cognitive activity of the peers and their independence as one of the actors of scientific research and communication, positioning the criticism in dialogue with other professionals. Secondly, for a negative evaluation, evaluative argumentation is characteristic, explaining and proving the expert’s point of view. It is concluded that a clearly and unambiguously presented critisism in scientific expertise is the basis for progressive development in science.

Keywords:

scientific communication, scientific expertise, peer-review, evaluative language, culture of rejection

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References

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