The representation of authorial and external voice in popular science book writing: a systemic functional linguistics approach

Purpose Investigating the dialogistic resources within a multiplicity of popularized disciplines shall provide further insight into the interpersonal status of popular science book writing, which can be converted into transferrable writing skills to (post)graduate students in the Saudi educational context. This study aims to investigate the representation of authorial and external voice in popular science book writing (PSBW), exemplified by the lexico-grammatical resources that make up a proposition (i.e. the statement or the argument by which the author conveys their voice) within the writer’s discourse. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a mixed-method approach to analyze how authorial and external voice is represented through the lexico-grammatical resources from a 93,078-word corpus extracted from various popular science book writings. The authorial and external voice is analyzed by the UAM CorpusTool3. Findings The results suggest significant differences between hard and soft disciplines, suggesting that popular science book writings employ discipline-specific lexico-grammatical phrases appropriate to projecting both the authorial voice and that of the external one. The scalability of projecting authorial and external voices seems to depend on whether the topic belongs to a hard or soft discipline. Hard science disciplines tend to insert their voices assertively, while more authors of soft science disciplines tend to treat the proposition in a spectrum of possibilities and give more affordances to the external voice with which they interact. Research limitations/implications Part of this analysis was to interpret the analyzed popular science corpus in the context of writing pedagogy and realize this interpretation within the most recently reported state on scientific writing in Saudi higher education. The literature presently shows a scarcity of English writing programs across Saudi universities. Not all programs have made it mundane to teach scientific writing to (post)graduate students from various scientific disciplines. Designing long-term scientific writing programs is of utmost importance to tackle the writing difficulties, as reported by researchers such as Al-Harbi (2021), who also train students to develop audience-oriented writing skills. Practical implications Integrating popular science text in scientific writing programs should be in the early stages and should not remain constant throughout the duration of the course because it is meant as a timely intervention to help (post)graduate students cross over from one genre to the scientific writing genre. It should ideally provide them with the ability to shift the orientation of their writing, accordingly, making them, for example, mindful of the targeted reader. Depending on the type of reader, whether an expert or otherwise, the student-constructed discourse should naturally align with the conventions and the discourse of the discipline. Originality/value In multiple reports within the literature, Saudi university students face writing difficulties not only at the undergraduate level but also at the (post)graduate level. Reportedly, they are marred by the lack of communicative, rhetorical function and discourse knowledge, along with linguistic issues in employing appropriate hedging or conjugating a justification for a claim while constructing an academic discourse. Therefore, this study brings an analysis of popular science books and interprets them in light of their viability as teaching materials, in the hope that they diversify the EAP content, ameliorate the writing deficiencies and elicit audience-oriented writing and thinking skills.