Lexico-syntactic features of science and science popularization texts: an information-theoretic view

Abstract Science and science popularization texts disseminating partly overlapped scientific knowledge show distinct writing strategies. We examine their differences concerning aspects of lexis, word classes, and dependency relations by Kullback-Leibler divergence, taking “60-Second Science” texts and source research article abstracts as an illustration. The findings reveal that “60-Second Science” is more interactive in terms of quotation marks, question marks, “they”, and “you” while abstracts are more informative with hyphens linking words from different categories. Moreover, word classes show that pronouns and adverbs are typical in “60-Second Science”. However, abstracts utilize nouns and adjectives significantly more. Dependency relations demonstrate that nominal subjects and adverbial modifiers are prominent in “60-Second Science” compared to adjectival and prepositional modifiers in abstracts. The study presents a clear comparison of linguistic features between science and science popularization texts that can be applied in scientific English writing and teaching in connection with different scientific communicative events and further promote the dissemination of scientific knowledge.