Dedication as a way of ontologization of the heterogeneity of modern English-language scientific discourse

Abstract

The aim of the research is to identify the role of dedications in English scientific prose in ontologizing its heterogeneity. One of the paratext elements of modern scientific publications in English, i.e., dedication, was used as the language material. The scientific novelty of the research is as follows: for the first time, dedication has been investigated as a type of paratext in English-language academic discourse and the dedication examples representing personal discourse and acting as paratext elements in institutional discourse have been selected. The influence of dedication functions and characteristics on the ontologization of academic text heterogeneity has been empirically confirmed; the chosen methodology has been used for the first time to analyze authentic examples, which were not previously described from the perspective of the problem under study. The paper summarizes the key characteristics of scientific discourse that are important for identifying the correlation between the ways of heterogeneity manifestation and the structural element in which it is actualized. The research findings demonstrated the following facts: general classifications of dedications without differentiation by the text type are applicable to dedications of scientific texts, the latter contribute to the ontologization of the heterogeneity of scientific texts. In addition, the heterogeneity of scientific texts was shown to be reflected in the range of types of dedications and the variety of their functions, manifested to varying degrees depending on the type of the text itself, the type of dedication and the author’s intention.