Begreppssyntes - För att förklara och förstå

Sammanfattning: It is important that natural science students are able to communicate their expert knowledge to laymen. Research shows however that not all students fulfill this demand, which might be due to the complexity of scientific language. One way of making natural science easier to understand, both to laymen and the students themselves, is to use popular scientific communication. The purpose of this study is to explore how rhetorical tropes (especially metaphor, personification, simile) in students’ popular scientific articles may influence the writer’s understanding of the subject matter. The study is based on Fauconnier and Turner’s theory, Conceptual blending (which I call “Begreppssyntes”), by which they argue that already existing knowledge is used when understanding new things. The focus of this study is the meaning of tropes in this process. Stylistic analysis and conceptual blending are employed when analyzing six articles, written by students in physics and geology. The analyses are complemented by semi structured interviews with the same students. Results show that conceptual blending, as a representative way of viewing an understanding process, where tropes play and essential role, could explain and facilitate how understanding is achieved. Metaphors and personifications, in particular, seem to be able to concretize and make abstract, natural scientific terms easier to understand. Thus, tropes, in connection with conceptual blending as a rhetorical conceptual apparatus, perhaps could: (i) help the student in his or her own learning; (ii) be a didactic method in science education; (iii) result in the dissemination of natural scientific knowledge in society.