How do magazines make science accessible and appealing to a broad readership? To answer this question, we studied an article which was published in Le Figaro magazine, the weekly magazine supplement of a large French daily newspaper. The article, which presents information on cancer and immunology, is illustrated with three large and spectacular colour photographs of microscopic corpuscles. A semio-linguistic and communications analysis revealed that a general series of elements, made up of headlines, photos and captions, forms a kind of narrative that can be read like a short melodrama. The text of the interview with the researcher proposes reformulations, directed to conscientious readers who take the trouble to understand the specialized terms. Finally, in the infratext, experts and specialists are able to discern references and allusions to different sorts of issues at play. In short, we show how an article can simultaneously attract different categories of readers.
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References
1.
Jacobi, D. , and Schiele, B., 1991, Metaphors and narrative in popularized science literature.
2.
One often harks back to the scientific popularizer, Fontenelle, for the birth of popularization as a literary genre. See: Mortureux, M. F., 1983, La vulgarisation scientifique au 18ème siècle à travers l'oeuvre de Fontenelle (Scientific popularization in the 18th century through the work of Fontenelle) (Paris: Didier).
3.
For a description of the relationships between comic strips and chemistry, see Carter, H. A., 1988, Chemistry in the comics: a survey of the comic book literature. Journal of Chemical Education, (65), 12, 1029-1036.
4.
Roqueplo, P. , 1974, Le partage du savoir (Knowledge sharing) (Paris: Le Seuil).
5.
For a review, see Jacobi, D., and Schiele, B., 1990, La vulgarisation scientifique et l'éducation non formelle (Scientific poularization and non-formal education). Revue Française de Pédagogie, 91, 81-111.
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Fresnault Deruelle, P. , 1977, La chambre à bulles (The bubble chamber) (Paris: 10 × 18).
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See Giordan, A., and Souchon, C., 1989, Pourquoi évaluer? (Why evaluate?), in `Les jeunes et la culture technique' (Youth and technical culture). Culture technique, 20, 83-95.
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Meyer, L. A. , et al., 1988, Elementary science textbooks; their contents, text characteristics and comprehensibility. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 25(6), 435-463.
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Moles, A. , 1971, Sociodynamique de la culture (Sociodynamics of culture) (Paris: Mouton).
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Lynch, M. , and Woolgar, S., 1988, Representation in scientific practice, special issue of Human Studies, 11.
11.
See Peytard, J., 1979, Lectures d'une aire scripturale (la page de journal) (Readings of a print area [newspaper page]) (Paris: Les belles lettres)
12.
For an application of this type of analysis to literary texts, see: Genette, G., 1987, Seuils (Paris: Le Seuil).
13.
or Fisher, S., and Veron, E., 1986, Théorie de l'énonciation et discours sociaux (Theory of enunciation and social discourse). Etudes de lettres, 4, 71-92.
14.
Paine, H. E. , 1980, Some Problems of Illustration, Processing in Visible Language, 2, edited by Kolerset al./ (New York: Plenum Press), pp. 143-156.
15.
For an analysis of the range of potential publics, see, for example, Fouquier, E., 1987, Petite typologie des préférences en matière d'émissions scientifiques télévisées (Brief typology of preferences concerning televised science programs). Education Permanente, 90, 22-28.
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Nelkin, D. , 1987, Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology (New York: Freeman).
17.
In the original French:
18.
For a formal analysis, a text is a composite whole in which the text, paratext and co-text are separated. See Martins-Balbar, M., 1977, De l'objet texte au texte objet. Etudes de Linguistique Appliquée, 28, 8-23. Available space is left in the presentation of the text itself, and the publisher can place visual displays in the blank areas. Such illustrations, complete with captions, form one of the elements of the paratext. The paratext also includes the headings and sub-headings as well as separate text inserts.
19.
Genette, G. , 1987, Seuils (Paris: Le Seuil).
20.
The Figaro readership is made up of slightly more men than women. One reader in three is under 35 but one in four is over 60. Nearly a third of the readers are in upper echelons (owners, managers, liberal professions) compared to 10% who are workers and employees. As the higher proportion of older readers indicates, the non-working represent a significant proportion of the readers. See Médias, special media planning issue, 1990, p. 126.
21.
Jacobi, D. , and Schiele, B., 1989, Scientific imagery and popularized imagery: differences and similarities in the photographic portraits of scientists. Social Studies of Science, 14 (3), 731-754.
22.
Schiele, B. , and Larocque, G., 1981, Le message vulgarisateur, Narrativité et scientificité (The popularized message. Narrative quality and scientific quality). Communications, (33), 165-183.
23.
Bremond, C. , 1973, Logique du récit (Story logic) (Paris: Le Seuil).
24.
Roland Barthes distinguishes two functional aspects of the text: that of the anchoring which sets the meaning to be attributed to an image (denominative value) and that of the relay which ensures the concatenation of the iconic message and the linguistic message than in a complementary relationship (diegetic relationship). See Barthes, R., 1964, Rhétorique de l'image. Communications, (4), 40-51.
25.
For P. Fresnault-Deruelle, the primary constitutive element of the comic strip is the design contained in a rectangle. See Fresnault-Deruelle, P., 1972, La bande dessinée (The comic strip) (Paris: Hachette).
26.
The declarative statement prevails. There is also an identity relationship between the procedures for headlines in the press and in advertising slogans. See: Grunig, B., 1990, Les mots de la publicité; architecture du slogan (Advertising words: the slogan's architecture) (Paris: CNRS).
27.
A virtually identical use of graphics presented in a narrative series was published in: The killer cells in action. Pour la Science, 125, 1988 (p.86). The recourse to a series of scientific pictures to illustrate a biological mechanism often generates a narrative-type effect.
28.
The positivist current, which includes many criticisms of popularization, rejects metaphors from outside the field of the sciences. Kuhn had to demonstrate that the values expressed by scientists interfere their work so that the metaphor is no longer discredited. See Leatherdale, W. H., 1974, The Role of Analogy, Model and Metaphor in Science (Amsterdam: North-Holland).
29.
Scientific language uses: chain, latch on to, co-habit, manipulate, to drain; and in scholarly language: popular, killer, doped, stratum, etc. For an analysis of the principles of metaphor construction, see: Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M., 1980, Metaphors We Live By (University of Chicago Press).
30.
See also Peytard, J., et al., 1984, Français scientifique et technique; reformulation, enseignement (Scientific and technical French; reformulation, teaching). Langue française, 64 (Paris: Larousse).
31.
On the relationships of inclusion of specification in languages, see Kleiber, J., and Tamba, I., 1990, L'hyponymie revisitée: inclusion et hiérarchie (Hyponymy revisited: inclusion and hierarchy). Langages, 98, 7-32.
32.
The definition game—resorting to terms ambiguous to the point that they can become homonyms—this is one of the strong points making descriptive discourse possible. On the argumentative strengths of descriptions, see, for example: Hamon, P., 1981, Introduction à l'analyse du descriptif (Introduction to descriptive analysis) (Paris: Hachette).
33.
See Sontag, S., 1979, La malaide comme métaphore (Illness as metaphor) (Paris: Le Seuil), where cancer is presented as the star sickness of cold fatality (AIDS was not then as prominent as it is today).
34.
We know today that the speciality texts are mainly read by specialists, as though they wanted to update and reinforce their culture in the area in which they are already cultivated. See Jacobi, D., 1987, Textes et images de la vulgarisation scientifique (Texts and images in scientific popularization) (Berne: Peter Lang).
35.
Fradelizi, D. , 1986, Les messagers de l'immunité (The messengers of immunity). La Recherche, 177, Les défenses du corps humain (The human body's defences), p. 674.
36.
On this subject, see Callon, M., 1990, La science par conférence de presse (Science by press conference). La Recherche, 225, 1184-1189.
37.
Jacobi, D. , 1988, Notes sur les structures narratives dans un document destinéà populariser une découverte scientifique (Notes on the narrative structures in a document aimed at popularizing scientific discoveries). Protée, 16(3), 107-118.
38.
The integrative functions relate to a character, atmosphere, philosophy and information that serves to identify, to locate in time and space; the distributional functions relate to pivotal points of the narrative; they open or close a logical alternative for the continuation of the story. See Barthes, R., 1966, Introduction à l'analyse structurale des récits (Introduction to the structural analysis of narrative). Communications, (8), 60-76.
39.
The distributional functions are obviously those that start and conclude a logical alternative for the end of the story. See Barthes, R., 1966, Introduction à l'analyse structurale des récits (Introduction to the structural analysis of narrative). Communications, (8), 60-76.
