Women Writing Science in the Eighteenth Century: A Preliminary Approach to Their Language in Use

Female authors of scientific works were few in the eighteenth century in comparison with the increasing production of male writers. Their limited presence in the scientific panorama of the period could, therefore, account for the lack of research on how these women wrote or the sort of linguistic strategies they were familiar with from a present-day perspective. Some external considerations should be also reckoned as of paramount importance: on the one hand, science as such was an underdeveloped concept at the moment. Male writers were busy in an attempt to set the grounds of science and to determine the best linguistic choices to convey scientific knowledge. On the other, it was not socially accepted that women somehow involved themselves in matters other than those such as the family or the household, or similar matters. The results obtained from the linguistic analysis point to a predominant use of modality indicating prediction and necessity in contrast to hypothetical constructions and recognizable verbs of persuasion. It follows from this that it is a modulated discourse constrained to a certain extent by the social norms of the period.