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QUENEAUВ’S STYLES APPLIED TO SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION TEXTS
Abstract
This work describes the first results of a research on applying potential literature ideas to scientific texts. Natural language has a major importance for communication, and its limits need to be defied in all possible ways if we want to reach different audiences with the most diverse themes. Science communication, for example, is a field where new kinds of media have been applied in order to aggregate artistic elements to subjects that are intrinsically specialized and technical enough to intimidate or even repel non-scientist public’s interest. Also, from a more art for art point of view, the beauty of science can help to make rich literary contents. In this sense, potential literature is a wide to be explored universe. While potential literature concept itself is mainly based on scientific, and, more specifically, mathematical constraints, the application of these constraints to scientific texts needs yet to be explored. In this work, we decided to start by one of the most notable OuLiPo’s authors, Raymond Queneau, and his impressive work Exercises de Style, a book where he tells the same story in 99 styles, representing, according to the translator Barbara Wright, “plenty of variations of the way different people actually speak". This seems to be an excellent way of making science communication more accessible. Because we are also interested in some linguistic and computational aspects of this so called stylization process, Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning techniques are used in the choice of words to be replaced and added to the manipulated text, producing a semi-automatized creation process. In this article, we discuss the technical and philosophical aspects underlying these hybrid project, and present a text in two styles inspired by Queneau’s ones.
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