The Language of Popular Science: Translation and Analysis of a Chapter from A Brief History of Black Holes

This thesis explores the concept of popular science and the language characterizing it, examining its role in the dissemination of scientific knowledge and its potential to shape society’s opinion towards science and technology. The work is structured into three parts. The first chapter offers an overview of the field of popular science, from its historical roots to the definition that popular science acquired as a genre in more modern times, other than describing its defining characteristics. The second chapter discusses the features typical of popular science language, highlighting how this genre succeeds in both educating and entertaining its audience by making use of linguistic elements such as metaphors, cultural references and humoristic jokes. Lastly, the third chapter provides a commentary on the translation of some chapters from the popular science book “A Brief History of Black Holes, and why nearly everything you know about them is wrong”, by Dr. Becky Smethurst, focusing on those aspects discussed in the previous chapters that can be detected in the book and showing how the entertaining and educational aspect of the original could be carried over to a different culture and language.