Science and news articles on mirror neurons: two degrees of popularization

Abstract

The paper deals with the linguistic strategies used by authors with a different degree of specialised expertise (scientists, experts, science and general journalists) to popularize and re-contextualize the mirror neuron discovery in the online Scientific American and New York Times versions. In particular, aiming at a comparison between the two journals, the authors focused on those linguistic and interdiscoursive strategies adopted to popularize three main aspects for each article: the definition of mirror neurons, the explanation of their activation in the brain and their function in social interaction.