Abstract
Non-specialised discourse describing the theory of evolution by natural selection can be misleading. To investigate this problem, descriptions illustrating how the environment affects biological entities and how these entities change over time have been extracted from specialised and non-specialised texts. The noun and verb phrases employed in these descriptions serve as units of analysis to uncover sources of misconception. These lexical items are analysed focusing on the semantic (especially metaphoric) and syntactic notions of "randomness", "passivity" and "plurality". Purposefulness, the antonym of randomness, dominates descriptions of evolutionary processes. Passivity is reflected semantically; however, the passive voice occurs at low frequencies. Descriptions of evolution remain essentially Darwinian and may imply that active agents are involved in this process. The use of plurality to denote taxonomic groupings can also lead to misunderstandings.