lexical features in scientific texts, Slide di Lingua Inglese

Scarica lexical features in scientific texts e più Slide in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity!

Lexical Features

Lexical Features

MONOREFERENTIALITY THE RELATIONSHIP WITH EGP LEXICAL PRODUCTIVITY LACK OF EMOTION TRANSPARENCY CONCISENESS CONSISTENCY CONSERVATISM AMBIGUITY REDUNDANCY SEMANTIC (IN)STABILITY METAPHOR (Gotti 2005)

Lexicology versus Terminology Lexicography versus Terminography

• (^) Lexicology: the study of words in general
• (^) Lexicography: the process of making dictionaries, most commonly of general-language words, occasionally of special- language words (i.e. terms). - (^) Terminology: the study of special- language words or terms associated with particular areas of specialist knowledge. - (^) Terminography: concerned exclusively with compiling collections of the vocabulary of special languages. The outputs of this work may be known by a number of different names - often used inconsistently - including "terminology", "specialised vocabulary", "glossary", and so on. (www.computing.surrey.ac.uk)

1. Mobile in general English and Information Communication Technology (ICT) Mobile is an adjective in general English, meaning “able to move or be moved freely or easily”. My in-laws are not very mobile any longer. In (ICT) mobile is a term. Definition from the PC Mag Dictionary: remote, portable, on-the-go. The term "mobile" used by itself is wireless parlance for the client device, such as a cellphone or laptop. oreferentiality: a term signals ONE concept in specialized subject doma

Homonyms in terminology

• In EGP there are many homonyms ( bank, point ,

etc.)

• In terminologies, homonyms and polysemes

within the same subject field are treated as

separate entries (because the definition of the

concept is different).

• e.g. in Automotive Engineering emission (the

process of emitting exhaust gases) and emission

(the exhaust gases themselves).

Terms cannot be substituted by synonyms , only by definition or paraphrase. e.g. In the example, hybrid TV as a term is defined. Why would viewers, who can already get dozens of channels over the air, via cable or satellite or through their telephone lines, need yet another way to watch television?Catch-up services, like the iPlayer of the BBC in Britain and Hulu in the US, have attracted millions of users on the Internet, allowing them to fit TV viewing into busy schedules. But they have been available only on computers. The new technology, called hybrid television because it uses over-the-air transmission as well as broadband connections, would do more.

Lexical productivity (1): securitization (international relations)

Those interested in the construction

of security in contemporary

international politics have

increasingly turned to the conceptual

framework of `securitization'. This

article argues that while an important

and innovative contribution, the

securitization framework is

problematically narrow in three

senses.

Lexical productivity (2) selectorate (international relations) In terms of a theory employed in some discussions below, Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003: 42 - 3) characterize political systems in part by the size of their selectorate , ‘those who meet the polity criteria for enfranchisement or … citizenship’, and ‘whose endowments include the qualities or characteristics institutionally required to choose the government’s leadership and necessary for gaining access to private benefits doled out by the government’s leadership’. (Bruce Russett, 2009, ‘Democracy, war and expansion through historical lenses’, EIJR, 15 (1), 9-36.

classical borrowings for specialized discourse: appendix, premium, carnivorous hybrid affixes: kilo-, auto, mega , micro , multi, meta- e.g. meta-theory: This article considers three factual observations about the history of the study of International Relations and examines how well several different meta-theories of IR can account for them. body parts: nouns (gen English) - adj (borrowings): brain - cerebral, chest - thoracic, heart - cardiac, liver - hepatic, skin - dermal, lung - pulmonary Relationship with general language

Lexical features

The opposite tendency is also true: terms coined in a specialized setting are increasingly likely to become part of everyday lexis ( bank: blood bank, data bank etc.) Lexical productivity: From specialized terms to everyday terms

neutral : i.e. logical, consequential arrangement of concepts informative purpose of specialized discourse

**- lack of emotional connotations

• preference of purely denotative function**

Lexical features

Lack of emotion

Lexical features

Expressive language:

The quest for the meaning of interactivity in

television by both communication scientists

and ITV professionals resembles the hunt of

medieval knights for the Holy Grail.

Lexical features

• (possible to access meaning through surface form of term) Greek & Latin affixes - each affix is assigned a precise meaning Semantic decomposition made easy (gastro , entero hyper; logy, ite (fluorite, magnetite) Video-phony, teletext, interface, literal translation procedures, loan translation esp. in compounds and word formation: e.g. chemistry, medicine: the word form (the naming system) allows the readers to immediately identify the nature of the compound concerned Process of standardization Transparency