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COPYRIGHT 2005 Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN)
In this article, I intend to marshal evidence in order to advocate the leading role that English philologists are called to play in the analysis of specialized communication. Considering that University Degrees are being adapted to accommodate to Bologna guidelines, English philologists, for example, could incorporate into their more traditional fields of research new analyses of special communication, particularly those focused on specialized lexicography and English for Specific Purposes (ESP). With respect to specialized lexicography, the recent publication of the Dictionnaire dapprentissage du francais des affaires (DAFA) offer interesting insights as to how the works of pedagogical lexicographers suit the needs of specialists, would-be specialists, and the informed layperson. Regarding ESP, two assumptions merit further interest. On the one hand, disciplinary variation is significant, thus paving the way for more incisive and rather different genre analyses. On the other hand, research with special purpose corpora encourages us to think that the tenets of, for example, Discourse Analysis, can be used to investigate the role played by ideology in specialized communication.
Key words: ESP, Genre Analysis, Pedagogical Specialized Lexicography, LSP, Discourse Analysis.
1. Introduction
The term LSP has been coined to designate the kind of language use associated with highly specialized communication in a wide variety of subject areas. (1) In applied linguistics, for example, the term "language for special/specific purposes" has been established as the generic term for the concept of "communication among specialists." The concept of LSP is not uniform. At least two opposing forces have contributed to its diversification. On the one hand, the fact that an LSP presupposes special training in a field, profession or discipline has led to the identification of three main LSP users: (i) the specialist, (ii) the would-be specialist, and (iii) the informed layperson. This implies that special contents may also be popularized audience and thus be transmitted to the non-specialist on a lower level of abstraction and specialism. On the other hand, special communication by means of LSP is a social necessity which has evolved accordingly. Special languages are the result of the historical division of labor which has led to a growing diversification of scientific disciplines and to a specialization of the branches of material production. Both views have contributed enormously to new approaches to the analysis of specialized texts, centered on a number of fields within the framework of applied linguistics: terminology, contrastive linguistics, translation theory, foreign language teaching, LSP stylistics, LSP text linguistics and LSP discourse analysis. In short, these approaches are analyzing the whole spectrum of linguistic means used in written or spoken texts.
Under this framework, research found out that LSP is neither monolithic nor uniform, but reveals a horizontal structuring and a vertical stratification which distinguishes five levels: the language of the theoretical basic sciences; the language of the experimental and technical sciences; the language of the applied sciences and technology; the language of material production; and the language of consumption (see Hoffman 1976). McGroarty (2002) argues that the criteria underlying this stratification of "text levels" include: (a) the interaction of specialists in a particular social setting (i.e. their work environment); (b) the degree of abstraction in dealing with a specific subject (with respect to the addressee's previous knowledge); and (c) the linguistic means and the non linguistic (artificial) symbols or visuals used in an LSP text.
In other words, this new approach to LSP has cast light on the leading role linguists and philologists should play in the analysis of special communication. Hence, English philologists could incorporate into their more traditional fields of research new analyses of special communication, particularly those focused on Pedagogical Specialized Lexicography and English for Specific Purposes (ESP).
2. Pedagogical Specialized Lexicography
Cabre (2000: 37-41) argues that the so-called General Theory of Terminology (GTT) shows some inadequacies. Its most distinctive characteristic is that it focuses on concepts and concentrates its practical applications on the standardization of terms and concepts. Some theorists of terminology, mainly those with a linguistic background, however, reject ingrained principles in use from the early days of Wuster. For example, they reject the reductionist character of GTT, "which makes it unable to explain the complexities occurring in special communication" (Cabre 2000: 39). In short, criticism of GTT has come from social, linguistic and cognitive perspectives (see Gaudin 1990, 1993, 1995; Temmerman 2000; Cabre 2000). Firstly, from a social perspective, the communicative role of terminology has been seen "to have the same importance as the representational role and it has been demonstrated that the social acceptability of terms is more important than their standardization" (Cabre 2000: 40). Secondly, from a linguistic point of view, it has been emphasized that terminology does not belong to artificial language but that it shares the basic features of general language, that traditional theory disregards the syntactic function of terminology and its relevance for discourse studies, and that univocity and monosemy of terms do not occur in real specialized texts. Finally, from a cognitive perspective, the traditional theory regarding the concept has been criticized as being profoundly idealistic. The "presumed universality of the concept and the belief that special subjects, independent of their domains and languages, are uniform, closed and static systems has also been attacked because these premises are very difficult to reconcile with empirical data" (Cabre 2000: 41).
Instead of the GTT, different, more linguistic approaches to terminology have been developed (Temmerman 2000; Cabre 2005). A basic principle is that technical terminologies contain several layers, "such as terms used in pure science, terms used in applied science, terms used in the sphere of production related to a given branch of science and terms used in various trades and occupations" (Heltai 1988: 32). These layers exhibit the characteristics of natural vocabulary to different degrees. Also, there is a wide area of overlap between technical terminology and natural vocabulary: many lexical items function simultaneously as technical terms and as natural vocabulary words. In addition, the lexico-semantics characteristics of individual technical terminologies vary depending on the nature of the given field of study. Heltai (1988: 33) claims that the
highly standardized terminologies of natural sciences are much less likely to show the characteristics of natural vocabulary than the terminologies of applied sciences, social sciences, commerce, trades and occupations. Such terminologies, especially their most general terms, are subject to a great deal of influence from natural vocabulary, and constitute a legitimate subject for lexicological inquiry.
In addition, it should also be borne in mind that all technical terminologies, even the most highly standardized ones, are also affected by basic lexico-semantic processes, such as the development of polysemy, synonymy and so on. Thus, sources of LSP vocabulary may be everyday words subject to a process of metaphorization. These words acquire a specific meaning and eventually become defined technical terms, as for example value or market in economics. Further sources of technical or scientific neologisms are word-formation processes with native or Latin or Greek lexical elements, borrowings from foreign languages (including loan translations), and designations by means of figures or artificial symbols. Finally, LSP vocabulary is not limited to defined technical terminology and phraseology, but equally includes nomenclatures,2 "semi-terms," "professional slang," "trade names" or "trade marks," and "acronyms." The following are some examples extracted from the field of Economics:
(1) value...
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