Terminology and Phraseology in Research Papers in the Domains of New Technologies

Introduction

Knowledge, science and technology and their transfer constitute factors which determine development in the modern world. Transfer of knowledge, referred to as transfer of powers, has transformed various spheres of human activity (Baumann, 1997: 728; Montgomery, 2000: 2–3). Moreover, language is a tool or an instrument, in the communication process, which enables the knowledge expansion (Olszewska, 2010; Grucza, 2015; Gajda, 1982). The emergence of new concepts and pushing the boundaries of the unknown bring about the development of specialised vocabulary (Temmerman, 2000). Due to its high level of abstraction, scientific writing is considered to be the most prestigious and complex.

Research results necessitate their validation in the permanent written form in carefully elaborated research articles, tailored to the needs of target readers published in peer-reviewed journals (Biber, 2006; Gajda, 1982; Rowland, 1999A, 1999B; Fathalla, 2004; Belt, Mottonen & Harkonen, 2011). Therefore, scientific writing is considered one of the formal stages in the completion of scientific work (Branson, 2004). By publishing results, scientists inform the public about their studies, pave the way for their research on the global scientific arena, and strengthen the position of their scientific institution (Todorović, 2003). As a result, scientific writing has taken the role of the scientists’ spokesperson that communicates research results to the target audience which nowadays has become diversified due to easy Internet access to scientific texts (Pearson, 1998).

A scientific paper constitutes a report of all the stages of the conducted studies or even a product for sale (Branson, 2004; Belt et al., 2011). Yet, despite the accepted and widely-used IMRAD format, there are domain-specific modifications of the genre. There are differences with respects to the reasons of creating scientific texts, their language, symbols, graphics, and the constitution of the body of text, the expectations of the target audience, and the changing characteristics of readers since nowadays scientific texts are at their fingertips.

Moreover, the language of science is a reflection of the specificity of the subject field and the characteristics of its users. It also exerts influence on the general variety because scientists do not work in isolation from the society, but they are deeply involved in the education process of future professionals (Gajda, 1990). However, there is no agreement as to its place in the classification of natural language varieties as well as the status of scientific writing as specialised texts (Klemensiewicz, 1953; Wilkoń, 2000; Cabré, 1998). Language researchers cannot agree whether to treat scientific and technical communication as well as scientific and technical discourse as joint concepts or separate entities (Pérez-Llantada Aurìa, 2001; Iljinska & Smirnova, 2014).

Each scientific discipline develops its own, peculiar or domain-specific means of communication. However, disciplines have been evolving, becoming more interdisciplinary and detailed, and as a result hybridised (Dury, 2005; Iljinska & Smirnova, 2014). These trends pertain also to scientific texts and terminology, the latter being the most salient feature of the specialised language which acts as a vehicle in knowledge transfer (Sager et al., 1980; Mohammadi, 2013; Gajda, 1990; Montgomery, 2000). In addition, scientific communities communicate in linguistic patterns, using more or less fixed lexical units that are also specific to a given subject field which also perform important functions in meaning-making in texts (Postolea, 2014; Müldner-Nieckowski, 2016; Biber, 2006).

The current study attempts at providing a comprehensive analysis of the scientific variety in English in the empirical and practical disciplines of new technologies: microelectronics, telecommunication and computer science (MTCS). The main goal is to determine distinctive features of the language of new technologies used by researchers in the given disciplines. The major emphasis is placed on the characteristics af single and complex terms in a wide array of terminological aspects, such as borrowings, abbreviations, hybrids and neologisms used by international teams of scientists and engineers. The current study also aims at studying polysemy and synonymy in terminology as functional linguistic phenomena in specialised communication (Peason, 1998; Temmerman, 2000). Oh the other hand, the scrutiny also tries to establish the degree to which terminology is standardised. Another study’s objective is to determine the terminological status of collocations and show the differences in the constitution and functions of phraseological units between the MTCS domains and other disciplines. This monograph also tries to verify whether the relatively young age of the MTCS domains and interdisciplinarity affect domain-specific terminology and phraseology. Finally, it investigates whether authors are present in these highly technical and empirical domains, which belong to hard sciences, and compares the results with soft sciences and how the authors maintain clarity, precision and conciseness of expression in order to communicate science within publishers’ constraints.

The methodology adopted for the study is based on standard corpus linguistics techniques, such as keywords (keyword terminology), n-grams (lexical bundles), concordances and frequency lists which allow for providing a systematic and comprehensive description of the scientific language of technical and empirical disciplines of microelectronics, telecommunication and computer studies. The competitive advantage of corpus linguistics lies in the unique possibility of studying text corpora that are comprised of authentic texts collected according to a set of requirements. These analyses are conducted via dedicated computer programmes which enable the scrutiny of large amounts of textual data, which results in maintaining greater representativeness and reliability of obtained results. The generated keywords, concordances and frequency lists constitute excellent input data for further linguistic analyses. Quantitative analyses with the use of the corpus methodology and tools help reveal the hidden aspects of a given language which otherwise would remain unveiled. The study also entails the qualitative scrutiny which is performed on the basis of keyword terminology, concordances and n-grams generated from the MTCS corpus (compiled by the author) along with methods of analysing terminology and phraseology in order to expose typical tendencies in the terminology creation and use, as well as the terminological status of collocations and textual functions of phraseological units, all of which contribute to the successful transfer of knowledge in science.

The monograph is divided into nine chapters, four theoretical and five practical ones.

Chapter 1 discusses the importance of science and knowledge in the modern world and deals with scientists and engineers as an academic community analysed from different perspectives and relationships they form. These include the scientific community treated as a community of practice (CoP) which constitutes a point of departure for the notions of a sociorhetorical discourse community, speech community (SpCom), community of interests (CoI) and professional learning community (PLC).

Chapter 2 provides a general discussion on the scientific language and writing. The investigations begin with the patterns used in formal scientific communication. Then, the status of different languages in scientific publications is discussed. This chapter also attempts at contrasting scientific and technical communication, and delimiting the features of the language of new technologies. In addition, there is a comprehensive overview of text typologies in order to determine the place of technical scientific articles in the galaxy of functional texts. Finally, the characteristic features of the macrostructure of a research paper are explored.

Chapter 3 provides an overview of the concepts that constitute a framework for the scrutiny of terminology and phraseology in the language of new technologies. These include aspects of the two polarising approaches to terminology: the traditional and cognitive methods of studying terms. In addition, the chapter discusses manifestations of terminology and the issue of modality in scientific writing. Finally, it also concentrates on phraseology, from collocations via multiword terms up to non-idiomatic phraseological units.

Chapter 4 discusses corpora in studies of specialised languages, and terminological studies in particular. It also tackles the use of the corpus linguistics methodology in delimiting characteristic features of the scientific language as well as provides a theoretical framework for building ontologies from terminology generated via a dedicated computer programme.

Chapter 5 opens the practical part by discussing the details of collected and compiled scientific articles for the MTCS corpus, its design, and the upload stage. It also provides the aims of the study and the methodology applied to perform the analyses.

Chapter 6 presents details of the scrutiny of the macrostructure of the MTCS research articles. The chapter concentrates on the structure of the research paper as well as the use of multimodal elements.

Chapter 7 shows the details of empirical analyses of MTCS terminology. They are focused on the cognitive aspects of technical terminology contrasted with the problem of standardisation. It also presents the analysis of definitions which are compared with the corpus realisations and a dedicated terminological standard (IEC). Finally, the author developed an ontology for the MTCS terminological system on the basis of keyword terminology along with the corpus and dictionary definitions.

Chapter 8 contains the analysis of the MTCS phraseology which entails collocations and their terminological status, followed by multiword terms and ending with non-idiomatic phraseological units.

Chapter 9 is the supplementary analysis of the authorial presence in the research articles contrasted with other studies on the subject.

The last chapter is followed by Final Remarks which contain conclusions drawn from the conducted study and obtained results. The monograph ends with the bibliography and appendices. Figures, tables and examples have a separate numeration for each chapter. In addition, the author performed all translations from Polish and German into English in order to facilitate understanding of the text.