Specialized Discourse: Linguistic Features and Lab Report Structure

Specialized Discourse Overview

The SPECIALIZED DISCOURSE is the specialist use of language in context which are typical of a specialized community, stretching across the academic, professional, technical, and occupational areas of knowledge and practice. Interest in specialized discourse started in the 1920s and 1930s, when a group of linguists known as THE PRAGUE SCHOOL turned their attention to the functional style of scientific and technical texts, often seen as restricted and inferior to literary language. They focused on the differences between technical language and language for general purpose.

After World War II linguists started looking at language as a mean of communication in different situational context and for different communicative purpose.

On the one hand specialized discourse is criticized for its obscurity and complexity, on the other hand it is treated with deference and its prestige is confirmed by the widespread tendency to quote technical terms, sometimes even inappropriately.

Specialized Discourse as a Situational-Contextual Variety

• Focus on the link between the receiver and the type of communicative or social relationship established
• Identification of situational varieties correlated to the topic and the approach chosen by a particular community of users
• Importance of the register
• Description of any feature diverging from the default level of common language, with a specific emphasis on the lexical dimension as embedded in discourse.

Focus on USER, DOMAIN OF USE AND SPECIAL APPLICATION OF LANGUAGE IN A PARTICULAR SETTING. From a statistical-quantitative approach to a qualitative approach.

The choice of specialized discourse doesn't depend only on the topic but also on the users and the setting.

Vocabulary and Terminology

VOCABULARY refers to the set of words that a person knows and uses to communicate in a language. It includes both common and specialized words and it can vary depending on a person's education, profession, and cultural background. It is dynamic, flexible, and constantly evolving.

TERMINOLOGY refers to the specific words and phrases that are used in a particular field or domain. It is a set of terms that have been defined and agreed upon by experts in that field to communicate specific ideas or concepts. Terminology is precise, concise, and unambiguous, it plays a crucial role in facilitating effective communication between experts and non-experts in a given field.

JARGON usually means the specialized language used by people in the same work or profession. People outside of the expert group will not understand it.

The three main criteria governing the choices made in specialized discourse are: ECONOMY, PRECISION, APPROPRIATENESS. Maximum communicative effect is achieved when the requirements of all three are satisfied.

Lexical Features of Specialized Discourse

• Monoreferentiality: one word = one meaning. The users are forced to create new terms rather than use existing terminology in order to define new concepts without ambiguity. Monoreferentiality leads to lexical repetition
• Lack of emotion, the tone is neutral, and concepts are expressed in an informative way
• Referential precision, every term expresses its own concept
• Transparency
• Conciseness - short forms, acronyms, ...

Semantic evolution often originates from the specialization of word meanings in the general language. In the 18th and 19th centuries rapid technological and scientific development made it necessary to use new specific lexis to talk about specific new things. The secondary meanings added to general language words ended up prevailing. The specialization process also produced new lexemes along with existing one which were not appropriate anymore.

Latin and Greek were the preferred options for specialized terminology in contrast with general language. The nouns are mostly Anglo-Saxon, the adjectives are rooted in classical language.

Syntactic Features of Specialized Discourse

• Omission of articles, auxiliaries and prepositions are often omitted for the sake of conciseness
• Relative clauses tend to be omitted for the sake of conciseness and transparency:
  • Substitution of relative clauses with adjectives obtained by means of affixation.
  • Omission of subject and auxiliary.
  • Passive form is avoided by turning the verb into a past participle to be used as a premodifier.
  • Omission of negative relative clauses by adding the prefix un- to the past participle used as a modifier
  • Omission of passive relative clauses modified by an adverb by means of a hyphen between the adverb and the past participle
  • Transformation of the verb of a relative clause into a present participle (that leads to > leading to)

Use of thus and so to replace and in this way Use of whereby to replace by means of which Premodification is the grammatical process where a word or phrase modifies another word by coming before it. Significant relative clause reduction leads to a frequent switch from post modification to premodification.

Nominal adjectivation is the use of a noun with the function of an adjective to specify another noun.The maximum number of nouns used in the compound is 6. The decoding of long nominal groups can be challenging and lead to misunderstandings. A hyphen is usually employed to avoid multiple interpretations.

The combination of two or more nouns often gives rise to a new concept that alters their nature and add new meaning, ex. Pace maker > pacemaker

Advantages and Disadvantages of Premodification

• greater textual conciseness
• construction of more complex sentences
• possible loss of conceptual clarity

The ambiguity is often only apparent.

Nominalization, which is very common in specialized discourse, consists in creating a noun from a verb to convey concepts relating to actions and processes. The frequent use of nominalization leads to a loss of verbal value, the verb is weakened and often works merely as a link between complex noun phrases and nominal and adjectival phrases. The preferred verb in this case is to be. The frequent use of nominalization leads to the simplification of syntactic structures within the sentence > typical pattern is NOUN PHRASE + VERB + NOUN PHRASE with complex noun phrases and simple verb phrase (ex. Be, become, form, mean, require, ... ).

Relative clause reduction results in tendency to avoid subordination > reliance on coordination and high number of non-finite forms, such as non-finite subordination, use of thereby + -ing form, -ing form to replace a sentence beginning with as/since, ...

In specialized discourse non-finite have a higher incidence than in general language.

Present Participle Usage

• To avoid a relative clause
• To simplify a concessive clause beginning with although
• With the suppression of subject and auxiliary
• As a verbal noun

The past participle is used as a result of the simplification of a passive form.

The infinitive is used to shorten the wording of a text.

The passive voice is used extensively in specialized texts to depersonalize discourse and emphasize the effect or outcome of an action rather than its cause or doer. The agent is normally omitted.

It is possible to use both active and passive forms in specialized texts, depending on the communicative purposes.Nominalization and passivization coupled with absence of explicit agent > depersonalization = reduction of the human element. The typical research-process verbs are demonstrate, suggest, indicate, highlight, confirm, used with inanimate subjects. In scientific writing the author often refers to himself indirectly through third person pronouns and phrases such as the author, the research team, the study, …

Legalese

Legalese refers to the specific style and vocabulary used in legal documents. It's typically:

• Highly formal
• Complex in sentence structure
• Redundant, with repeated terms and phrases
• Full of technical jargon
• Often includes archaic Latin or French expression

Legalese aims for extreme precision but often at the cost of clarity because of the redundance. The texts are often wordy and use elaborate structures, for example "agrees, covenants and undertakes ... " where just "agrees" would suffice. Legal language is extremely formal and impersonal. It is full of highly specialized terms which are not easily understood by laypeople. Legal documents often repeat phrases like "null and void", "any and all", to eliminate ambiguity - though this makes the text heavier. Legalese often uses phrases like "herein", "thereafter", "notwithstanding", ... to add legal specificity, sometimes making the text harder to follow.

Grammar and Syntax in Legalese

• NOMINALIZATION, legalese often turns verbs into nouns making the text more formal and abstract
• Some words exist only in legal contexts while others are common words with special legal meanings
• Legalese often repeats party identifiers
• Modal verbs: SHALL (obligation), MUST (imperative obligation), MAY (permission or discretion), WILL (commitment)
• Frequent use of conditional phrasing to account for possible outcomes in different situations, often in very formal terms

Style and Structure in Legal English

Legal English often uses inverted word for clarity or emphasis, e.g. "the tenant shall not carry on the property any profession" instead of "on the property the tenant shall not carry on ... ". To narrow meanings or set limits, legal documents use "insofar as", "to the extent that", "in the event that", ...In the 1970s the plain English movement emerged in the U.S. advocating for clearer, simpler legal writing. This led to official government guidelines and simpler contracts in both public and private sectors. The goal was to make legal documents more accessible to non-lawyers. However, many legal professionals still prefer the Legalese due to its traditional precision.

European Legal English

Euro-English is a variety of English used within European institutions. It has its own features:

• Existing English words are given EU-specific meanings e.g. green papers (documents published by the European Commission to stimulate discussion on given topics at European Union level
• New terms are borrowed from other languages or invented e.g. comitology (set of procedures through which the European Commission exercises the implementing powers conferred on it by the European Union legislator with the assistance of committees of representatives from EU Member States)
• There is a whole range of vocabulary which is hardly recognizable in any form of English and is the result of translations or non-native speaker errors which make some sense e.g. dispose of misused to mean "to have" rather than "get rid of', important used to mean "large" or "significant", actual used like in Romance languages to mean "current" instead of "real"

Legal English in Asia

Singapore: a common law system influenced by British colonial history. Court proceedings are in English.

Specialized Language of Tourism and the Travel Sector

Tourism has only recently become a focus of linguistic study. Its language is hybrid because it integrates multiple disciplines such as geography, economics, sociology, psychology. Above all, tourism language serves a persuasive function: it aims to seduce and convert potential clients into actual tourists.

Lexical Features of Tourism Language

• MONOREFERENTIALITY. New terms are often coined to describe emerging trends e.g. smart tourism (tourism enhanced by technology), townsizing (choosing small-town destination)
• CONCISENESS, achieved via blending e.g. ecotourism
• EMPHATIC AND EUPHORIC LANGUAGE. Combines information + persuasion. Overuse of positive adjectives, superlatives and evocative themes like dream, imagination, pleasure, rebirth, happiness, magic, ...