specialized discourse

Specialized discourse

Defining the notion of specialized discourse

Specialized discourse clearly reflects the specialist use of language in context, which is typical of a specialized community (academic, professional, technical, etc.). This perspective stresses both the type of user and the domain of use, as well as the special application of language in that setting. For specialized discourse to develop, all three of these factors need to be present. Halliday classifies all registers according to three parameters: mode (channel and medium of communication); field (object of communication), and tenor (relationship between participants).

Lexis linked to professions has often been classified as jargon. But jargon attempts to make the message incomprehensible to outsiders, whereas in specialized discourse, comprehension problems depend not only on unfamiliar lexis but also on conceptual content.

A specialist may address a topic relating to his profession in three different situations. The first case is when the expert addresses other specialists to debate issues within his disciplinary field. If the addressees share a considerable amount of knowledge, the author can make frequent use of specialized terminology.

The second case is when specialists address non-specialists to explain notions of their discipline. Typical texts of this nature are academic textbooks and instruction manuals. The third case is when a specialist provides information of a technical nature mainly through everyday lexis. The purpose here is to reach out to a wider audience, as generally observed in newspaper or magazine articles.

These three situations lead to three different uses of language and to three levels of specificity in language use: ‘scientific exposition’, ‘scientific instruction’, and ‘scientific journalism’. Biagi allows for a fourth level – the highest: ‘formalisation’ or ‘condensation into formulae’ (e.g., botanic formula for a flower).

Qualities of specialized discourse

Hoffmann provides a list of the desirable qualities of specialized discourse:

• Exactitude, simplicity, and clarity;
• Objectivity;
• Abstractness;
• Generalization;
• Density of information;
• Brevity or laconism;
• Emotional neutrality;
• Unambiguousness;
• Impersonality;
• Logical consistency;
• Use of defined technical terms, symbols, and figures.

Not all the criteria mentioned by Hoffmann are applicable to all specialized languages. There are also incoherent qualities: the need for clarity may conflict with simplicity, unambiguous expression with conciseness or abstractness. Sager et al. hypothesize three main criteria governing the choices made in specialized discourse: economy, precision, and appropriateness. These are interdependent, and communicative effectiveness is achieved when all three are satisfied. Their balance ensures maximum efficiency within the specialized communicative process.

Lexical features of specialized discourse

1 – Monoreferentiality

In a given context, only one meaning is allowed. The specialized term cannot be substituted by a synonym but only by its definition or a paraphrase. The highly referential nature of terminology is a major advantage for conciseness. Each scientific field adopts its own meaning of specific languages that sometimes contain lexical items occurring also in other disciplinary contexts.

The relative poverty of lexical resources in each discipline is due primarily to the scientific community’s effort to avoid alternative terms for the same concept. This need arose in the 17^th – 18^th centuries because of the urgency to pursue a perfectly biunivocal link between concept and language.

2 – Lack of emotion

The tone of specialized discourse is neutral. The informative purpose of specialized language prevails over other traits (emotive, aesthetic, etc.) typical of general language. However, if the pragmatic is persuasive, the emphasis on emotion surfaces also in specialized texts.

3 – Precision

Every term must point immediately to its own concept. This phenomenon arose by the scientific revolution of the 17^th century.

4 – Transparency

Transparency is the possibility to promptly access a term’s meaning through its surface form. This criterion was particularly valued by the French chemist Lavoisier, who developed a new naming system for chemical compounds to allow readers to immediately identify the nature of the compound concerned. The terms used should immediately suggest the idea they express. To each Greek-based suffix was assigned a precise meaning that allowed a functional distinction of similar terms and clearly established the physical properties shared by compounds employing the same suffix. This change provided rules of terminological development also for naming new elements as they were discovered.

The frequent use of classical words in science reflects the effort of 18^th century scientists to avoid the lexis of general language, which leads to misunderstandings and ambiguities. A considerable advantage afforded by this kind of system is its extension of the principle of transparency also to other fields (e.g., in medicine gastroenterology - stomach, intestine, study). Affixes have acquired precise values in each discipline as a result of the standardization process. For example, in chemistry or mineralogy, the suffix –ite denotes derivatives of other elements (fluorite).

5 – Conciseness

Conciseness means that concepts are expressed in the shortest possible form. The need for conciseness generally leads to zero derivation (saldo from saldare), which allows the omission of affixes. Another neological process is the merging of two lexemes into a single term (informatica from the French informatique = information + automatique). Another type of conciseness device is juxtaposition of two words, which allows omitting prepositions and premodifiers (estrattoconto).

Sometimes conciseness in specialized discourse relies on acronyms and abbreviations.

6 – Conservatism

Fear that new terms may lead to ambiguity favors the permanence of traditional linguistic traits, which are preserved even if they disappear from general language. Old formulae are preferred to the new words because of their universally accepted interpretation.