Title :

The Definition of Technical Language: An Ethnographic Approach

Author(s) :

Brantley, Kate [Auteur]
Université de Lille
Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163 [STL]

Conference title :

Integration in English for Specific Purposes as a ferment of intellection and innovation for research, didactics and pedagogy

Conference organizers(s) :

Université de Bordeaux

City :

Bordeaux

Country :

France

Start date of the conference :

2015-03-19

English keyword(s) :

English for specific purposes
English as a Second Language
Technical languages
specialized languages

English abstract : [en]

Do specialized languages exist, and if so, what are they made up of? These questions may seeminnocent at first glance but have been a source of contention since the origin of ESP teaching. Some,such as Hutchinson and Waters ...
Show more >Do specialized languages exist, and if so, what are they made up of? These questions may seeminnocent at first glance but have been a source of contention since the origin of ESP teaching. Some,such as Hutchinson and Waters insist that the language of specific disciplines is not distinct from“general English,” whereas others, such as Hyland, assert that technical languages are characterized not only by specialist vocabulary but also by syntactical, grammatical and rhetorical conventions, oftensupporting their arguments with corpus analyses, which have demonstrated the linguistic specificitieswhich exist across disciplines.The stakes of these questions are high. If it is decided that technical languages do not exist, itwill be easy to justify teaching “general English” to students, no matter their chosen discipline.However, if it is decided that technical languages are indeed defined by specific linguistic features,teaching the discipline-specific language may be necessary to prepare students to use the language inprofessional or academic contexts.For this study, we took an ethnographic perspective of the question of what constitutes aspecialized version of a language. Students and teachers in the 3 rd year of law school at the Catholic University of Lille and legal professionals in Lille were asked the question “What does it mean to speak Legal English?” The responses showed divergences in the answers of the different groups. However, the most striking differences appeared between the perspectives of the groups interviewed, who were likely to consider technical languages only in terms of terminology, and the researchers who also take into account non-terminological aspects of technical languages. These findings suggest the need to adapt current linguistic research about technical languages in order to make it more relevant to language teaching and/or the need to promote technical language awareness to students, teachers andprofessionals.Show less >

Language :

Anglais

Peer reviewed article :

Oui

Audience :

Internationale

Popular science :

Non

Collections :

• Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163

Source :

Harvested from HAL