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doi.org/10.35321/term27-05
Terms in Online Media (An Exploratory Study)
ASTA MITKEVIČIENĖ
Institute of the Lithuanian Language
ABSTRACT
The article aims to determine which fields’ terms most frequently enter everyday online media and whether these popular terms undergo more pronounced changes (term variation and determinologization are discussed). The exploratory study examines two-word terms in the publicly available DELFI.lt corpus, compiled from texts published on the news portal of the same name between 2014 and 2016. Although the methodology employed has limitations, it makes it possible (to the extent feasible) to analyze terms without prior bias—that is, without specifying in advance either the field or the particular terms.
The article attempts to determine the domains from which terms usually get into the daily online media and whether the most popular terms undergo any more prominent changes (terminological variation, determinologization are discussed). The pilot study focuses on two-word terms found in the publicly available DELFI.lt corpus, which is composed of the texts published in the news portal under the same title in the period between 2014 and 2016. Though the methodology applied has certain weaknesses, it enables us (as much as possible) to analyse terms without any prejudices, i.e., by not anticipating the domain or specific terms.
Generally, it is well known that some terms are used not only in scholarly communication but also enter general usage. The noticeably increased number of terms in everyday communication is associated with the information age, the knowledge society, and the technological revolution (see Meyer et al. 1998: 645; Kageura 2002: 15; Geeraerts 2015: XVII–XIX, etc.).
One important route by which terms reach a nonspecialist audience is the media. The media both introduce terms into general usage and help popularize some terms from fields relevant to them. When terms become widespread and familiar not only to specialists, the possibility of determinologization arises (Gaivenis 2014: 242). This article seeks to establish which fields’ terms most often appear in everyday online media and whether those popular terms undergo more pronounced change (term variation and determinologization are discussed). The object of the study is two-word terms used on the DELFI.lt news portal. Two-word terms were selected for several reasons. First, this is the most frequent1 (or at least one of the most frequent, depending on the field) type of term; second, their extension is narrower and their intension broader than those of one-word terms at a higher hierarchical level in the same system, making them easier to identify.
This is the first study of the use of terms in the media that does not restrict itself to terms from a single field and does not rely on a predetermined list of terms. The study is exploratory.
Kazimieras Župerka has analyzed the use of linguistics terms in journalistic writing. Based on their usage, he distinguished two functional-semantic groups. The first comprises terms used as terms (with either their precise meaning or an approximate or even inaccurate one); the second comprises determinologized terms (some used with a conventional figurative meaning, others with an individual figurative meaning, as a stylistic device) (Župerka 2000). This classification is a useful point of reference for discussing the use of terms from other fields outside their usual settings (scientific and administrative styles).
Cognitive psychology and philosophy emphasize that it is difficult to draw a clear line between general and specialized knowledge, while language sciences question the strict separation of general and specialized language (Cabré Castellví 2003: 171). Accordingly, a nonspecialist may consider a word to be a term, while regarding terms used by specialists as general-language words when encountered in a nonspecialist audience (Kageura 2012: 12). Therefore, this article does not undertake a broader discussion of termhood and its degrees.
SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY
For the study of terms in the media, and in the hope of obtaining results quickly, we used the publicly available DELFI.lt corpus (http://tekstynas.mwe.lt/), which comprises 70 million words. It is a corpus of online journalism, consisting of
1 See Umbrasas 2013: 113, 117; Bielinskienė et al. 2015: 65 et seq.
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texts published on the DELFI.lt website in 2014–2016 and assigned to 12 sections: DELFI Veidai, Projektai, DELFI Mokslas, DELFI Auto, Sportas, DELFI Gyvenimas, DELFI Žmonės, DELFI Pilietis, Verslas, DELFI FIT, DELFI Žinios, and the Unidentified category (for more on the corpus, see LKKŽ 2019: 14–15). Thus, some texts belong to subject-specific sections and are informational or analytical in style, while others are intended for entertainment and have a freer, expressive style2. Readers’ comments were not included in the corpus.
Sets of n-grams and their frequencies derived from this corpus are publicly available (http://resursai.mwe.lt/atsisiusti). The bigram list was used for this study.
An additional source was the Database of Lithuanian Fixed Word Combinations (PJB), compiled on the basis of the aforementioned corpus. It contains about 12,000 two- and three-word fixed expressions formed with the 97 nouns most frequently occurring in such combinations. Where the term of interest was recorded in the database, its lemma or form frequency and variants were checked.
The study was carried out in several stages. First, the bigram list was reviewed and two-word terms were identified in it (more precisely, term forms, since the list was not lemmatized). Given the particularly large amount of material, it was decided to include only two-word terms whose frequency in at least one form exceeded 500 (this required reviewing more than 7,000 of the most frequent bigrams3). The selected terms were then classified by field. Finally, concordances of the selected compound terms in the corpus were analyzed.
A total of 461 two-word term forms were selected, representing 317 distinct terms. As many as six inflected forms of the combination prekybos centras occurred more than 500 times each (PJB gives the frequency of this lemma as 7118).
A methodological limitation relevant to terminology is that the selected two-word terms occur in the media not only as standalone terms but also as parts of longer terms; cf. artimoje aplinkoje and smurtas artimoje aplinkoje, pridėtinės vertės and pridėtinės vertės mokestis. Nevertheless, it was decided that if a two-word collocation is a term, it would be treated here as a two-word term, even if that term forms part of a multiword term in some concordance lines. The fact that a two-word term is merely part of a term does not—
K. Župerka distinguishes three substyles of journalistic style: informational, analytical, and expressive (Župerka 2001: 87); Audronė Bitinienė distinguishes four: informational, analytical, expressive, and dialogic (Bitinienė 2007).
The most frequent bigram that can be considered a term is JAV dolerių (nearly 10,000 occurrences), but it was not included in the list of selected two-word terms because its first component is not an independent word but an acronym. This is a matter of convention: some studies (e.g., Boizou et al. 2015) treat an acronym in a combination as equivalent to a one-word component.
knows its terminological status and frequency of use. Proper names also support this choice: when a term is used in compound names, it remains a term (Vilniaus gyvosios gamtos apsaugos inspekcija).
Because of the specific nature of the selection process, the study material did not include instances of term usage in which other words intervened between the components of a term. In addition, in individual concordance lines, some of the selected two-word forms happened to coincide formally with the terms under study, and there are also examples of non-terminological—figurative—usage (see below). Consequently, the data on the frequency of term usage in the corpus can only be considered approximate.
TERM RECOGNITION
It is well known that multi-word terms do not have a distinctive form that would make them easy to distinguish from word combinations (or longer syntactic constructions), although certain forms are more typical, e.g., attributive combinations with a noun in the genitive, with an adjective bearing the suffix -inis, with a pronominal adjective, etc.4 “Automatically determining which combination is a collocation and which is a term is almost impossible” (Rimkutė et al. 2017: 15). If a two-word collocation is a noun phrase, one might guess that it will often be a term (or at least part of a term). For example, after reviewing the 50 most frequent attributive two-word combinations in PJB, more than 60 percent could be considered terms from one field or another. A similar number of terms was found among the 50 most frequent two-word combinations in that database, regardless of the semantic relationship between their components.
To determine more objectively whether a collocation is a term, the first step was to search for the linguistic unit in question in term databases and dictionaries; consideration was also given to the fact that terms may have variants and synonyms. Of course, not all terms, even the most popular ones, are included in terminographic resources, and not all fields have terminographic resources; moreover, such resources sometimes also include other kinds of linguistic units, such as proper names. Ideally, the terminological status of combinations would be assessed by a subject-matter expert (the contribution of subject-matter experts is emphasized in various studies of automatic term recognition), but in this case there is more than one field, and they are quite diverse.
Another difficult issue is the boundaries of terms. This problem arises when attempting to determine the boundaries not only of terms, but also of other fixed combinations
4 Plačiau apie dvižodžių terminų struktūrinius modelius žr. Gaivenis 2014 [1975]: 64–70; Akelaitis 2008: 6–8; Drukteinis 2011: 239–241; Bielinskienė ir kt. 2015: 62; Mockienė 2016: 109–111 ir kt.
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(see Bielinskienė et al. 2017: 86). If a combination is merely part of a longer term, it can function as a term in its role as a contextual synonym. For example, the contextual synonym of the terms afrikinis kiaulių maras and klasikinis kiaulių maras (included in TB, IATE) is kiaulių maras; cf. examples from the corpus:
Insurers, according to A. Baravykas, compared swine fever to war and said that during wartime they would no longer insure against war, which means that they will probably refuse to insure against African and classical swine fever. [Verslas]
The swine fever recorded in Lithuania last week will cause enormous losses. [Verslas]
The combination kiaulių maras is not an independent term; it names one of the two diseases or, in general, both. In form, this two-word combination and the aforementioned three-word terms resemble typical related and specific terms5.
TERMS BY FIELD
To avoid subjectivity as far as possible, terms were assigned to fields on the basis of the European Union’s multilingual, multidisciplinary thesaurus EuroVoc and the Terminology Bank of the Republic of Lithuania (TB). It should be noted that TB terms are assigned to one field or another according to their source, which is why a term with the same or a very similar meaning may be presented as a term belonging to different fields. For example, the fields assigned to the term Member State are public safety, defence, law, economics, finance, social protection, employment and working conditions, and health. Consequently, the fields assigned to a term in the TB and EuroVoc can sometimes differ considerably. For instance, the TB assigns the term national minority to the field of culture, whereas Eurovoc assigns it to law. In such cases, the decision is made on the basis of context. Since the field classifications in both resources share similarities as well as differences, this article attempts to reconcile them, while giving priority to the TB classification, which better reflects Lithuanian realities. In addition, the analysis focuses only on the broadest fields, in order to provide a more general picture of the fields. A separate group was created for professions and positions, as this group is especially prominent and numerous in the material under study (if its terms were assigned to the field of social protection, employment and working conditions, that field would have the largest number of terms).
5 In the VLEe article “Animal Plague,” its author Vytautas Stūgys states that “[t]he following diseases are known as plagues: cattle plague, peste des petits ruminants, African horse sickness (African disease), African swine fever and classical swine fever, canine distemper, avian plague (influenza), salmon plague, pike plague, and crayfish plague.” Classical swine fever and African swine fever are contagious viral diseases of pigs (see TB).
Because of the large volume of material, it is extremely difficult to examine every concordance line. It is therefore possible that a term is not used with the same meaning in every instance and consequently belongs to more than one field. Nevertheless, the assumption is that the broadest field of the most popular media terms should be relatively easy to determine.
When a term, in different meanings, belongs to several fields (usually two), it is assigned in this study to the group of terms belonging to multiple fields. Generally, one of its meanings and fields clearly predominates. For example, third country (most commonly in the form third countries) is used more often as a term in international relations than as a legal term:
Compared with last year, the volume of imports from third countries increased by 5.4 per cent. [Verslas]
The two-word terms used in the media under study belong to a wide range of fields (see Fig. 1 and Table 1). This is, of course, due to extralinguistic factors—the media agenda and the subject matter of the texts.
Fig. 1. The most frequent two-word terms (one of their forms occurs more than 500 times) and their forms6 in the DELFI.lt corpus by field
6 The frequencies given in the bigram set do not always match the results of corpus searches, but the discrepancy is small and is not considered significant. The quantitative data in the chart are taken from the original research source—the bigram set. The frequencies of the terms (lemmas) discussed in other subsections of the article were checked in the corpus and, where available, in PJB.
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Table 1. The most frequent two-word terms (one form used more than 500 times) in the DELFI.lt corpus by subject area
SUBJECT AREA
EXAMPLES
NUMBER OF TERMS
physical education and sport
qualifying competition, athletics, ranking points, sport
44
professions and positions
press officer, company manager, police officer, Member of the Seimas
30
communication
website, news agency, press conference, video recording
26
law
court of appeal, equal opportunities, legal act, court decision
24
politics
amendment to the law, election campaign, municipal council, governing coalition
23
social protection, employment and working conditions
wages, care home, unemployment rate, trade union
20
finance
euro area, interest rate, securities
19
public safety
traffic accident, criminal offence, police station
19
environment
waste management, national park, weather forecast
19
transport
airport, technical inspection, public transport
18
economics
economic growth, retail trade, added value
13
defence
armed forces, military equipment, military service
FIELDS | EXAMPLES | NUMBER OF TERMSculturecultural heritage4standardization and metrologycubic metre3statisticshousehold1several fieldsthird country, public space7
As already mentioned in the introductory section, the most frequent term forms in the corpus were selected for the study. With a lemmatized list of terms and their frequencies, the distribution of fields by number and frequency of terms would likely be different.
TERMS AND (PROPER) COMPLEX NAMES
Some terms can be considered frequent in non-specialist communication because they enter the media as part of proper names that are important to the public or to a particular group within it. For example, the form automobilių kelių (‘of motor roads’) occurs more than 700 times in the corpus, but most often as part of the name Lietuvos automobilių kelių direkcija (‘Lithuanian Road Administration’). The second most frequent form of the same term, automobilių keliais (‘by motor roads’; frequency greater than 180), also most often appears in a complex name (Saugaus eismo automobilių keliais įstatymas, ‘Road Traffic Safety Act’). By comparison, the locative automobilių keliuose (‘on motor roads’) occurs only a few times. However, there is little doubt that the combination automobilių kelias (‘motor road’) is terminological; the term is also included in TB. Similar examples can be given for some other terms as well (see also the next section).
Another type of example is the term akcijų rinka (‘stock market’; frequency 2382 PJB). Its most frequent forms are the locative akcijų rinkose (‘in stock markets’; 774) and the genitive akcijų rinkos (‘of the stock market’; 526). Both these forms, as well as the combination itself, are most often used in generalized names for the markets of a particular region or country (e.g., Azijos akcijų rinkos, JAV akcijų rinkose (‘Asian stock markets’, ‘in U.S. stock markets’), etc.), cf.:
On Thursday, a surge of large transactions was felt in the Baltic stock markets. [Verslas]
News about companies drove the increase in trading activity in the stock markets of the Baltic states. [Verslas]
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SYNONYMS, PERIPHRASES, VARIANTS
Reviewing the selected terms used in the media revealed synonyms, periphrases, and variants7.
Among the most frequent bigrams were synonyms from the field of communication. One synonym pair is pranešimas spaudai (‘press release’) and pranešimas žiniasklaidai (‘media release’; frequencies 4437 and 1340, respectively; for both terms, the most frequent forms are singular locatives). The first term is also found in EuroVoc and in the IATE terminology database, where it is rated as highly reliable. Most concordance lines for the less popular term pranešimas žiniasklaidai belong to the “Auto” section; “Mokslas” also stands out, so subjective preferences among authors may be discernible here, possibly influenced by the sources of the publications. Both terms are included in the latest public relations terminology dictionary (RVŽ 2018), which gives preference to pranešimui spaudai (‘press release’).
Another synonym pair, both members of which are frequently used in the media, is visuomenės nuomonė (‘public opinion’; lemma frequency 1217, most frequent form visuomenės nuomonės) and viešoji nuomonė (‘public opinion’; lemma frequency 742, including the non-pronominal variant, most frequent form viešosios nuomonės). In the aforementioned public relations terminology dictionary, the order of the synonyms—visuomenės nuomonė, viešoji nuomonė—corresponds to their prevalence in the media. No major differences in usage were observed, except that one synonym is more often used with the names of certain public-opinion research institutions, and the other with those of others. This may partly explain why viešosios nuomonės tyrimas (‘public-opinion survey’) is more frequent in the corpus than visuomenės nuomonės tyrimas (‘public-opinion survey’; frequency 265 and 146 PJB, respectively).
The energy-sector term atominė elektrinė (‘nuclear power plant’) is much more frequent in the media (lemma frequency in the corpus 1697) than its synonym branduolinė elektrinė (‘nuclear power plant’; frequency 58)8. Undoubtedly, the first term has a longer history of use, but, importantly, it occurs in complex names, for example: Ignalinos atominė elektrinė, Astravo atominė elektrinė (the official name is Baltarusijos atominė elektrinė; see VLEe), which helps it spread among the general public—
7 Here, a narrower conception of term variants is adopted (different forms of the same term). Agnė Bielinskienė and her co-authors discuss the grammatical variation of fixed expressions, including those functioning as terms, in DELFI.lt texts (2019). In that article, the concept of a variant is broader; for example, combinations such as pagrįstas sprendimas – nepagrįstas sprendimas, augti kaina – kainų augimas. are considered variants.
8 VLEe – branduolinė elektrinė, atominė elektrinė. The order of synonyms is not consistent across TB sources. For example, the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on Nuclear (Atomic) Power Plants and defense-sector dictionaries give preference to the term branduolinė elektrinė (‘nuclear power plant’); the dictionary of thermal and nuclear engineering terms and the dictionary of physics terms prefer atominė elektrinė, while other sources (e.g., the dictionary of automation) list them as non-synonymous terms.
at the old one. In the corpus, this term is often found in the names of specific power plants (or is used when referring to power plants whose (Lithuanian) name contains the element atominė), cf.:
Sweden’s plans to close nuclear power plants and the Astravets nuclear power plant rising in Belarus will also change the situation in our electricity market. [Pilietis]
The corpus also contains fairly frequent terms atominė jėgainė (lemma frequency 229) and branduolinė jėgainė (193). Without specialist knowledge, and from context alone, it is difficult to say precisely whether they are used in every instance with the same meaning as the terms discussed that contain the element elektrinė, but in more than one concordance line their synonymous use is quite obvious:
The new nuclear power plant will be the first nuclear power station built in the United Kingdom in the past twenty years. [Verslas]
Ignalina AE is the world’s first nuclear power plant to be shut down because of the Russian RBMK reactors installed there, which are considered unsafe. [Verslas]
A power plant is often confused with a power station (see the note on the term vėjo elektrinė in IATE; for more, see Klimavičius, Smilgevičius 2002), and Wikipedia, too, defines the term branduolinė jėgainė as a power station.
Another frequent two-word form in the corpus is head of government. VLEe lists the terms prime minister, premier (“in many states, the head of government (cabinet, council of ministers, and others)”), while TB includes only prime minister (source: a political science dictionary), and the Lithuanian Classification of Occupations lists Prime Minister. The latter term is the official title of the position in Lithuania. Thus, the frequent lemma in the corpus head of government (PJB 1693, including feminine forms) initially appears to be a periphrasis of the term, a stylistic synonym (cf. the more frequent lemmas premier (over 20,000 occurrences), prime minister (more than 5,000)). Interestingly, the term EuroVoc actually lists is head of government, and from there it also entered IATE. Thus, the compound head of government nicely illustrates that there is no very strict boundary between terms and periphrases (for a somewhat fuller discussion, see Mitkevičienė 2015: 54–55). In the media, titles vary for stylistic reasons and appear as equivalent units:
Among the possible candidates are Ireland’s prime minister Enda Kenny, former Latvian head of government Valdis Dombrovskis, and former Estonian prime minister Andrus Ansip. [Žinios]
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Among the most frequent forms was also the term form prekės ženklo (frequency 891 PJB). The PJB includes the generalized phrase prekės ženklas (frequency 3530), which also covers cases where the first component is in the plural form. Number variation in the dependent component is terminologically significant. The currently approved term variant is prekių ženklas (see TB, the Law on Trademarks of the Republic of Lithuania), although the variant prekės ženklas was also included in TB from dictionaries. It may be argued that this term is still variable (compare also prekės ženklas, prekių ženklas in VLE, prekės ženklas in the VŽ dictionary, etc.)9. This variation is also reflected in the corpus. Table 2 summarizes the forms of the term in question according to the number of both components and gives their frequency in the corpus (according to PJB). As can be seen, the variant prekės ženklas clearly predominates in the media, while the plural number of the dependent component may have been influenced by the plural form of the head component (prekių ženklai). The same factor—the form of the main term component in context—may also have increased the frequency of the variant prekės ženklas.
Table 2. Frequency of singular and plural forms of the term prekės / prekių ženklas
prekės ženklas (singular forms) 1988 prekės ženklai (plural forms) 632 Trade in their own products online cannot be restricted even for owners of t r a d e m a r k s. [Verslas]
prekių ženklas (singular forms) 268 prekių ženklai (plural forms) 642 For this reason, many well-known t r a d e m a r k s disappeared during the crisis when the companies that owned them went bankrupt. [Verslas] How can you preserve your t r a d e m a r k or name during a division of property? [Verslas]
2620
910
variable term prekės / prekių ženklas 3530
The variable term in question also has a grammatical synonym in the corpus—prekinis ženklas—which is not as popular (lemma frequency 592 PJB). Interestingly, it occurs mostly in the genitive form, as does its synonym prekės ženklas.
9 Further discussion of the term prekių ženklas and its variants as equivalents of the loanword brendas can be found in Vladarskienė 2016. In the corpus under study, there are only a few occurrences of the word brendas, and it is almost always graphically distinguished, as if to indicate its status.
Among the most frequent bigrams are also definite and indefinite variants of terms, e.g.: nekilnojamojo turto (3684) and nekilnojamo turto (558), viešojoje erdvėje (1296) and viešoje erdvėje (534). The term nekilnojamasis turtas (‘real estate’), popular in the media (5551 occurrences in PJB), is used much more often in the definite form (4749) than in the indefinite form (802), although the frequency of the latter is surprisingly high as well. The use of the indefinite form can be explained both by inattention to expression and by stylistic reasons, since this term in its indefinite form is also found, for example, in astrological forecasts and in quotations of statements by interviewees (colloquial speech?), cf.:
We see that now most r e a l e s t a t e properties being developed in Vilnius, especially those in the higher-end segment, are found precisely in Užupis and the surrounding areas,” notes <...>. [Verslas]
On October 12–13, when Mars passes through the royal degree, you can accomplish a great deal of importance—the time is auspicious for those wishing to buy r e a l e s t a t e or a car. [Gyvenimas]
At the end of the week, those wishing to acquire r e a l e s t a t e or change their place of residence will have good luck. [Gyvenimas]
Another variable term, vieša (–oji) erdvė (‘public space’), is not unambiguous—it is used in the media mainly as a communications term, and also as the name of a concept in the field of the environment. It varies in both cases.
The frequency of indefinite variants of other popular terms used in the media does not exceed 500, e.g.: gyvenamoji vieta (2410 PJB) and gyvenama vieta (215); reguliarusis sezonas (1579) and reguliarus sezonas (703) (the singular genitive is the most frequent form of both variants of this term); or it is very low, e.g., viešasis transportas (2776) and viešas transportas (12), etc.
Contextual analysis suggests that the indefinite form gyvenama vieta is again used in astrological forecasts, although it is also found in more business-oriented sections.
The term reguliarusis varžybų sezonas (‘regular competition season’) is given in the Dictionary of Sports Terms (see TB). If we take this to be the primary term, the phrase reguliarusis sezonas would have to be considered a shortened variant. The three-word term occurred only once in the corpus (in dozens of cases, the name of a specific league was inserted between the components, e.g., reguliarusis Eurolygos sezonas). It can therefore be argued that the two-word phrase reguliarus(is) sezonas is the form used in the media as a sports term.
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Among the most frequent bigrams are also the indefinite forms raudona kortelė and raudoną kortelę. The Dictionary of Sports Terms (see also “Kortelė” in VLEe) gives the definite term raudonoji kortelė. This sports term is not attested in its definite form in the corpus. The few examples found with the definite form do not belong to the field of sports, although they have undoubtedly been borrowed from it (trans-terminologized):
Moreover, it is proposed to introduce the so-called “red card” system, which would allow 55 percent of EU national parliaments to block or amend directives issued by Brussels. [Žinios]
Thus, the indefinite variant raudona kortelė has become established in the media as a sports term.
As emphasized in language practice recommendations, indefinite forms may be used in compound names in colloquial speech and other informal styles (KP1: 26). The question arises whether, in such cases, the expression is still a term, or at least still performs the function of a term. A definitive answer is presumably difficult, not only because views differ on terms outside scholarly discourse, but also because the opposition between definite and indefinite forms is complex. As Ramunė Vaskelaitė’s extensive research shows, the use of definite forms in terminology does not conform to the codified norm (see Vaskelaitė 2016, 2019). Thus, first of all, it is necessary to investigate which form a given term takes in specialist discourse, and only then draw more substantial conclusions about changes in the expression of terms and their variation in online media. The terms in use may not coincide with those given in dictionaries.
DETERMINOLOGIZATION
As already mentioned, Kazimieras Gaivenis wrote that for determininologization10 to occur, a term must be widely disseminated and known not only to specialists. Thus, frequent terms in popular media should meet this condition. It should be emphasized here that determininologization is understood in different ways in scholarly literature. According to the broadest conception, the phenomenon covers any use of a term outside its usual context, as a result of which it is regarded not as a term but as an ordinary word (e.g., Superanskaja et al. 2003). The most important criterion here is the usage situation. Ingrid Meyer and Kristen
10 This article uses the established international term determininologizacija, rather than the variant used by K. Gaivenis, determinizacija.
Mackintosh (2000) dažnai cituojamame straipsnyje apibūdina du determinologizacijos atvejus: 1) įvardijama ta pati sąvoka kaip ir atitinkamoje dalykinėje srityje, bet ta sąvoka suvokiama paviršutiniškiau nei dalyko specialisto, galimos konotacijos, 2) nebeįvardijama ta pati dalykinė sąvoka, žodis vartojamas kita reikšme. Pati determinologizacija šių autorių aiškinama kaip semantiniai, gramatiniai (plg. jau aptartą įvardžiuotinių ir neįvardžiuotinių formų opoziciją) ir pragmatiniai pokyčiai, kai terminus vartoja ne tos srities specialistai. Jana Nová (2018), determinologizaciją nagrinėjanti iš leksikografinės perspektyvos, išskiria tarpinį determinologizacijos etapą, kai terminas vartojamas miglota dalykine reikšme – ne specialistai tiesiog nežino, kad terminą vartoja netiksliai (pvz., psichiatrijos ir psichologijos terminų depresija įvardijamas laikinas liūdesys).11
K. Gaivenis explains determinologization as the transformation of terms into ordinary words: “a term that has undergone determinologization does not disappear, but merely puts forth a new offshoot (an ordinary word) in another domain of usage” (Gaivenis 2014 [1997]: 242). This statement and the examples given in the cited article (epicentras in physics and geology, and neramumų epicentras) show that determinologization is understood there as a term becoming an ordinary word through semantic transfer. This is the narrow conception of determinologization. K. Župerka (2000) also adopts the narrow conception (see the introduction), not treating even inaccurate use of terms as determinologization. Here we may also recall the confusion, mentioned in the previous section, of the term jėgainė with elektrinė.
In their study of the determinologization of terms containing the component aparatas, Jurgita Mikelionienė and Aušra Berkmanienė draw on foreign-language scholarship and consider stylistic use of a term, while retaining its principal semes, to be partial determinologization, as in: “The coffee machine gave a little gurgle, so the last drops are dripping out.” (Mikelionienė, Berkmanienė 2018: 242).
A review of the concordance for the term prekių / prekės ženklas discussed in the previous section revealed a fairly frequent metonymic use of this term: most often in place of the owner (a), and less often in place of the thing denoted (b), for example:
a) Most b r a n d s view the Baltic countries as a single country. [Verslas]
b) American and European conglomerates trading in famous b r a n d s feel the effects of the turmoil in Russia <...>. [Verslas]
11 Only a few studies by foreign researchers have been mentioned here, although determinologization has been discussed quite extensively. A few more significant or comprehensive publications may also be noted: Halskov 2005; Dury 2008; Bagijan 2014; Renouf 2017, and others.
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Depending on the theoretical approach, such metonymic usage could also be regarded as a manifestation of determinologization. Nevertheless, it does not extend beyond the boundaries of the concept designated by the term: the phrase continues to serve a terminological function, and metonymy is probably a feature of professional rather than general (non-specialist) language.
Without delving further into the theoretical subtleties of determinologization, what follows discusses only the figurative use of terms as ordinary phrases.
Determinologization in the corpus can be identified only from context, and the material under study is too extensive to review every concordance line for the selected two-word terms12. Therefore, several terms from different fields were chosen somewhat subjectively, on the assumption that familiar terms from the environment, sports, and health tend to undergo determinologization, and their concordance lines were analyzed. Conversely, analysis of the concordance confirmed the view that phrases such as natural gas, military equipment, criminal act, election campaign are used as terms in the media.
It was found that earthquake is most often used with its precise terminological meaning (at least, this can be inferred from the context). It is used metaphorically only a few dozen times (out of more than 1,300):
The victories of Eurosceptics in the European Parliament elections are rightly called an earthquake. [Žinios]
In the concordance, the phrase weight category is most often recorded as a sports term, and only rarely as a metrology term. Its stylistic use (identified in a dozen or so cases) is associated specifically with the more frequent sports concept; the particular sport is sometimes also specified in metalinguistic comments, cf.:
Russia is not trying to equal the United States and compete with it as if the two countries belonged to the same weight category. [Žinios]
“A serious mistake would mean being barred from starting, while smaller mistakes could have knocked us down to Group 1, that is, a different weight category, as wrestlers would say,” explained navigator S. Jurgelėnas. [Auto]
The frequent phrase finish line occurs in only a dozen or so concordance lines in a figurative sense rather than as a sports term. These determinologized examples are found in both specialist sections (e.g., science and business) and leisure sections:
12 Julie Humbert-Droz and her co-authors (2019) discuss in detail the principles for compiling a corpus to study determinologization using language technology tools. They limit their study to terminology from a single field.
Pharmaceutical companies are competing with one another to be the first to offer a new class of drugs that regulate cholesterol levels in the bloodstream. It is expected that at least some companies will cross the finish line this year. [Mokslas]
It has already been noted that the sports term raudona kortelė (‘red card’) occurred in the corpus with a transterminologized meaning. It can also be added here that several examples of usage point to the determinologization of this compound as well (the initial assumption was that there would be more such cases):
Thousands of Czechs symbolically showed the country’s current president, Miloš Zeman, a “red card.” [Žinios]
A different example with regard to determinologization is galvos skausmas (‘headache’). Although it formally entered the material for this study as one of the more frequent two-word terms, its terminological use is less frequent in the concordance than its figurative use (‘concern’)—accounting for about 40 percent of all recorded instances; cf.:
At that time, Ukraine’s borrowing rating was already causing considerable concern. [Verslas]
General reactions—fever, headache, and rash—occur rarely. [Gyvenimas]
About 40 percent of uses of this compound in its primary meaning13 are plural forms. Such frequency of form could also be regarded as a feature of the term’s use in the media; however, the plural is also not avoided in scholarly style, as a search of Google Scholar shows (cf. the title of one publication: “Headaches: Diagnosis and Treatment. A Methodological Guide” (2017)).
Figurative use of terms can usually be considered a matter of style rather than a systemic feature of language. Moreover, in the Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian (BŽ), finišo linija, žemės drebėjimas (‘finish line, earthquake’) are included only in their literal meanings. Nevertheless, galvos skausmas (‘headache’) meaning ‘concern’ (cf. širdies skausmas ‘sorrow, heartache’ in LKŽ) could be regarded as a separate meaning of the compound.
CONCLUSIONS
Although the study conducted is only exploratory, certain tendencies in the use of terminology in the media can be discerned.
The most frequent two-word terms in the media are diverse in terms of subject matter—they belong to more than twenty fields. These results were obtained by limiting the analysis to only the largest fields.
13 Motivated plural forms (abdominal and headache pains) are not included in this count.
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The popularity of some terms in the media is increased by proper compound names relevant to it.
Even the more popular terms in the media are characterized by formal variation and synonymy. This also stems from the terminology of the relevant subject field, in which a concept is named in more than one way; stylistic factors also have an influence. Unmotivated variation can be attributed to inattention to expression.
It cannot be claimed that the consistent use of some terms in a form other than that given in terminography is a feature of media terminology use—they may have entered the media in that form directly from specialist discourse (including spoken discourse).
Cases of determinologization were recorded among the two-word terms popular in the media, which means that they are well known to the online media audience.
Although the methodology applied has shortcomings, it nevertheless makes it possible (to the extent possible) to analyze terms without prior assumptions—without specifying in advance either the field or the particular terms.
Lietuvių kalbos pastovieji žodžių junginiai. Resursai atsisiuntimui: 2-gramos ir jų dažniai. Prieiga internete: http://resursai.mwe.lt/atsisiusti.
PJB – Lietuvių kalbos pastovieji žodžių junginiai. Duomenų bazė. Prieiga internete: http://resursai.mwe.lt/paieska.
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TERMS IN ONLINE MEDIA (PILOT STUDY)
S u m m a r y
Media is one of the major ways through which terms reach a non-professional audience. The article attempts to determine the domains from which terms usually get into the daily online media and whether the most popular terms undergo any more prominent changes (terminological variation, determinologization are discussed). The research focuses on two-word terms.
The study on the terms used in the media is based on the corpus of the news portal DELFI.lt (http://tekstynas.mwe.lt/). The research was carried out in several stages. First of all, the list of bigrams gathered from the corpus (http://resursai.mwe.lt/atsisiusti) was reviewed and two-word terms (to be more precise, the forms of terms, because the list is not lemmatized) where at least one form demonstrates the frequency higher than 500 were identified. In this way, 461 two-word term forms were selected, resulting in 317 different terms. The selected terms were then divided by domain. Finally, the concordances of the chosen composite terms in the corpus were analysed. Though such methodology has certain weaknesses, it enabled us (as much as possible) to analyse terms without any prejudices, i.e., by not anticipating the field or specific terms.
Though it is only a pilot study, we can nevertheless grasp certain tendencies of term usage in the media:
1) The most common two-word terms used in the media are varied subject-wise – they belong to over twenty domains. Such findings were received by limiting with the largest domains only.
2) The popularity of a part of the terms in the media is increased by composite proper names relevant to it.
3) Even popular media terms demonstrate formal variation and synonymy. It also pertains to the terminology coming from the respective domain in which a concept is named in multiple ways; stylistic factors play a role as well. Unmotivated variation may be explained by inadequate attention to expression.
4) We cannot say that the consistent use of certain terms in a different form than provided in terminology is a characteristic feature defining the usage of terms in the media – they could have come into the media in such a form straight from professional discourse (including spoken).
5) Cases of determologization were identified among the two-word terms which are popular in the media, which means that the audience of the online media is well familiar with them.
