21st International Conference on Language for Specific Purposes “Interdisciplinary Knowledge-Making: Challenges for LSP Research”

ASTA MITKEVIČIENĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

On 28–30 June 2017, the biennial international “Conference on Language for Specific Purposes” was held for the 21st time. For four decades, it has been one of the world’s most important events for researchers in this field. The theme of this year’s conference was “Interdisciplinary knowledge-making: Challenges for LSP research,” and it was held in Bergen, Norway. It was organized by the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) and the University of Bergen.

The conference featured parallel sessions and workshops, while new projects were presented in poster presentations. Researchers and practitioners from Europe, America, Asia, and Africa gave presentations and took part in discussions.

The conference’s invited speakers were Kjersti Fløttum (University of Bergen, Norway), Maria Teresa Musacchio (University of Padua, Italy), and Paul Thompson (University of Birmingham, Great Britain). K. Fløttum discussed the role of language in the climate change problem; M. T. Musacchio’s presentation focused on interdisciplinary perspectives on economic and financial communication; and P. Thompson examined discourses on interdisciplinary environmental change research through corpus analysis.

The presentations in the plenary sessions were grouped by topic:

terminology;

specialized discourse and knowledge communication;

multilingualism and language planning;

teaching language for specific purposes;

specialized translation;

legal discourse.

Below is a brief account of the presentations in the terminology session. Håkan Landqvist (University of Gothenburg, Sweden), Niina Nissilä and Nina Pilke (University of Vaasa

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Asta Mitkevičienė

21-oji tarptautinė specialiosios kalbos konferencija „Tarpdalykinių žinių kūrimas: specialiosios kalbos tyrimų iššūkiai“

The University of Helsinki, Finland) spoke about terminological discussions between subject specialists and linguists in Sweden from 1941 to 1983. The author of these lines discussed explicit features of the concept of “term” in Lithuanian scientific language. Marcus Müller (Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany) examined the formation of key terms in international relations discourse. The presentation by Jelena Andelković and Gordana Jakić (University of Belgrade, Serbia) introduced a corpus-based study of metaphorical English and Serbian terms. Some of the findings of this study also apply to Lithuanian terminology. Miriam Leibbrand of the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria) spoke about accounting terminology in translations for French-speaking countries. Aurélie Picton (University of Geneva, Switzerland) presented a study of the variation of terms over time and across regions and expert communities in French texts. Flavia De Camillis and Elena Chiocchetti (Eurac Research, Italy) discussed the opportunities for translation projects with social impact in today’s translation market. Lotte Weilgaard Christensen (University of Southern Denmark, Kolding) demonstrated how the card-sorting method can be applied to teaching the identification of concept systems in terminology work. A joint presentation by Lulianna van der Lek-Ciudin (KU Leuven, Belgium), Ayla Rigouts Terryn (Ghent University, Belgium), Geert Heyman (KU Leuven), Els Lefever (Ghent University), and Frieda Steurs (KU Leuven) presented a study of the methods translators use to find domain-specific terms. Kim Grego (University of Milan, Italy) and Alessandra Vicentini (University of Insubria, Varese, Italy) discussed a highly sensitive topic—the discourse on medically assisted death in Western culture. A presentation by Austrian Academy of Sciences representatives Tanja Wissik, Claudia Resch, and Daniel Schopper introduced a historical thesaurus of Austrian criminal law in the eighteenth century that is under development. Kerstin Norén of the University of Gothenburg explored how scientific terms that are also general words (for example, energy) are explained in textbooks. Daniela Matić (University of Split, Croatia) spoke about English terminology in Croatian university teaching materials for computer science. Some attendees were surprised by specialists’ reluctance to use Croatian computer science terms.

Presentations were given and discussions held in seven workshops on the following topics:

• information retrieval in terminology using lexical knowledge models;

• cognitive research in terminology and its interdisciplinary methodology;

• special-language corpora in specialized translation;

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training specialist translators;

interdisciplinary approaches to climate change communication and special languages;

language in international military conflicts;

The Transatlantic and Pacific Project in 2017: international cooperation amid rising nationalism.

The conference book of abstracts is available online: https://www.nhh.no/contentassets/09a8aed5f0cb48ebac9e6abb23f5d084/book-of-abstracts-pr-220617.pdf. The 22nd “Special Language Conference” will be held in two years (2019) in Padua, Italy.

Received 2017-10-28

Asta Mitkevičienė

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius

Email: [email protected]

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Asta Mitkevičienė

21-oji tarptautinė specialiosios kalbos konferencija „Tarpdalykinių žinių kūrimas: specialiosios kalbos tyrimų iššūkiai“