The English-Language Military Borrowed Terms: Deconstruction Mechanisms in the Scientific and Popular Science Text

Abstract

he article is devoted to the study of the specifics of the semantic deconstruction process of the English-language terminological units of the military sphere in the scientific and popular science texts. The topicality of the study is conditioned by the lack of linguistic studies of the phenomenon of deconstruction on terminological material as such. Specific mechanisms of semantic deconstruction in the texts of different styles have not been identified and are not ordered, which also requires the attention of linguists. The material for the study includes a corpus of the English-language terminological units of the military sphere with a total volume of more than 500 units selected by the continuous selection method from various electronic and printed sources, including scientific and popular science texts on military topics, as well as more than 250 contexts within which the semantics of these units was deconstructed by explication. The selection of text fragments is made from monographs and other literary works of a scientific and popular scientific nature devoted to the history of the emergence and use of various types of weapons, military operations, means and methods of warfare. The main research methods include the method of continuous selection, methods of seminal (component) and definitional analysis, the method of etymological analysis, as well as methods of quantitative calculation. In the course of the work, the analysis of the English-language military terms has been carried out. These terms were deconstructed by explication in the scientific and popular science texts. As part of the work, it has been revealed that the deconstruction process follows two main mechanisms – according to the frame structure and according to the script structure. In addition, there is a combined version of the semantic deconstruction process. It has been determined that the cases of the frame and combined semantic deconstruction are the most common, while the cases of deconstruction according to the script structure in its pure form are quite rare. The fact is emphasized that the deconstruction of the semantics of a military term occurs to a greater extent in a popular science text as compared to a scientific one.

Keywords

• military term
• borrowed term
• terminology system
• deconstruction
• scientific text
• popular science text
• semantic deconstruction
• frame deployment mechanism
• script deployment mechanism