On the terminology of electronic (dance) music

Abstract

Due to rapid technological developments, the terminology of electronic (dance) music is constantly changing. This also causes challenges for the discourse community of electronic dance music in the use of different technical terms. This paper gives a general overview on the subject as it is a pioneer investigation of research. Firstly, it summarises the characteristics of the discourse community’s language use. Later, it highlights the different types of technical terms used by the terminology users. For this, tech terms of a web discussion forum are analysed in detail. The article also describes some of the challenges in using these technical terms by taking different examples from three languages: English, German, and Hungarian. Moreover, phenomena such as the lack of standardisation, norms, and music glossaries and the influences from other terminologies (e.g. classical music, informatics, mathematics, physics) are also included in the study. After presenting the most striking issues, the paper also proposes a possible practical solution to the phenomena in question: it outlines a plan for creating a wiki on the technical terms of electronic (dance) music.

Keywords

• electronic dance music
• discourse community
• terminology
• tech terms
• standardisation
• translation