On the study of professional sociolect as linguistic universal

Volume 3, Number 2, 2018, P. 19–26

[ PHILOLOGICAL SCIENCES ]

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Abstract:

The article discusses the concept of «professional sociolect» of oil industry experts through the prism of the sociolinguistic approach. As an illustrative example of the social differentiation of language, the sociolect clearly demonstrates the systemic links between language and society, and the study of sociolects provides understanding the mechanisms of linguistic changes, that is the most important task of theoretical linguistics. The article presents the definition of sociolect and discusses it as a special language of a particular social group, developed on the basis of a national language, but having units specified by a number of territorial, social (including professional) biopsychological factors. This concept is studied for the purpose of specifying its structure and basic components. The main categories of this linguistic phenomenon are distinguished within the framework of the specification proposed. The article also examines the influence of professional sociolects on the everyday speech of native speakers, as well as their fixation in the literary canons of the national language. The conclusion is drawn that the professional sociolect remains rather a closed language system designed for the social identification of its representatives in a highly specialized society. The penetration of professionalisms and jargonisms into everyday speech is extremely rare, since the linguistic units that form the basis of the sociolect are units of the lower speech register, and the enrichment of the common vocabulary of the native language occurs in the process of determinologization of terms that form the basis of a professional sociolect.

Keywords:

professional sociolect, terminologically tagged vocabulary, slang words, literary norm, determinologization

Author:

Ekaterina V. Dvorak, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor of Linguistics and Cross-cultural Communication Institute, Foreign Languages Department No 2 for Engineering Fields of Study, Irkutsk National Research Technical University, Irkutsk, Russia

For citation:

Dvorak E.V. On the study of professional sociolect as linguistic universal. Social Competence, 2018, vol. 3, no 2, pp. 19–26. (In Russian).

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