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УДК 81
АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК ДЛЯ СПЕЦИАЛЬНЫХ ЦЕЛЕЙ: ВОЗНИКНОВЕНИЕ И РАЗВИТИЕ
Зеленская Лариса Лактемировна, кандидат филологических наук, профессор кафедры английского языка №6 Московский государственный институт международных отношений (Университет) МИД России (119454, Москва, Россия, проспект Вернадского, 76, e-mail: zelenskaya@yahoo.com) Аннотация. В статье представлен анализ возникновения и развития «языка для специальных целей» в тесной взаимосвязи с историей развития общества в контексте когнитивной лингвистики, обозначены лингвистические характеристики языка для специальных целей и его роль в современной лингвистике. Стремительные технологические и информационные изменения конца XX века и начала XXI века, естественным образом сказались на характере теоретического исследования и практического изучения специального/специализированного языка, обслуживающего эти сферы деятельности человека. Советские и российские исследователи внесли свой вклад в исследование языка для специальных целей. Была создана стройная теория функциональных стилей, дана дефиниция термина «стиль», определены устная и письменная формы речи, функциональные варианты речи и многое другое. С 1960х годов преподавание английского языка для специальных целей претерпело разные подходы. В разное время объектом исследования становились анализ отдельных подъязыков, анализ текста, анализ целевой ситуации, анализ механизмов, участвующих в усвоении материала; объектом исследования было и само обучение языку. В настоящее время во главе угла стоят потребности и интересы обучаемого.
Ключевые слова: язык для специальных целей, английский для специальных целей, анализ текста, анализ подъязыка, анализ целевой ситуации, когнитивная лингвистика, функциональный стиль, метод логического анализа
ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
© 2017
Zelenskaya Larisa Laktemirovna, candidate of philological sciences, professor of the chair of english language №6 Moscow State Institute of International Relations (University) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia (119454, Moscow, Russia, prospect Vernadskogo, 76, e-mail: zelenskaya@yahoo.com) Abstract. The paper describes the development of English for Specific Purposes, its linguistic characteristics and role in modern linguistics.The beginning of the 21st century has been marked by speedy and drastic changes in various professional areas. These changes have seriously modified professional communication, particularly in what concerns terminology and special purpose vocabulary. These changes created new challenges for professional lexicographers, teachers of specialpurpose language and communication instructors and called for a range of focused research based on historical estimation of the special purpose vocabulary in the post-war period and up until modern times. The article delves into the establishment of the term within the framework of cognitive linguistics. With English becoming the lingua franca of international communication in areas of technology and trade, there arose a need for developing methods of teaching the English language that would meet modern demands. At the same time, new directions in the study of language were emerging. Traditionally, the description of grammatical rules was believed to be the purpose of linguistics. The new directions, however, were focused on searching for linguistic means used in real life communication. The article looks into five approaches of ESP development.
Keywords: language for specific purposes, English for specific purposes, register analyses, cognitive science, cognitive linguistics, functional style, method of logical analysis, learning centered approach.
To date there have emerged numerous definitions of society. The specialisation of knowledge and creation of
LSP, all of which examine this phenomenon from various languages for specific purposes date all the way back to an-
perspectives. Researchers view LSP as an approach to stud- cient times. Antique science and art are examples of the deep
ying the English language, where an educational course is specialisation of knowledge - take, for instance, the works
aimed at fulfilling the needs of those students who study a of the Ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle, Heraclitus,
language for specific professional purposes. It is noteworthy Democritus and others. The specialisation of professional
that the authorship of the term LSP belongs to T. Hutchinson knowledge first occurred in ancient times and continues to
and A. Waters, who coined it in their 1987 paper 'English this very day.
for Specific Purposes: A Learning-Centered Approach'. Linguistic research in the early 20th century was domi-
This work describes the framework of English for Specific nated by the method of logical analysis. It was suggested that
Purposes, within which ESP is seen as the basis for a num- language has a perfect structure, through the use of which
ber of areas of professional communication, namely EBE, one can establish the structure of reality. Subsequently, there
English for Business and Economics, and ESS, English for appeared the idea of creating a logically perfect language,
Social Sciences, which includes English for Medical Studies, which, unlike natural languages, would be void of all am-
English for Secretaries, English for Psychology and others. biguity and capable of expressing scientific truth. This lan-
Prior to the spread of the term 'language for specific pur- guage appeared to be LSP, viewed as a way of thinking and
poses', scientific Russian literature compensated for its lack describing reality. Special vocabulary now became the focus
with the use of such terminology as 'science and technol- of LSP research [4].
ogy languages' or 'science and technology sublanguages'. Compared to the 19th century, international communica-
Similar phrases exist in other languages as well, i.e. the tion in the 20th century reached a qualitatively new level;
French la langue de sciences et des techiniques. It should there arose a need for creating of a language that would sim-
be noted that these are all far more vague than the term 'lan- plify the process of expressing ideas and and help avoid the
guage for specific purposes' [1; 2]. difficulties in mastering language which was based upon an
Since through studying LSP we can better understand idiomatic approach to teaching a foreign language [1]. Due to
the process of how scientific knowledge is accumulated and the fact that none of the literary European languages fit these
transferred, language for specific purposes "is a highly spe- criteria, researchers in the 1930s raised the question of estab-
cialised dynamically functioning lexical layer, the structure lishing a system such as Esperanto, i. e. a simplified version
of which allows for the organisation of informative and com- of an already existing language. Guided by these ideas, the
municative relations in specialised subject areas and for the English philologists Ogden and Richards created a system
creation of a model of cognitive structures to be realised in of 'Basic English', the disadvantages of which have been
these areas" [3]. repeatedly noted in specialised literature [5]. Proponents of
In fact, the emergence and development of languages the Prague School in the 1930s also attempted a categorical
for specific purposes is interlocked with the history of our approach to the description of functional and stylistic proper-
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ties of linguistic units. In particular, B. Havranek wrote that linguistic units possess certain properties inherent to the normal use of language and wrote of the possibility of further developing or limiting them [6]. It ought to be noted that the researcher identified a language of everyday use, a technical sublanguage and the languages of science and poetry [7].
The Czech researcher L. Drozd was one of the first to mention language for specific purposes in his scientific work, writing of it as both a functional language and a language in a special function [8].
Functional-stylistic research was anticipated in the works of H. Sweet, M. West and F. Palmer, where language was seen as a heterogeneous phenomenon in terms of function and style in A.Komarova, M. West and J. Piaget [5; 9; 10 ]. V.Leichik notes that the linguistic study of the languages of science began with the publication of 'The Language of Science'by the British researcher T. Savory [11].
Academician L.Shcherba counterposed two essentially different understandings of language, while estimating the decline of philological education and linguistic culture in post-revolutionary Russia. In his opinion, pre-revolutionary Russia had a sufficient number of people studying a foreign language in an early age and, therefore, had mastered it at a vernacular level. On the other hand, there also existed an extensive layer of those who were able to read and understand complex foreign language texts of both a literary and of a very specific character. Although the members of the latter group not always were fluent in oral speech, their understanding of the foreign language was significantly deeper and more fundamental than that of those who only learned the vernacular form [12]. It can therefore be concluded that even at that time researchers realised the presence of significant difference between the spoken and literary forms of the language [5].
The end of World War Two marked the beginning of an unprecedented growth of science, technology and economy on an international scale; there subsequently arose a need for a language of international communication. English became this language due to the significant economic influence of the USA during the post-war period. Today, English, along with several other languages, acts as an intermediary language; such languages are needed for the exchange of information between countries [13]. As a result, there arose a great demand in learning the English language, which became the key language in international trade. Never before had the purposes of learning English been so clearly defined. With English becoming the lingua franca of international communication in areas of technology and trade, there grew up a generation of people who understood the purpose of mastering the English language, as a factor of their further professional and coreer development [1]. There arose a need in developing methods of teaching the English language that would meet modern demands. At the same time, the study of language itself started following new directions. Traditionally, grammatical rules description was believed to be the purpose of linguistics. The new directions, however, were focused upon searching for linguistic means which can be used in real life communication. A significant finding was the establishment of the fact that spoken and written language forms are largely various. It was also established that the languages of different industries largely differ from one another - take, for instance, English of Commerce and English of Engineering. These ideas became the basis of English language courses for specific groups of students. It was decided that since the language varies depending on the communication situation, we can define the properties of specific situations and make them the basis of language courses [14].
Traditionally linguistics has dealt with the description of the rules of language usage. However, with the increase in demand for profile-oriented English language classes, new ideas arose as to how language may be used in real life communication. Researchers have reached the conclusion that the spoken and written language differ significantly, with these differences largely depending on the context of use 42
[15].
The 1950-60s mark a new stage in the development of language for specific purposes - after numerous debates, a coherent theory of functional styles was created. Soviet researchers of the time raised various theoretical issues: the definition of the term 'style' and other major stylistic terms and categories, establishing the principle behind style classification, the comparison of linguistic and extralinguistic elements, the culture of language and stylistics, the functional variations of language and speech, the relationship between these variations and the form of speech (oral and written), the place of the literary style and colloquial speech within the stylistic system, etc. These issues were raised in the works by O. Akhmanova, V. Vinogradov, T. Vinokur, R. Budagov, E. Galkina-Fedoruk, A. Efimova, M. Kozhina, V. Kostomarov, E. Riesel, O. Sirotinina, Y. Sorokina, G. Stepanova and others. A common feature of these studies is that, despite their broad scope and strong theoretical basis, the invariant and variant features of functional styles were not fully identified and researched. The attention of linguists was mainly directed to the peripheral features of style (particularly grammatical characteristics), without examining the issues of word usage and the limitations or actualisation of their semantic properties within a single register [5].
Since its birth in the 1960s, research into LSP has developed in several stages. Initially, the aim of the researchers was to obtain an understanding of the lexical level and terminology, which lead to the creation of specialised literature and dictionaries. Researchers' attention then shifted to the syntactic structure of LSP texts, the model of sentence construction and the morphological linguistic features.
Starting with the 1970s, most of LSP research was aimed at describing its modern-day usage and identifying the features of special communication at various linguistic levels
[16].
In Russia, the traditions of functional stylistics, as developed by the national scholars, formed the basis of a new direction in linguistics - the theory of language for specific purposes. Works by V. Vinogradov, O. Akhmanova, R. Bugadov and others laid the ground of the theoretical and methodological approach to both studying and teaching LSP.
The theory was premised on the theoretical and methodological discoveries made in the works by V. Vinogradov, O. Akhmanova, R. Bugadov and others.
In the second half of the 20th century, the study of LSP reached a new stage, concentrating mainly on the English language (ESP - English for Specific Purposes); this resulted in ESP gaining wide recognition within the international science community and gradually becoming the language of global communication.
P. Strevens, J. Iver and J. Wells stand at the very roots of ESP. Generally, 1962 is viewed as the birth date of English for professional communication, when it was first proposed that the English language varies depending on the content of the information being transmitted, hence it must be possible to discern the formal characteristics that distinguish discourse from the language of specialists of various areas of professional activity [17].
The initial impetus for the development of ESP was research into register analysis that examined the grammar of scientific and technical texts. Register analysis, rhetorical and discourse analysis, analysis of study skills and the analysis of learning needs all constitute directions of research closely related to ESP [18].
In the late 1960s-early 1970s there was a significant breakthrough in the study of the nature of different types of the English language: in particular, the written scientific and technical languages were described [19; 20; 21]. Most of the works of that period were devoted to EST (English of Science and Technology), and the terms ESP and EST were considered to be virtually synonymous. One theory became particularly popular, the idea that the features of the English language needed by a specific group of people can be established through analysing the linguistic characteristics of Балтийский гуманитарный журнал. 2017. Т. 6. № 2(19)
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the industry they are employed in [14]. There were also numerous studies exploring the features of several variants of the English language, such as a description of the written English of the scientific and technical sphere, [22] and an analysis of the communication between a doctor and a patient [23].
According to J. Scrivener, ESP includes EAP (English for Academic Purposes), EPP (English for Professional Purposes) and EFB (English for Business) [20]. A. Razduev emphasises ESP, EAP and EGP equating EPP with ESP [3]. While adopting the following classification: English for Social Purposes (or General English), English for Academic Purposes and English for Occupational Purposes, Kerr [24] emphasises that for practical purposes differentiation between... and ... is illogical, in teaching students, ESP should go in line with the GE course. In L. Kerr's opinion, while studying ESP, due attention should also be given to General English [24].
Despite the fact that LSP and LGP (Language for General Purposes) are closely related, they are used in different situations and are treated as separate categories. LSP is a language, which 'functions in an environment of professional communication when the speakers need to resort to a special language' [25]. Determining the correlation between LSP and LGP is problematic. According to Hoffmann, it is almost impossible to determine the bulk of the so-called common vocabulary and provide an inclusive list of its components, or to determine the belonging of every single word to a common vocabulary [26].
T. Hutchinson and A. Waters believe that the development of ESP was significantly influenced by the end of the Second World War and the oil crisis of the 1970s. According to the researchers, the development of ESP was also influenced by the revolution in linguistics: as a result of the change of the formal paradigm to the functional one, linguists' attention shifted from the formal characteristics of languages to the situational contexts of communication. The development of LSP was also influenced by the creation and implementation of new teaching methods, directed at meeting the individual needs of the students [14].
In each country, English for Specific Purposes has been developed with an individual speed; T. Hutchinson and A. Waters, however, emphasise five stages of ESP development, as demonstrated by five approaches [Ibid].
The first approach relates to the development of ESP in the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, as represented by the works of P.Strevens [27], J. Ewer [19] and J. Swales [20]. This approach is based on the data gathered from register analysis. Based on the fact that the LSP of a particular area is a certain register, identification of grammatical or lexical features became the purpose of analysis. Particular focus was on the use of language within a sentence. The researchers Ewer and Latorre determined that the most frequently used forms are present simple, the passive voice and compound nouns. The main aim of the researchers was to create profile oriented English language courses adapted to particular needs of the students. Within these courses, the main focus was on linguistic forms needed by the students to learn the disciplines that made up their profile; the secondary focus was on the forms students were unlikely to need [15].
The second approach is characterised by the involvement of ESP in discourse or rhetorical analysis and is based on the data gathered from discourse analysis. The founders of this approach are H. Widdowson, the Washington School of Larry Selinker, L. Trimble, J. Lackstrom and M. Todd-Trimble. Their research was aimed at defining organisational components of the text and linguistic means denoting these components - the ultimate goal was to figure out the way in which discourse combines sentences that convey meaning. The research sought to identify certain patterns of text organisation and to establish characteristic linguistic means that would create the basis of the programs. Limited research was also carried out into the differences between the rhetorical structure of texts on different topics, however the issue
was not studied in detail [15].
The aim of the third approach was to use existing knowledge in a 'more scientific way', i.e. development of linguistic analysis techniques on the basis of the analysis of the situational use of language (needs analysis). This approach did not lead to the establishment of any new knowledge about ESP, however a new term was created - 'needs analysis' or 'target situation analysis', defined as the target situation detection and the implementation of a rigorous analysis of the linguistic features of this situation. The most comprehensive explanation of the situational language use analysis is presented in J. Munby's work; his system describes the needs of students in terms of communicative goals, means of communication, language skills, functions, structures, etc. [28].
The fourth approach is aimed at developing language skills and strategies. This approach does not simply study the language, instead, it concentrates on underlying mental processes. It actively develops a skill centred approach based on the idea that the use of the language is built around similar processes of argumentation and interpretation, thanks to which you can extract meaning from discourse, irrespective of the external forms. Mental processes underlying the use of language become the main point of focus. Much of the work of this period is devoted to reading skills and strategies [29; 30; 31].
As a result, researchers came to the conclusion that it is far more productive to focus on the strategies underpinning language proficiency (guessing the meaning of words from the context, defining the type of text through external features, recognising words through their similarity with the words of the native language), without giving much attention to external forms of language. The specifics of the register are overlooked in this approach as it is believed that the processes underpinning the use of language are universal for all registers.
The fifth approach is based on learning, hence it is commonly known as the learning centred approach. Today, researchers' attention is on the study of language itself, in contrast to previous approaches, built mostly on the description of language use. The description of the external forms of language and the processes underpinning its usage are important in determining the aims of the English language course, but does little to help students master the language as such [15].
In Soviet linguistics, the study of LSP is carried out within the framework of the scientific style. Researchers view LSP as one of the varieties of language. In addition to the analysis of the morphological composition, morphological features, syntactic structure and multi-genre are all taken into consideration when examining LSP within the framework of the scientific style.
To date, the development of LSP has gone in two directions: linguistic (a functional approach to the study of language as a systematic and structural education) and didactic (methods of teaching LSP) [21]. While in the 1960s LSP was contrasted to language for general purposes, it is now viewed as the sum of all the linguistic resources used in oral and written texts.
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Статья поступила в редакцию 12.05.2017.
Статья принята к публикации 22.06.2017.
