Abstract:

The paper considers key aspects associated with teaching English terminology in economic discourse and establishes interconnections binding the generic and specific ESP components. The topic appears relevant, because lack of expertise in the field of terminology precludes a student from getting an insight into the economic activities and hinders intercultural business communication.

ESP training of future economic experts is a specific process that primarily involves the study of lexical and phraseological units and the features of their functioning, since a professional jargon is often viewed as a terminology system. Terminology study evidently relies upon the use of translation dictionaries, thesaurus dictionaries and encyclopedias. The teaching techniques applied to introduce terminology draw upon various approaches, among which the definitional and the cognitive (epistemological) approaches are to be highlighted. The latter feeds upon the unity of word and concept, the language and the thought, linguistic and extra-linguistic factors affecting the development of terminology, as well as the semantics of individual terms.

It has been discovered that elements of terminology system tend to migrate from one jargon to another within various professional subcultures. At that, the same concept may be perceived differently by representatives of different cultures. Furthermore, studying professional jargons helps establish a relationship binding the generic and the specific in the structure of the occupational language. Various integration models giving evidence of the hierarchical coordination of terms (thesauruses, terminology sets, denotation maps) should be subject to extensive application when teaching terminology.

The learning process must be based on a deep understanding of the fact that the development of any occupational language goes hand in hand with the emergence of uncodified professional units characteristic of speech behavior of a specialist, who selects speech means depending on his pragmatic needs, as well as his intents, motives and attitudes.

In conclusion, the authors suggest three key parameters underlying the differentiation of codified and uncodified lexical units (formal, semantic and functional) and justify the need for deeper social and cultural analysis of speech text units in the framework of ESP training.

Keywords:

Professional jargon, economic terminology, ESP training, professional subcultures, generic and specific ESP components, intercultural business communication.