Research data collection methods and stages of the research

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    2015-03-13
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Research data collection methods and stages of the research

Introduction

the time of globalization, the knowledge of foreign languages becomes an important and essential part of communication. In addition, an educated person of nowaday‘s life is expected to know not only full words of a particular language but also abbreviations of them as well. One of the most frequent methods of formation of abbreviations in the English langauge is formation of acronyms. All began during The World War II, when a necessity to replace hard and long words by simpler ones appeared. Moreover, the most frequent usage of acronyms took place in the area of business communication. Nowadays everybody can say that time is money, which is one of the reasons why acronyms play such an important role in business world. The usage of acronyms prevents saving time in speaking and writing. If the listener and the reader have good knowledge of acronyms, he/she can easily understand what the writer or the speaker wanted to say. Furthermore, in any business document we can find acronyms. The question arises if there is vast productivity of acronym formation in business English. This is the issue which the current research paper is mainly concerned with. Thus, the aim of the paper is to assess the level of productivity of acronym formation in business English.

The aim of the paper is specified by the following objectives:

)To provide the theoretical foundation of the concept of „acronym" and its origin

) To establish the main reasons of using acronyms in Business English

) To determine the frequency of acronyms in Business language in different registers in British National Corpus

The theoretical part of the research paper presents the theoretical background of acronyms in business English. In addition, the comparison of abbreviations, initialisms and acronyms, differentiation of them is provided as well. The practical part makes an attempt to establish the level of productivity of acronym formation by analyzing the collected library and British National Corpus based data. The conclusions present the concept of "acronym", its origin, main reasons of using acronyms in Business English and the frequency of acronyms in Business language in different registers in British National Corpus.

1. Concept of acronym

term "acronym" (1940) originally came from Greek „acros"(point, tip) „andonuma"(name). It is also called ‘protogram‘which came from Greek ‘protos‘(first) and ‘gramma‘(letter) i.e. an abbreviation formed from the first letters of a series of words and pronounced as one word NATO from North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, pronounced ‘Nay-toe‘; radar from radio detection and ranging, pronounced ‘ray-dar‘(McArthur 1996: 13; Aronoff & Fudeman 2005: 114). Some scientists (Aronoff & Fudeman 2005; The Oxford Dictionary of Abbreviations 1998) declare that abbreviations pronounced as one word such as NATO is an initialism because of not being pronounced as series of letters, though.

It is not exactly known why acronyms were started to be used as one of the ways of derivation. Mirabela & Ariana (2012: 9) say that: In the English language, the widespread use of acronyms and initialisms is a relatively new linguistic phenomenon. As literacy rose, and as advances in science and technology brought with them more complicated terms and concepts, the practice of abbreviating terms became increasingly convenient. In business, industry, education, and government, acronyms and initialisms are often used by people working within the same fields. However, such abbreviations may not be comprehensible to those outside the field. Certain abbreviations can mean different things to different people. <…>The rapid advance of science and technology in recent centuries seems to be an underlying force driving the usage, as new inventions and concepts with multiword names create a demand for shorter, more manageable names". As it is seen from the date, the most important cause of appearance of acronym was The Second World War when tanks, telephones, various organizations and many other things were created. It was almost impossible to form a short sentence using such long phrases.

2. Types of derivation

are many ways of derivation in English morphological system. All scientists declare that general and most frequently used method of derivation is affixation. In addition, affixation is divided into three subcategories: prefixation, suffixation and infixation. Matthews (2004: 131) tells about the above mentioned method of derivation in one of his books: "The first major division is between processes of addition or affixation and all the remainder <…>Process of affixation may be divided into prefixation, suffixation or infixation, depending on whether the affix is added before the base, after it, or at some determined point within it. By the same token, the affix itself may be a prefix, a suffix, or an infix". Brinton and Brinton (2010: 94-95) confirm the above thesis, saying: "The addition of a derivational affix to a root produces a new word with one or more of the following changes<…>Their productivity may range from very limited to quite extensive". Even though, Aronoff and Fudeman (2005: 110) also mention methods of derivation with affixation, they distinguish "circumfixation as a kind of affixation".second type of derivation is reduplication. Brinton and Brinton (2010: 100) claim that "reduplication is a process similar to derivation, in which the initial syllable or the entire word is doubled, exactly or with a slight phonological change. Reduplication is not a common or regular process of word formation in English, though it may be in other languages." Booij (2007: 35) declares that reduplication is "a special kind of affixation is the attachment of a complete or partial copy of the base as a prefix or suffix". In contrast, some researchers (Jackson & Ze Amvela 2000; Aronoff & Fudeman 2005) do not consider reduplication as a kind of derivation and do not mention reduplication in their works at all.third but not least important type of derivation is called conversion. Plag (2008: 12) explains that conversion in other words can be called zero-suffixation or transposition. It is explained that: "we can turn nouns into verbs by adding nothing at all to the base" what is called reduplication. Jackson and Ze Amvela (2000: 86) consider that "conversion may be defined as a process by which a word belonging to one word class is transferred to another word class without any concomitant change of form, either in pronunciation or spelling", and add that " it is a highly prolific source for the production of new words since there is no restriction on the form that can undergo conversion in English". Booij (2007: 5) confirms the explanation of earlier mentioned researchers. He thinks that: "changing the word class of a word, as happened in a creation of the verb to tax from the noun tax, is called conversion, and may be subsumed under derivation". Brinton and Brinton’s (2010) main idea of the meaning of conversion coincides with the above mentioned researchers. Nevertheless, Brinton and Brinton (2010: 101) consider that: "A functional shift involves the conversion of one part of the speech to another without the addition of a suffix, as in a phone (N) > to phone (V). It is sometimes said that a zero derivational suffix is added".analysis of linguistic literature revealed that another type of really extended derivation is compounding. Compounding can be considered as one of the most productive processes of word-building in English. Every scientist analyzing the syntax and morphology of English does not omit this important process of word formation. Brinton and Brinton (2010) raise the problem of compound and verb phrase distinction. Considering a compound as "a combination of two roots" and as "a single word", Brinton and Brinton (2010: 103) claim that a compound can sound like a "syntactic phrase consisting of a number of distinct words". The above mentioned researchers (Brinton & Brinton 2010: 103) explain how to distinguish where is a compound and a phrase:"However, stress seems to offer the most reliable means of distinguishing a compound from a phrase. As a single word, a compound will carry only one primary stress, whereas a phrase, as a group of words, will carry more than one primary stress. The second half of the compound carries secondary stress and the vowel may be reduced. <…> This principle holds true for compound nouns and some compound verbs. Compound adjectives, however, may carry more than one primary stress…" Despite the fact that Booij (2007: 75) also tries to explain the difference between a compound and the phrase, he mentions another term of compounding - "composition". In his explanation of compounding he uses terms such as "lexemes" instead of "words"., there are other word-formation processes in the English language. One of them is blending. According to Jackson and Ze Amvela (2000: 87): "A blend may be defined as a new lexeme built from parts of two words in such a way that the constituent parts are usually easily identifiable, though in some instances, only one of the elements may be identifiable". In addition, the authors, mentioned above, classify folk etymology as a type of blending. On the contrary, Booij (2007) does not mention folk etymology and only in a few words talks about blending. It should be mentioned that there is also one more type of such process of derivation in the English language as backformation. All of the scientists (Lieber 2011; Brinton & Brinton 2010; Jackson & Ze Amvela (2000) declare that backformation is a process of forming the word into the position when it was without affixes. One of the processes of word-formation is called clipping. Aronoff and Fudeman (2005: 115) explain the term clipping as "the creation of a new word by truncation of an existing one". There are also other processes of word building without adding an affix such as shortening, creating of alphabetic forms and abbreviating. Mirabela & Ariana (2012) say that: "Abbreviation is a popular way of forming words. Abbreviations are similar in nature to blends, because both blends and abbreviations are amalgamations of different parts of words. Like truncation and blending, abbreviation involves loss of material, but it differs, however, from truncation and blending in that prosodic categories do not play a prominent role. It is considered that orthography plays a central importance. Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations formed from the first letters of words". Lieber (2011: 53) claims that: "In acronym, the new word is pronounced as a word, rather than as a series of letters.<…> Initialisms are similar to acronyms in that they are composed from the first letters of a phrase, but unlike acronyms, they are pronounced as a series of letters". Briton and Brinton (2010), Aronoff and Fudeman(2005) agree with the above mentioned statement. Booij (2007: 20) asserts that:"acronyms are combination of initial letters of a word sequence". Neither Booij (2007) reveals how acronyms should be pronounced nor does he mention initialisms. Jackson and Ze Amvela (2000) emphasize that alphabetisms, abbreviations and acronyms belong to the group of initialisms depending how words are pronounced. They (Jackson & Ze Amvela 2000: 89) also say that: "When initialisms are pronounced with the names of the letters of the alphabet, they may be called alphabetisms or abbreviations. But when they are pronounced like individual lexical items, they are acronyms". Moreover, Jackson and Ze Amvela (2000) claim that there are coincidences in pronunciation of both acronyms as alphabetisms. Haspelmath and Sims (2010) in their research book do not mention any initialisms and say that acronyms and alphabetisms belong to the class of alphabet-based abbreviations. Thus, Plag (2008: 13) points out the fact that:"Blends based on orthography are called acronyms, which are coined by combining the initial letters of compounds or phrases into a pronounceable new word". He adds that there are some problems in distinguishing abbreviations when there already exist homophonous words with a stem in the English language. Langacker (2008) states that acronyms can be pronounced both as individually spelled letters and spelled as one word. Onysko and Michel (2010: 60) say that: "… an acronym, perceived as a higher level entity with its own identity, would qualify as an instance of morpheme formation, in fact an extreme example of emergentness, with the constituent phonemes re-combining to yield a morpheme; an initialism, presupposing a phoneme-by-phoneme reading, would rather instantiate a case of expression formation".conclusion, there are main types of derivation pointed out such as: affixation, reduplication, conversion, compounding, blending, backformation, shortening, abbreviating and clipping. Initialisms and acronyms are sub-classes of abbreviations. Some scientists claim that initialisms are pronounced as individually spelled letters while acronyms are spelled as one word. Although, the majority of scientists are not able to prove that initialisms totally differs from acronyms because acronyms can also be pronounced as individually spelled letters.

3. Formation of acronyms

researchers claim that there is no sharp line between distinction of acronyms or initialisms. So the acronyms are similarly coined as initialisms. Acronyms are often gathered with abbreviations. For example, McArthur (1996: 13-14) states that:"Acronyms are numerous and are more constantly being coined. As a result, they are often gathered, with other abbreviations, in such collections as Elevier’s Foreigh-Language Teacher’s Dictionary of Acronyms and Abbreviations, which contains more than 3.500 items like Flint (Foreign Language Instructional Technology) and Team (Teachers of English Arabic Monthly). <…>Syllabic and hybrid acronyms do not have points (Asda, sitcom), may be lower-case, upper-case, or mixed, and sometimes have internal capitals". Mirabela and Ariana(2012) tell more about the structure and building of acronyms: "Some acronyms are coined on the basis of an already existing word and associations between the two items are welcome. The formatives of the acronyms may carry semantic information. The acronym has a meaning of its own, apart from the meaning of the individual words of the base form. The base form of acronyms can be made of:

noun phrase: noun + adjective (CFO - Chief Financial Officer); nouns (PINC - Property income certificate); nouns + participle (VAT - value added tax); nouns + prepositional phrases with nouns (YTD - year-to-date);

- clause: reduced clause/sentence (JIT - just in time); complete sentence (TINA - there is no alternative).

While typically abbreviations exclude the initials of short function words (such as and, or, of, or to), they are sometimes included in acronyms to make them pronounceable".findings suggest that in general acronyms can be made of a noun phrase or a clause. Usually abbreviations do not include initials of conjunctions but they can appear when there is a need to make word pronounceable.

4. Classification of acronyms

analysis of linguistic literature showed that there are some word classes of acronyms. Not many researchers write about classification of acronyms. Although, Mirabela and Ariana (2012) claim that: "…in some cases, an acronym or initialism has been redefined as a non-acronymous name, creating a pseudo-acronym. For example, the letters making up the name of the SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) - pronounced as letters - no longer officially stand for anything. This trend has been common with many companies hoping to retain their brand recognition while simultaneously moving away from what they saw as an outdated AT&T (its parent/child, SBC, followed suit prior to its acquisition of AT&T and after its acquisition of a number of the other Baby Bells, changing from Southwestern Bell Corporation), Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC, British Petroleum became BP to emphasize that it was no longer only an oil company (captured by its motto "beyond petroleum"), Silicon Graphics, Incorporated became SGI to emphasize that it was no longer only a computer graphics company."has also become apparent that acronyms are also classified by their lexical meanings. There are six groups of acronyms: Information and Technology, Military and Government, Science and Medicine, Organizations, Schools, Business and Finance, Slang, Chat and Pop culture (#"807772.files/image001.gif">

 analysis of the empirical research data revealed that acronym ‘APC’ stands for ‘average propensity to consume’ (Ekonomikos terminų žodynas 1997). As it can be seen from the figure above, in SPOKEN register there is no frequency of acronym ‘APC’ at all. In FICTION are 6 tokens which comprise 0,38% of the frequency of the acronym. Also in MAGAZINE register there is 1 token which presents 0,14% of frequency of the acronym. Only 1 token contains the NEWSPAPER register which constitutes 0,10% of frequency. In contrast, in NON-ACADEMIC register 14 tokens are found. It comprises 0,85% of productivity. The most productive of all these registers is ACADEMIC and MISC sub-selections. ACADEMIC register presenting 1,89%, and the MISC - 1,92%.following figure (Figure 2) presents the information about the frequency of acronym ‘APM’ (average propensity to import) in different registers.

 Figure 2 the frequency of the acronym ‘APM’ is given which means ‘average propensity to import’ (Ekonomikos terminų žodynas 1997). As it is shown in the above figure some registers as SPOKEN, FICTION, MAGAZINE and NEWSPAPER do not contain the acronym ‘APM’. NON-ACADEMIC register contains 3 tokens what equals to 0,18% of frequency. In ACADEMIC register 3 tokens were noticed which comprise 0,20% of frequency of the given acronym. In the last MISC register 3 tokens are found which constitute 0,14% of frequency of the given acronym.following figure presents the frequency of the acronym ‘APS’ (average propensity to save) in different registers (Figure 4)

Figure 3. The percentage of frequency of acronym ‘APS’ in different registers

3 presents the frequency of the acronym ‘APS’ which means ‘average propensity to save’ (Ekonomikos terminų žodynas 1997). As it is shown in the above figure some registers as SPOKEN, FICTION and NEWSPAPER do not contain the acronym ‘APS’. Although, there are such registers as MAGAZINE register which includes 1 token with this particular acronym what equals to 0,0006%. NON-ACADEMIC register contains tokens what equals to 0,36% of frequency. In ACADEMIC register 1 token was noticed which comprise 0,07% of frequency of the given acronym. In the last MISC register 7 tokens are found which constitute 0,34% of frequency of the given acronym.following figure presents the frequency of the acronym ‘APT’ (average propensity to tax) in different registers (Figure 5).

Figure 4. The percentage of frequency of acronym ‘APT’ in different registers

 


Figure 4 presents the percentage of frequency of acronym ‘APT’ which means ‘average propensity to tax’. SPOKEN register includes 11 tokens of given acronym, what constitutes 1,10% of frequency. The registers of FICTION, MAGAZINE, NEWSPAPER and NON-ACADEMIC have almost the same percentage - 6,47%, 6,20%, 5,22% and 6,12%. Other registers such as ACADEMIC and MISC have 9,26% of acronym frequency and 9,41%.

Figure 5. The percentage of frequency of acronym ‘GNP’ in different registers


The above figure presents the acronym ‘GNP’ which stands for the term ‘actual gross national product’ (Ekonomikos terminų žodynas 1997). As it is seen, there are no tokens of the acronym in the register of SPOKEN ENGLISH. Whereas in FICTION there is 1 token out of 15,909,342 texts what presents 0,06% of frequency of the acronym. In the register of MAGAZINE there are 56 tokens out of 7,261,990 texts that comprise 7,71% of productivity of its usage. However, in NEWSPAPER register there are 7 tokens out of 10,466,422 texts what constitutes 0,67% of frequency of the acronym. In NON-ACADEMIC register the percentage of frequency reaches 20,49% so there are 338 tokens out of 16,495,185 texts. In ACADEMIC and MISC registers the frequency is much lower in comparison with the previous register. In ACADEMIC sub-section there is one hundred tokens out of 15,331,668 texts what coprises 6,52% of frequency of the taken acronym. In MISC register there are 90 tokens out of 20,835, 159 what comprises 4,32% of frequency of the acronym.

. The Frequency of Acronyms in Business Context

The second sub-section of the practical part reviews the results of productivity of acronyms in Business language as reflected in such registers as MAGAZINE, NEWSPAPER, ACADEMIC and MISC.

Acronym ‘APC’ is presented in Figure 1. In MAGAZINE register there is 1 token which presents 0,14% of frequency of the acronym. Only 1 token contains the NEWSPAPER register which constitutes 0,10% of frequency. The most productive of all these registers is ACADEMIC and MISC sub-selections. ACADEMIC register presenting 1,89%, and the MISC - 1,92%.‘APM’ is presented in Figure 2. As it is shown in the above figure some registers as MAGAZINE and NEWSPAPER do not contain the acronym ‘APM’. In ACADEMIC register 3 tokens were noticed which comprise 0,20% of frequency of the given acronym. In the last MISC register 3 tokens are found which constitute 0,14% of frequency of the given acronym.‘APS’ is presented in the Figure 3. The NEWSPAPER register does not contain the acronym ‘APS’. Although, there are such registers as MAGAZINE register which includes 1 token with this particular acronym what equals to 0,0006%. In ACADEMIC register 1 token was noticed which comprise 0,07% of frequency of the given acronym. In the last MISC register 7 tokens are found which constitute 0,34% of frequency of the given acronym.‘APT’ is presented in the Figure 4. The registers of MAGAZINE and NEWSPAPER have almost the same percentage of frequency - 6,20% and 5,22%. Other registers such as ACADEMIC and MISC have 9,26% of acronym frequency and 9,41%.‘GNP’ is presented in Figure 5. In the register of MAGAZINE there are 56 tokens out of 7,261,990 texts that comprise 7,71% of productivity of its usage. However, in NEWSPAPER register there are 7 tokens out of 10,466,422 texts what constitutes 0,67% of frequency of the acronym. In ACADEMIC sub-section there is one hundred tokens out of 15,331,668 texts what coprises 6,52% of frequency of the taken acronym. In MISC register there are 90 tokens out of 20,835, 159 what comprises 4,32% of frequency of the acronym.

The following conclusions can be drawn from the present study of productivity of acronyms in Business context. Firstly, all five acronyms are highly productive in such registers as ACADEMIC and MISC. Acronym ‘GNP’ in ACADEMIC register equals to 6,52% of frequency, ‘APC’ - 1, 89%, ‘APM’ - 0,20%, ‘APS’ - 0,07% and ‘APT’ - 9,26%. Acronym ‘GNP’ in MISC register comprises 4,32% of frequency, ‘APC’ - 1,92%, ‘APM’ -0,14% , ‘APS’ - 0,34% and ‘APT’ - 9,41%. It is shown that the most frequent acronym out of five in ACADEMIC and MISC register is ‘APT’ (9,26%; 9,41%). The most frequent acronym in MAGAZINE and NEWSPAPER registers is ‘APT’ (6,20% ; 5,22%).

Conclusions

) This study of theoretical part has found that generally word "acronym" was started to be used in 1940 and came from Greek „acros"(point, tip) „andonuma"(name). It is also called ‘protogram‘which came from Greek ‘protos‘(first) and ‘gramma‘(letter) i.e. an abbreviation formed from the first letters of a series of words and pronounced as one word. Acronymy is one of the types of word-formation. It can be made of a noun phrase or a clause.

) Mainly acronyms were started to be used during the World War II when tanks, telephones, various organizations and many other inventions were created. Acronyms are used in daily life of each businessman because it is quicker to say an acronym than a noun phrase or a whole clause. They are classified into six groups by their lexical meaning: Information and Technology, Military and Government, Science and Medicine, Organizations, Schools, Business and Finance, Slang, Chat and Pop culture.

) The present study of productivity of acronyms in Business context has made it apparent that: firstly, all five acronyms are highly productive in such registers as ACADEMIC and MISC. Acronym ‘GNP’ in ACADEMIC register equals to 6,52% of frequency, ‘APC’ - 1, 89%, ‘APM’ - 0,20%, ‘APS’ - 0,07% and ‘APT’ - 9,26%. Acronym ‘GNP’ in MISC register comprises 4,32% of frequency, ‘APC’ - 1,92%, ‘APM’ -0,14% , ‘APS’ - 0,34% and ‘APT’ - 9,41%. It is shown that the most frequent acronym out of five in ACADEMIC and MISC register is ‘APT’ (9,26%; 9,41%). The most frequent acronym in MAGAZINE and NEWSPAPER registers is ‘APT’ (6,20% ; 5,22%).

acronym english translation business

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