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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