Употребление аббревиатур в научном и публицистическом стиле английского языка. (Use of abbreviations in the English scientific and journalistic texts)

For example, FSA may refer to Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and Food Standards Association (in Britain) as well.

F inancial Services Bill — Establishes a Council for Financial Stability, chaired by the chancellor, and comprising Treasury, Bank of England and Financial Services Authority (FSA). S trengthens the FSA to take «action» on pay of those in financial services, following the recent outcry over bonuses. P

romises action, in UK and internationally, on bankers' pay. M akes banks and other financial firms set up «living will» to make them easier to wind down in the event of a crisis. B ans unsolicited credit card cheques and enables the setting up of national money guidance service. A llows groups of consumers to bring court actions against financial institutions.

Applies to whole UK.

The Parents Television Council (PTC), a media pressure group which campaigns against «indecent» content on US television, posted a statement on its website calling the show «tasteless» and «vulgar». President Timothy Winter said members were «outraged». He added: «They just can’t believe the nature of the content, the explicit nature, and how much graphic content there was.»

Some of the abbreviations used concern universal time or time zones, for example GMT refers to Greenwich Mean Time or Greenwich Time mean solar time on the 0° meridian passing through Greenwich, England, measured from midnight (formerly a standard time in Britain and a basis for calculating times throughout most of the world, it has been replaced by an atomic timescale).

O fficers were called to Lynton Estate in Southwark, south London, on Monday after people heard an argument. P olice found the body of a boy with knife wounds. H is 31-year-old father was arrested and remains under guard at a south London hospital. H is 28-year-old wife suffered a stab wound to the neck but has been discharged, police said.

A 17-month-old girl was found unharmed at the address in Lynton Road at about 1800 GMT. Police are not looking for anyone else in connection with the alleged stabbing.

Each newspaper column has its own specific rules and regulations concerning use of abbreviations. In law or court column one can find out a lot of abbreviated law terms, such as CPS — Crown Prosecution Service (in England and Wales), an independent prosecuting body, established in 1986, that decides whether cases brought by the police should go to the courts, which is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions Compare or Det — department (a territorial and administrative division in several countries) or Insp — inspector (a police officer ranking below a superintendent or chief inspector and above a sergeant).

T he prosecution said that at 03.49 the next morning, Mr Thomas made a 999 call, which was later played to the court, in which he said he had killed his wife because he had mistaken her for an intruder in a dream. H e said he had dreamt he was fighting one of the boy racers. T he prosecution said the defendant had told the 999 operator: «I woke up fighting one of those boys but it wasn’t a boy, it was Christine.» In police interviews, Mr Thomas repeated what he had told the 999 operator — that he had dreamt of a man crawling across the bed, putting him in a headlock, then waking to find his wife dead. T

he prosecution told the jury that the police and CPS had been «highly sceptical» of his explanation and charged him with murder. B ut because the defendant had raised the matter of his sleep disorder, both defence and prosecution commissioned experts to investigate it. Tests were carried out on Mr Thomas as he slept and both sleep experts agreed he had killed his wife while affected by a sleep disorder, meaning his behaviour was «involuntary.»

Joan Dixon, 39, who has lived on the estate for 23 years, said: «What I heard was screaming, then my mum saw the police turn up. «We saw the ambulance turn up and they were doing everything they could to resuscitate the man.» Her mother Rita Dixon, 71, said: «I saw a man on a stretcher — they were resuscitating him halfway down the stairs and then outside. They were doing everything to sort him out.» Joan Dixon described the area as «no trouble» and «normal and quiet». The death is being investigated by officers led by Det Insp Keith Braithwaite, based at Stratford, east London.

Such an abbreviation as PM stands for 1) Prime Minister, 2) Past Master (of a fraternity), 3) Paymaster, 4) Postmaster, 5) (military) Provost Marshal, but the problem of its polysemy is solved easily by context (Indian PM refers to Indian Prime Minister).

The attacks led India to suspend peace talks with Pakistan. Indian PM Manmohan Singh said in July talks would not restart until the Mumbai attacks suspects were brought to justice.

Such an abbreviation as DI stands for 1) Defence Intelligence, 2) Detective Inspector, 3) Donor Insemination, but thanks to the context (criminal activity) the reader can guess its meaning as Detective Inspector.

DI John Anderson said: «It's hard to believe that in the middle of a well known area like Goodge Street, these shady dealings were blatantly going on. This type of criminal activity is a nuisance and a blight on the community who live and work in the area. Now this club has been shut down, the prostitution that went on has ceased and those running the club have lost a lucrative and immoral source of income.»

Such an abbreviation as PC stands for 1) personal computer, 2) Parish Council (lor), 3) Past Commander, 4) (in Britain and Canada) Police Constable, 5) politically correct, 6) Prince Consort, 7) (in Britain and Canada) Privy Council (lor), 8) (in Canada) Progressive Conservative, but the reader can guess its meaning as personal computer paying attention to the context (software, pornographic sites, URL (uniform resource locator; a standardized address of a location on the internet, especially on the World Wide Web)…).

From July, every PC sold in China was supposed to be supplied with the Green Dam Youth Escort software. The software was created to stop people looking at «offensive» content such as pornographic or violent websites. But widespread disapproval inside China, legal challenges and overseas criticism forced the Chinese government to backpedal on its policy. Petitions calling for Green Dam to be scrapped have circulated widely and analysis has shown that it does a piecemeal job of stopping pornographic sites and inadvertently blocks sites dealing with sexual health issues. Analysts at the University of Michigan found weaknesses in the URL, text and image filtering system and vulnerabilities in the software that made machines susceptible to being hijacked.

Even new words are quite often abbreviated, for they are becoming popular among youth, who try to make their speech as brief as possible. For example, BMX may refer either to bicycle motocross; stunt riding on rough ground or over an obstacle course on a bicycle or a bicycle designed for bicycle motocross. Due to the context the reader can determine this abbreviation meaning as a bicycle designed for bicycle motocross in the text below.

A description of the girl’s attacker has been issued by police. He was wearing a black hooded top with a grey back, army-style trousers and brown shoes. He is thought to have had a bike, possibly a mountain bike or BMX.

Paying attention to scientific texts one can easily see that the meaning of abbreviations highly depends on the type of science.

Such an abbreviation as C may stand for:

I capacitance

II capacitor

III capacity

IV carbon

V case

VI cathod

VII cell

VIII chrominance

IX circuit

X code

XI coefficient

XII coil

XIII collector

XIV computer

XV concentration

XVI conductivity

XVII conductor

XVIII contact

XIX control

XX coulomb

XXI course

XXII crosscut

XXIII current

XXIV cycle …

Even in the same type of science abbreviations have a significant number of meanings.

For example in medicine texts such an abbreviation as C may mean:

1) [calorie]

2) [capacity]

3) [carbon]

4) [cathode]

5) [center]

6) [coefficient]

7) [color]

8) [concentration] …

To avoid the risk of misinterpretation the authors of scientific texts quite often show the reader what this or that abbreviation stand for.

In this small series there was a suggestion that the runting index (R.I.) and the presence or absence of reagins might correlate with the prognosis of the disease. [

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov]

Ossification/calcification around the medial femoral condyle has been known as Pellegrini-Stieda (PS) disease for almost 100 years. [

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu]

With its potential to eliminate and prevent hereditary diseases such as cystic fibrosis and hemophilia and its use as a possible cure for heart disease, AIDS, and cancer, gene therapy is a potential medical miracle-worker. [

http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/system/medical/gene_therapy.html ]

Only a little number of abbreviations (for example, AIDS = acquired immune deficiency syndrome) tend to be used in scientific texts without previous explication of their meaning.

As we see, journalistic texts differ from each other, as they have their own specific features concerning use of abbreviations.

Scientific texts are not the same either, each type of them having its particular features requiring to use or refrain from using these or those abbreviations.

Both in journaliustic and scientific texts abbreviations should be used only if their meaning is known to the target audience and / or the context resolve the problem of their polysemy. Otherwise abbreviations should not be used at all or should include the reference indicating their meaning.

Conclusion

Although journalistic texts and scientific texts are taken into account as neither a proper study of popular culture, nor a form of aesthetic fit for analysis, nor do they generate expert language appropriate for semantic analysis, but an elusive mixture of all. We can not ignore social functions of journalistic texts dealing with political events or officials. Journalists, for example, like everybody else may far from objectivity and abuse argumentation when trying to persuade the readers that their point of view is true and any different points of view are false, inaccurate or mistaken. Businessmen, on the contrary, try to be as objective as possible, otherwise their business relations will not be sustainable.

Use of acronyms (pronounceable names made up of a series of initial letters or parts of words; for example, UNESCO for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) and abbreviations (shortened or contracted forms of words or phrases used in place of the whole (bn for billion or battalion), including acronyms as well (BNA (an abbreviation used in Canada) for British North America)) in each separate functional style is different. That is why the aim of our research is studying peculiarities of use of abbreviations in such particular functional styles as journalism and science.

Each functional style has its own distinctive features as to what kind of abbreviations, in what way and how often are used in the texts without making difficulties in communication caused by polysemy of a great number of existing abbreviations.

Various types of journalistic and scientific texts functional style, for example, are closely connected with use of informal style of communication which appears in connection with colloquial (due to desire to attract and persuade its target audience), but there are other kinds of journalistic and scientific texts preferring more formal type of communication.

Use of more formal acronyms and abbreviations in particular scientific texts is closely connected with dry, ceremonial and perfunctory character of communication, which is a characteristic feature of scientific functional style, and necessity to use a great number of terms and clichés. Herein the special attention should be drawn to use of various words and word combinations in reduced or abbreviated form rather than in their full and long forms.

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All the journalistic texts (they are italicicized) we refer to in this subsection are taken from the site of BBC ;

http://news.bbc.co.uk

Macmillan English dictionary for advanced learners. International Student Edition. — Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2002.

Macmillan English dictionary for advanced learners. International Student Edition. — Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2002.