engleski

The Norm and the Language of Science

Norm and the language of science and technology As a result of the development of science and the need for parallel development of scientific terminology, lexical creativity is particularly present in the language of science, which is characterised by constant change. Normative rules are applied in order to bring order into this process and to facilitate communication among experts. Standardization aims at integrating the scientific lexis into the language system. It creates criteria of lexical acceptability of a term on phonological, morphological, and semantic levels. However, in order to avoid the danger of lexical petrification and its negative impact on the development of science, the so called dynamic norm is applied today. It is constantly being adapted to the development of science and to linguistic change. This leads us to the dilemma regarding the very concept of norm: is it more appropriate to talk about the prescriptive concern, or rather about following the development of terminology in the attempt of grasping the laws of its actual usage at the given moment. It is particularly hard to apply normative rules are on the semantic level. In spite of legitimate tendency towards exact and monosemous description of a concpet, terms frequently appear as polysemous lexemes. The paper analyses an example of a lexeme from the field of electronics in order to show how different modifiers in multiword lexical units frequently change the conceptual frame of particular terms. They appear as polysemous structures, whose meaning can hardly be prescribed and limited.

language of science; lexical creativity; normative rules; norm and the language practice

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