ulary’ to refer to words that are not in the top 2,000 words of English but which occur reasonably frequently in a wide range of academic texts. Unlike Coxhead, however, he also uses it to label a whole set of lexical items also known as ‘sub-technical vocabulary’ (Cowan 1974; Yang, 1986; Baker, 1988; Mudraya, 2006), ‘semi-technical vocabulary’ (Farrell, 1990), ‘non-technical terms’ (Goodman and Payne, 1981), and ‘specialised non-technical lexis’ Table 1.3 Word families in the AWL
link proceed issue evident item stress utilize
linkage linkages linked linking links procedural procedure procedures proceeded proceeding proceedings proceeds issued issues issuing evidenced evidence evidential evidently itemisation itemise itemised itemises itemising items stressed stresses stressful stressing unstressed utilisation utilised utilises utilising utiliser utilisers utility utilities utilization utilize utilized utilizes utilizing
(Cohen et al, 1988). However, all these terms have been used quite differ- ently in the literature. Cowan defi nes sub-technical vocabulary as ‘context independent words which occur with high frequency across disciplines’ and comments that,
Clearly some of what I am calling sub-technical vocabulary would be encompassed in the existing word frequency counts like Thorndike Lorge, Michael West’s General Service List and the recent one million word com- puter analysis by Henry Kucˇera and Nelson Francis. (Cowan, 1974: 391) Cowan’s defi nition of sub-technical vocabulary applies to those words that have the same meaning in several disciplines. Trimble (1985) extends Cowan’s (1974) usage to include ‘those words that have one or more “general” English meanings and which in technical contexts take on extended meanings’ (Trimble 1985: 129). Trimble’s defi nition thus encompasses words such as junction, circuit, wage and cage that would be categorized as technical terms according to Chung and Nation’s (2003) four-level rating scale of tech- nicality or fi eld-specifi city (see Table 1.2) (see also Farrell, 1990: 37).
Cohen et al. (1988) regard the extended meanings of what they call ‘non-technical’ words as a major area of diffi culty for non-native readers who may only be aware of one of their meanings. In biology, for example, the adjective specifi c may also be used with reference to the genetic notion of specifi city, which is a characteristic of enzymes. A second area of diffi culty arises because non-technical words may be used in contextual paraphrases to refer to the same concept (e.g. repair processes and repair mechanism in a genetics text), thus causing problems of lexical cohesion at the level of synonymy. Cohen et al. (1988) identify a subset of non-technical vocabulary as a third area of diffi culty, viz. ‘specialized non-technical lexis’. They do not offer a precise defi nition of the term, but explain that this lexis includes vocabulary items indicating, for example, time sequence, measurement, or truth validity. They show that a large proportion of vocabulary items which indicate time sequence or frequency in a genetics text are unknown to their informants (e.g. ensuing, alternatively, consecutively, intermittently, subsequent and successive).
In Li and Pemberton’s (1994) view, sub-technical vocabulary as defi ned by Trimble (1985) is an important subset of academic vocabulary. They showed that fi rst-year computer science students are better able to recog- nize the technical meanings of sub-technical words than their non-technical meanings. For example, they are quite familiar with the technical meaning of the verb compile in computer science and tend to interpret it as ‘convert
What is academic vocabulary? 19
or translate a language into a machine code’ or ‘translate’ regardless of the context in which the word occurs. This is problematic as the non-technical meaning of a sub-technical word is often more common than its technical meaning (see Mudraya, 2006). For example, the word solution is more fre- quently used in its non-technical sense in engineering textbooks, even in a chemical engineering thermodynamics textbook.
Baker (1988) has argued that this middle area between core and techni- cal vocabulary is itself made up of several different types of vocabulary: 1. Items which express notions shared by all or several specialized
disciplines. Examples include factor, method and function.
2. Items which have a specialized meaning in a particular fi eld, in addition to a different meaning in general language (e.g. bug in computer science, solution in mathematics and chemistry).
3. Items which are not used in general language but which have different technical meanings in different disciplines (e.g. morphological in linguis- tics, botany and biology).
4. General language items which have restricted meanings in one or more disciplines. In botany, ‘genes which are expressed have observable effects, i.e. are more apparent physically, as opposed to being masked. Expressed in botany is therefore not associated with emotional or verbal behaviour as is the case in general language’ (Baker, 1988: 92).
5. General language items which are used, in preference to other semanti- cally equivalent items, to describe or comment on technical processes and functions. For example, an examination of biology textbooks showed that photosynthesis does not happen but takes place or occasionally occurs. Baker thus comments that take place and occur can be regarded as sub- technical words.
6. Items which are used in academic texts to perform specifi c rhetorical functions. These are ‘items which signal the writer’s intentions or his evaluation of the material presented’ (Baker, 1988: 92).
Martin uses the term academic vocabulary as a synonym for sub-technical vocabulary to refer to words that ‘have in common a focus on research, analysis and evaluation – those activities which characterize academic work’ (1976: 92). The vocabulary of the research process consists primarily of verbs, nouns and their co-occurrences (e.g. state the hypothesis and expected results; present the methodology; plan or design the experiment; develop a model). The vocabulary of analysis includes high-frequency verbs and two-word verbs that are ‘often overlooked in teaching English to foreign students but
which graduate students need in order to present information in an organized sequence’ (ibid: 93), e.g. consist of, group, result from, derive, bring about, cause, base on, be noted for. Adjectives and adverbs make up a large proportion of the vocabulary of evaluation.
In summary, the many defi nitions of sub-technical vocabulary proposed in the literature cover very different sets of lexical items, which are of various sizes and may share certain characteristics. Sub-technical vocabu- lary is generally defi ned as a category of words which are frequent across disciplines and account for a signifi cant proportion of word tokens in academic texts. Farrell (1990), for example, found that out of 508 lemmas occurring more than fi ve times in a corpus of electronic texts, 44 per cent were sub-technical. Defi nitions of sub-technical vocabulary also differ widely, referring to words that take on extended meanings in specifi c academic disciplines (Trimble, 1985), or to words that allow scholars to conduct research, analyse data and evaluate results (Martin 1976). Baker (1988) uses the term as a broad category for different types of lexical sets including both Trimble’s (1985) sub-technical vocabulary and Martin’s (1976) academic vocabulary.
Figure 1.1 shows that the various defi nitions of sub-technical vocabulary and academic vocabulary as defi ned in Section 1.1.2 partially overlap. Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List includes a large proportion of the words that take on extended meanings in specialised fi elds (cf. Trimble’s defi nition of ‘sub-technical vocabulary’). For example, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the adjective nuclear has extended senses in astronomy, biology, medicine, psychoanalysis, sociology, linguistics and phonetics; the verb enable has a specialized meaning in computer science (‘to make (a device) operational; to turn on’). The noun error refers to ‘the quantity by which a result obtained by observation or by approximate calculation differs from an accurate determination’ in mathematics. The AWL also contains several sub-technical words as defi ned by Martin (1976) (e.g. hypothesis, signifi cant, method, function) but a large number of them do not fall within Coxhead’s defi nition of academic vocabulary. Many of these are general service words (e.g. cause, develop, group, model, plan, result). The same is true of Baker’s (1988) category of words that perform rhetorical functions: case, cause, compare, describe, explanation, observe, report, and study are among the top 2,000 most frequent words of English. This category will be the focus of the next section as it is itself made up of various sets of lexical items and Baker (1988) suggested that it is the most diffi cult type of sub-technical vocabulary to teach and acquire.
What is academic vocabulary? 21 Baker's (1988) sub-technical vocabulary
Coxhead's (2000) academic vocabulary Martin's (1976) academic vocabulary psychology hypothesis cause, develop, group, model, interesting, show, experiment, remarkable, result, plan, present, observe explanation increase, case result, study compile transport, journal, civil, nuclear, decade, text error enable morphological
Trimble's (1985) sub-technical vocabulary
base fast mouse dog bug solution 'expressed' (genes) 'masked' (genes) appropriate function derive consist factor, significant, method colleague nevertheless enormous thereby briefly welfare hence widespread participant