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Academia 20
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Abracadabra!, or on the Mysteries behind Language
Academia Nr: 20 (September - Dezember / settembre - dicembre 1999)by Stefania Coluccia
Two summers ago they had met in Copenhagen, under the favourable auspices of Andersen's enchanting mermaid, last summer they gathered in Bressanone/Brixen at the feet of the enchanted Rosengarten and bade each other farewell until August 2001, when they will assemble again in Vaasa/Vasa1 , a Finnish town not far from the enchantments of the boreal days of Lapp-land. They are the linguistic community engaged in the study of Languages for Special Purposes (LSPs) and if they cross Europe every second year headed for some of its most outstanding scientific Centers it is to take part in the European Symposium on Language for Special Purposes. But what are LSPs exactly? And why is it so important to study them?
A language for special purposes, states Michele A. Cortelazzo2 in his well known definition, is a functional variety of a natural language linked to a specialised knowledge field or activity, which is spoken in its entirety by a smaller number of speakers than that constituting the totality of the native speakers of the natural language it represents a variety of, in order to satisfy the communicative needs of that specific knowledge field. In comparison to natural language, continues Cortelazzo, on the lexical level LSPs exhibit additional series of correspondences whereas on the morpho-syntactical and textual levels, they exhibit a smaller inventory of regularly recurrent selections drawn from the larger inventory of selections available in the natural language.
The above mentioned definition helps us to kill, so the saying goes, two birds listening to experts or professionals (computer scientists, doctors, lawyers, etc). The language written and spoken for special purposes seems indeed to be only loosely reminiscent of the language for general purposes - so the linguists call it – we use in our everyday life.
The aim of LSP research is to scientifically analyse the ways in which experts and professionals mould, so to speak, natural language (its lexicon, syntax, or textual patterns) in order to fix and communicate specialised knowledge, for instance to approve, reject or refute theories, to transfer knowledge to colleagues, to translate it to non-experts, to intervene on real life on the basis of the results acquired in their studies, or to strengthen scientific links - in nuce, to analyse the phenomena of the language applied to the communication of specialised knowledge.
The relevance of LSP research is wideranging and for anyone to see. The strong interdisciplinary approach (i.e. the deep collaboration between linguists and experts) is reflected in the practical outcome of LSP studies – suffice here to remind how important language studies are in the field of law (good laws must be also well written in order to promote the wellbeing of each individual citizen), or in the field of medicine, where with one stone – to outline the notion of LSP and to provide at the same time what can be rightly considered as a poignant sample of the specific LSP of applied linguistics! Those who might not be so familiar with this particular language, will surely be able to recall the intuitive notion of LSP one often gets when reading specialised texts (pharmaceutical instructions, contracts, forms to fill in at public offices, etc.) or when specialised communication plays a fundamental role in the success of health promotion and intervention programmes. As for the practical implications of LSP studies and the perspectives opening up for them in the Third Millennium, they can be appreciated in detail in the report on LSP '99 at p. 9.
As for us, the most positive legacy of the LSP '99 adventure is the many interesting experiences we have come in contact with, which confirm the practical importance of the studies we are carrying out and the desire to plunge even more enthusiastically into them so as to be in Vaasa/Vasa, with old and new friends, for the 13 th European Symposium on Languages for Special Purposes.
Dott. Stefania Coluccia, researcher in the section
"Language and Law" at the European Academy Bozen/Bolzano
Stefania.Coluccia@eurac.edu
Notes
1 Vaasa in Finnish and Vasa in Swedish – the two official languages of Finnland.
2 Cortelazzo, M. A. (1988): "Lingue Speciali", in Lexicon der Romanistischen Linguistik. Edited by Günter Holtus, Michael Metzeltin, Christian Schmitt, Bd. II, Tübigen, Niemeyer, pp. 246-255.
The history of LSP Symposia
Inaugurated in Vienna in 1977, the biennial LSP Symposia represent one of the most awaited milestones in Applied Linguistics. The Symposia, supported by the AILA Scientific Commission on Language for Special Purposes, are organised in turn by different universities or research institutes of Europe and aim at promoting the varied activities of LSP studies. And thanks to the growing importance and recognition such studies are gaining worldwide, it is probably not too hazardous to claim that the echo of LSP Symposia is bound to spread far beyond the borders of our old continent.
After twenty-two years, the honour of organising the 12 th European Symposium on Language for Special Purposes (LSP '99) eventually went to Italy. The Symposium, as many of you might know by now, was dedicated to the "Perspectives for the New Millennium" and organised by the European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano in collaboration with the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano. For a whole week, at the end of August 1999, over 250 linguists of the younger and older generation, coming from all over the world, peopled the beautiful halls of Brixen/Bressanone's Priester Seminar and Cusanus Akademie to exchange the results of their linguistic studies on LSPs, studies characterised by a closer link to the practical world. The XII LSP-Symposia was held at the Priester Seminar of Brixen/Bressanone, Italy
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