Contributions of the philosophy of science to juridical semantics

Evaluation in research article abstracts across the curriculum

Objectivity has long been the catchword for scientific research, although recently several scholars (e.g., Myers 1989, 1990; Hunston 1993, 1994) have argued the opposite. The purpose of the present study has been to investigate research article abstracts originating in a number of disciplines in order to identify traces of evaluation. Evaluation is understood here in a broad sense, covering various subjective discourse acts performed by the authors of the abstracts. Some of the implications for the teaching of abstract writing across the curriculum are also discussed.

Stålhammar, Assoc. Prof., Ph.D. Mall

Abstracts of doctoral dissertations

Abstracts within the sciences have often been the subject of analyses, focusing on journal abstracts, or abstracts submitted for conferences. This paper presents results from analyses of abstracts of more than 200 doctoral dissertations presented at the University of Göteborg, in the faculties of the Humanities and the Social Sciences, respectively. Additional abstracts from the corresponding faculties of other universities have also been compared.

Analyses of macro- and microlevel features show that textual structures vary considerably between disciplines and departments, whereas linguistic features such as the use of pronouns, impersonal constructions, or tenses show no consistent correlation to discipline.
The results suggest that certain disciplinary styles develop within departments or in related subjects. In view of the international distribution of abstracts, more linguistic guidance is recommended for doctoral students.


Svendsen, Assoc. Prof. Lisbet Pals

Ways and means in professional oral communication – a case for meta-linguistic awareness

see: Margrethe Smedegaard Mondahl

Syssoyeva, E
Autonomous learner and language environment constructing (from experience of business German teaching)
see: Sergei Lyapin

Sørensen, Rita
The latinisms are still necessary in the legal language? The latinisms – the first internationalization factor
This paper examines the role of the latinisms in the modern legal language and the modern legal dictionaries. By latinisms are understood the Latin words that have preserved their original spelling or the so-called "genuine latinisms". Historically the latinisms could be considered the first internationalizations factors of the law or the lingua franca of the law. They have the same meaning in all countries or you could say that they are the lingua franca of the law.
The latinisms are fixed expressions, understood by lawyers all over the world. But are they generally understood by the layman and are they still necessary in the legal language? How are they treated in monolingual, bilingual and polylingual dictionaries? This paper will try to give an answer to these questions.
Specific reference is made to Danish and Spanish legal language, but as well examples from the English legal language are included.

Tayyebi, Akram
Analyzing flight permission sub-language
This paper reports on a study of Grammatical behavior of sentences used in overflight permission requests. For a period of six months, Telexes reached to the flight permission department were collected. Excluding repetitions and grammatical mistakes, 100 sample sentences were chosen. Applying LFG as the Grammatical Model, S-Structures and F-Structures of these sentences and their Persian equivalents were drawn.
Due to the critical nature of the air traffic controlling and the importance of safety matters, these messages/texts have several unique characteristics such as straightforwardness, explicitness. They use short sentences, containing many abbreviations, avoid ambiguity, and use technical terms with specified meaning.
Tehrani, Mahnoush

Iran, government authorities and terminology

In many of third world countries, because of type of the ruling viewpoint, the rate of government’s interference and influence in the activities of community is more than industrial countries.

During the old history of Terminology in Iran, our country has had 2 types of government: royalty and republic. During the long period of royalty, three of the academies established and after long or short periods, their activities were stopped.
The first Academy in Iran, established in the reign of one of the latest kings of Gajar dynasty. The next one, established in the reign of the founder of Pahlavi dynasty. This academy was very active and sucessful. But after the attack of the Allies to Iran (during the second world war), the king gave government to his son Mohammad Reza Shah, and the Academy became inactive and changed practically in to a literary association, until it’s afficial closure in 1954. Then in 1971 Mohamad Reza Shah ordered to establish the Language Academy of Iran. This academy was active, but not very sucessful until the Islamic Revolution. In 1978, the government authority in Iran changed from royalty to Islamic republic. In 1991 the triple Academies began their work.
In this essay, we try to discuss on the cultural, social and political conditions of Iran at the time of each academy. We study on the rate of their success in the field of selecting or coining proper Persian equivalent to foreign terms; and we tend to show that there are some imporant elements in popularization of Persian equivalents, that do not only depend on the term itself. The power of government, it’s collaborations with the academies, the popularity of authority, acceptance of term users, … are some of these elements and we give examples of the influence of each of these in Iran.

Tehrani, Mahnoush
The Academy of the Persian languge and literature: Terminology projects, successes and failures
together with: Nasrin Parvizi
The Academy of Persian Language and literature, established in 1991, consists of 7 departments. The terminology department, undertook it’s research activities in 1995. There are 2 major research activities in this department:

1) selecting or coining Persian equivalents to be substituted for the general foreign terms that are currently used in Persian. These foreign terms was collected by a group of researchers from general newspapers and magazines and then, listed according to the frequency of these terms in Persian. At the next phase, another working group reviewed and found or made proper Persian equivalents them. Until now, the department has found equivalents for more than 300 foreign, general terms, but people tend to use just some of these Persian terms. It was not a totally successful project for many reasons (it will be discussed in the essay).

2) Selecting or coining Persian terms to be substituted for the foreign, technical terms that are in current use among the Iranian experts and specialists as well as in scientific texts and technical writings. In order to develop this project, the Terminology department has 37 active specialized technical committees. In any of these committees, which were working in different fields, such as medicine, veterinary, engineering, basic sciences and etc, a group of science experts and terminology experts work together and after collecting foreign terms, find or make proper Persian equivalents for them. It can be said that most of these technical committees were successful in making the Persian terms prevalent.
Our other terminology projects are: compiling national standards for the purpose of term selecting and terminography; carying out researches in the areas of language planning, terminology planning and term formation patterns in Persian language.
In this essay, we discuss about weak nesses and strengths and the reasons of their success and failures in the contermporary Iranian community.
Terauchi, Dr. Hajime
The development of an ESP reference for US constitutional cases: An approach based on applied linguistics and corpus linguistics

see: Shinichiro Torikai