Frequency and distribution of the units of general scientific (academic) lexicon as the markers of disciplinary affiliation of a discourse

Abstract

This article is dedicated to a corpus-based research of functionality of the units of general scientific (academic) lexicon in various types of disciplinary discourse, the purpose of which lies in verification of a hypothesis on a special function of the academic lexicon to indicate disciplinary affiliation of the scientific text. In the era of increasing mathematization and digitalization of scientific knowledge, corpus linguistics becomes a paramount instrument of empirical research aimed at acquisition of knowledge on the language through quantitative and qualitative analysis of compilations of texts, the scope and subject of which can be set in accordance with the specific objectives of the scholar. Special role in corpus-based research is assigned to the methods of statistical analysis for effective processing of the obtained quantitative data on linguistic realias, thereby considering linguistic research equivalent to the research of exact and natural sciences by degree of verification. The article describes the fragment of comprehensive research on functionality of the general scientific lexicon, which using the statistical method of correlation analysis on the example of more than 100 general scientific words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) established correlation between frequency and distribution of the units of general scientific lexicon and the type of disciplinary discourse. The scientific novelty lies in the holistic approach towards analyzing the characteristic features of distribution of the frequency of general scientific lexical units in 8 types of disciplinary discourse, as well as in in application of the methods of descriptive and mathematical statistics that demonstrate that academic lexicon same as terminological lexicon may serve as marker of disciplinary affiliation of the discourse.