Abstract
The research suggests the list of the most critical problems inmedical terminography, such as, difficulties in the identification of terms, polysemyand synonymy, a great quantity of abbreviations, rapid expansion of theterminological field of medicine. The approach used consists in the analysis of thedefinitions of English medical terms in medical dictionaries widely used inUkraine. The study of the theoretical literature and the results of the empiricalresearch show, that the following aspects as adequacy (compliance of the meaningof the term with the modern scientific knowledge); accuracy (sound and semanticaccuracy without doublets in microterminosystem); unambiguity (unified structuraland semantic model); unification of terms representation should be central inimproving lexicographical practice in the field of medical terminography. Theidentification of medical terms needs the specification of theoretical and clinicalmedicine at macro-, micro- and sub-microsystems levels. The work makes theattempt to identify these critical issues with focus on the problem of synonymy. Toevince the state of the art in this area, we studied dictionary articles in which termscomprising the synonymic set “damage”: disorder, disturbance, hurt, impairment,injury, are defined. These and other issues are evident to the dictionary compilers.In different attempt to solve them, lexicographers resort to the incorporation of26collocations with the key terms. New strategies of dictionaries compilation shouldbe developed for medical terminography to serve the tasks of promoting effectivemultinational communication in English. Some of the strategies can be based onthe complex dynamical systems theory. Medical terminography in the aggregateshould be a complex dynamical system developing in context with the globalprocesses in the field of medicine and in compliance with linguistic theory.
Highlights
One of the consequences of globalization is the use of English as a ‘lingua franca’ in specialised discourse
The methodology used in the study is complex: survey and critical analysis of literature, empirical analysis, comparison method, semantic analysis and juxtaposition of obtained data To achieve the aim of our study, we analysed the pertinent literature and investigated English medical dictionaries that are most popular in Ukrainian medical community, including medical universities: a monolingual English medical dictionary which contains definitions of medical terms from Stedman's
A survey and critical analysis of the current literature in theoretical lexicography and the study of the introductory parts to medical dictionaries [1; 2; 3; 4; 7; 8; 9; 11; 12; 14; 15; 16; 17] showed that medical dictionaries compilers are struggling with a whole range of issues which they share with lexicography as a whole
Summary
One of the consequences of globalization is the use of English as a ‘lingua franca’ in specialised discourse. English terminology is much more often used by non-native speaker than by the native ones. Conjoined with variation of English this creates ambiguity in professional communication that is detrimental in medicine. While native-speaking members of medical community in their choice of appropriate terms rely on nomenclatures, non-native speakers turn to dictionaries. Neither nomenclatures nor dictionaries allow solving the ambiguity in medical terminology. For Ukrainian medical practitioners, scientists and students, who are becoming a part of European medical community, this problem is urgent
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