Technical vocabulary in languages for special purposes: The corpus-based Russian economics word list

Abstract

In this article, we address the topic of language for specific purposes (LSP) through the creation and validation of a technical, corpus-based word list in Russian. We build on an existing body of research on developing lists of specialized vocabulary in English as a second language (ESL). We introduce some methodological innovations in compiling a list of Russian vocabulary for students with a professional interest in economics. This study illustrates that a corpus-based list of specialized vocabulary, which includes 507 lemmas united in 324 word families, can provide a hypothetical shortcut to the increased coverage of discipline-specific texts compared with the coverage achieved using the next 1,000-word frequency increment of general vocabulary. Therefore, such a list could facilitate LSP mastery at lower levels of proficiency, which yields important pedagogical implications for the foreign language classroom. The methodology could potentially be used to compile similar lists in other languages.