Military Vocabulary Research Articles

Using Military Vocabulary and Concepts for Successful Language Learning at the Defence University

This study attempts to review the English language courses at the National Defence University of Malaysia (NDUM). Although English language is accepted as a universal language, the roles played by the future military officers require the university to prepare its graduates with the ability to not only master the language, that is, to become communicatively competent, but also to function effectively during peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. It is argued that when the language courses do not match the stakeholders and students’ expectations and needs, the students particularly appear to be less inclined to learn the target language. This research focuses on whether students have been undergoing appropriate English language courses for their future needs as officers of the armed forces. The methodology of this paper involves distributing and collecting data from 167 students of the university. Data were then analysed using Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 16. Findings suggest that students are positive about learning English language. Nonetheless, they have raised several issues that must be addressed immediately by the English instructors. As this research is still collecting data from other sets of respondents, suffice to conclude at this point that military vocabulary and concepts will better assist students in English language learning.

The Time of the Avant-Gardes: the History of Art in the Age of Its Globalisation

The avant-gardes have had their history. Since that time, their heroic past has been now relived in accounts in which the course of time is overturned and they re-emerge to “enliven their time” and accomplish history. The term “avant-garde” derives from military vocabulary and designates those groups that advance ahead of the main body of troops – the vanguard. From the outset, the use of the term was thus linked to combat and to a radical strategy conceived with regard to an objective in bat...

Слова минулої епохи в сучасному історичному романі Василя Шкляра «Залишенець. Чорний Ворон»

У статті з’ясовано семантичні та функціональні особливості застарілої лексики, засвідченої в сучасному історичному романі Василя Шкляра «Залишенець. Чорний Ворон». До аналізу залучено здебільшого військову (батальну) лексику, зокрема одну з найбільш чисельних лексико-семантичних підгруп – «назви військових звань і посад», з одного боку, українського повстанського війська, з іншого, − Червоної армії; окремий акцент зроблено на так званих радянізмах, пов’язаних з тогочасним адміністративним і суспільно-політичним життям.

How a corpus-based study can help in ROK-US combined operations: A corpus-based study on the military vocabulary

How a corpus-based study can help in ROK-US combined operations: A corpus-based study on the military vocabulary

`Operation motorway': landscapes of construction on England's M1 motorway

Recent years have seen an increasing number of academics attempt to write more process-oriented and ‘non-representational’ accounts of landscape. Drawing upon this literature, I discuss a number of the movements, materialities, and practices entailed in constructing England's M1 motorway in the late 1950s. The performances, movements and durability of a diverse range of things—including earth-moving machines, public relations brochures, maps, helicopters, senior engineers, aggregate and labourers—are shown to be important to the construction and ordering of the motorway and spaces of the construction company in different times and spaces, with people's experiences or understandings of construction, both now and in the past, emerging through memories, talk and embodied encounters with architectures, texts and artefacts which are assembled, circulated and/or archived. Aerial perspectives assumed a prominent role in depictions of construction, while journalists and engineers frequently drew upon a military vocabulary and alluded to the military nature of the project when discussing the motorway.

The Age of Discoveries and Patriotism: James Darmesteter's Assessment of French Orientalism

The rapid development of Orientalism in the nineteenth century played a fundamental role in the expansion of our prior conceptions of various religious traditions. In this article, I will analyse James Darmesteter's assessment of the development of French Orientalism. He discussed this issue in his Essais orientaux (1883a). First, I will describe the discoveries mentioned by Darmesteter. Second, I will highlight his comments about the contributions of French scholars to the development of orientalism. Finally, I will analyse the relation between the Franco–German War (1870–71) and Darmesteter's Essais. The article will show that the military vocabulary used by Darmesteter is a clear indication of the impact of the war on his writing.

A Profile of Slobodan Milošević

In 1989 A collection of speeches and interviews of Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia, was published in Belgrade. His narrow intellectual horizons and limited vocabulary were obvious; the chapter titles, in their arrogant and hollow simplicity, were rem iniscent of Mao Zedong's Red Book. (The difficulties are neither unexpected nor insurmountable; The difficulties should not be a reason to demobilize, but to mobilize ourselves; The future will still be beautiful, and it is not far away; etc.) Milosevic's dry, overcompressed sentences and his frequent use of ritual formulas made his style mechanical; the use of military vocab ulary (mobilization, battle, war) gave the prose a rigid and belliger ent tone. This ponderous text seemed to be very much in harmony with the author's large photograph on the book's cover. He appears stiff, inhibited, hierarchical?almost robot-like. Yet the book was an instant success. A Serbian reading public that considered itself discerning had been seduced by a simplistic, almost na?ve book, whose author seemed incapable of presenting a genuine vision of political and social life. To understand why a crude propa gandistic tract became a national best-seller is to begin to understand

Peace Symbolism in Ancient Military Vocabulary

Peace Symbolism in Ancient Military Vocabulary

Peace Symbolism in Ancient Military Vocabulary

What is called the art of warfare plays in ancient literature and society an ambiguous role-perhaps being resolved in the contemporaryworld. Originally it had the indispensable function of guarding the city-state, within which the new emergent of free man appeared about simultaneously in Hellas and Israel. The earliest alphabetic texts are epics of war, which still approach the horrors of their topic with a singular realism; their heroes are men of war, an Achilles or David. But the humanism generated and protected by the militant city-state came to see itself as an international society, an academy or synagogue, whose highest task was to preserve precisely those texts which narrated its origins. As such it no longer needed that original military protection, which it came to see as more and more inconsistent with its own ideals.

Words and the War

W 7HEN I JOINED the Army some time ago in a very humble capacity I saw an opportunity to study a department of language that is somewhat of a mystery to the civilian. I soon discovered, however, that a military vocabulary consists in the main of a highly specialized professional jargon, composed largely of terms that denote the insides of weapons and the complexities of drill and manoeuvres. Two somewhat contradictory features of this technical vocabulary stood out. There was, first, a desire to economize by using initials and abbreviations, so that the military neophyte wades through a sea of terms like A.V.F. (Armoured Fighting Vehicle), L.M.G. (Light Machine Gun), and so on. Opposed to this is a tendency which prevails in the British Army to use what I believe are called $5 words. An officer not attached to any particular group of men is a supernumerary, a list of names is a nominal roll. This habit probably goes back to the more leisurely days of the i8th and 9ith centuries, but it is carried over to purely modern developments in warfare. Thus no self-respecting soldier talks of his gas-mask, but his respirator, while the process by which one gets rid of the after-effects of poison gas, an amenity confined to modern warfare, is known as personal decontamination. Terms such as these are naturally often distorted in the speech of the ordinary soldier; thus a command used in connection with a very modern weapon-Action imminent-generally becomes Action eminent in the mouth of the N.C.O.

Teaching Modern Languages in War Time1

Author's Summary— The best contribution to the war effort civilian modern language teachers can make is to teach future draftees and war workers the rudiments of the most important languages, stressing particularly oral and aural drill. A specialized military vocabulary should be taught after the trainee enters the service.