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School is not the only institution that educates children and provides them with specialised information. Television also contributes substantially to education. The article deals with the question of how the authors of educational programmes for children handled the difficult task of educating children while capturing their attention at the same time. This issue is examined using the example of selected German and Czech television programmes for children with the topic of biology, and attention is paid especially to the choice of language when working with specialised terms and to the specific procedures of defining or explaining them. Also monitored is whether or not the strategy of introducing new specialised terms in the analysed children programmes is different in terms of quality from the strategies applied in popular science programmes for adults with comparable topics.
This paper presents some results from a wider study which aims to define the features of German medical textbooks from a diachronic perspective. The medical textbook is presented here as a genre-class (Textsortenklasse) subsuming all texts written for didactic purposes in the field of medicine, i.e. texts aiming to present the theoretical and practical background required in this particular specialist professional field. Since the lingua franca of academic communication was Latin until the 18th century, the corpus used for this study mainly comprises surgery textbooks. The paper focuses solely on structural aspects of textbooks, seeking to show how these aspects functionally contribute to the realization of the general textual function and thereby constitute a historically established conventionalized scheme underlying genres. However, a thorough and effective description of a genre-class requires a much more extensive approach including more interrelated levels of analysis.
Globalisierung durch reduzierte Fachwörter, oder Elemente einer beinahe universellen Lingua franca?
(2020)
This paper focuses on multi-segmental acronyms ('Kurzwörter'), whose use was initially condemned by German linguistic purists as a manifestation of language decay. However, the desire for abbreviation has not abated: multi-segmental acronyms are being used more and more. Without them, technical language would no longer be conceivable today. But are they only popular because of their brevity? This article investigates the advantages of using multi-segmental acronyms in technical texts, as well as exploring a kind of globalization process affecting technical languages, manifested in a new kind of embedding of English and English-transmitted technical terms.
German authors considered easy comprehensibility of their architecture books very important and therefore they included in them a number of explanatory terminological notes of varying complexity. These notes gradually evolved into elaborate terminological glossaries. This paper explores the terminology and its presentation, as well as the authors' motivation.
The current state of German studies is driving certain changes in degree programmes at Polish universities. Above all, students expect training in practical subjects. It is often noted that a change should take place in the field of German studies, in order to improve skills in the field of technical language and specialist communication. On the one hand, this would mean turning away from classic, canonical German studies. On the other hand, it would meet the expectations of future students. In this article we provide a critical overview of the curricular requirements regarding the technical language component of degree programmes at Polish universities. Degree programmes are analyzed in terms of the occurrence and content of the technical language component, and future developments are forecasted.
The article introduces the language of wine connoisseurs in all its forms and, based on a number of specific examples from different genres and various types of texts (specialist literature, catalogues, wine labels, etc.), aims to stimulate discussion on the circumstances which influence the level of specialization in connection with the choice of linguistic resources.
The focus on communication in research on professional and scientific language somehow reflects the intention of John L. Austin's phrase "How to do things with words?" But a description based on the concept of communication ultimately also relies on linguistic idiosyncrasies. We will look at things the other way round and ask first "how to do (professional) things" and then look at the linguistic units used specifically for this purpose. Professionalism in this view takes very different forms for different types of actions ("practices"). Although reliability and professional authority are central features of all linguistic realizations to be considered, they are represented in very different ways. As a result, professionalism not only shows in the high degree of explicitness of technical prose typical for written scientific discussion. It is also reflected in the high degree of implicitness of speech that accompanies and constitutes practical action.
With the preservation of health an age-old concern for humanity, guides to healthy living based on humoral theory were among the earliest texts of medieval school medicine to be translated from Latin into the vernacular. Subject of this study is the development of a German technical language for dietetics from the late thirteenth to the late fifteenth century as evidenced in Hiltgart von Hürnheim's translation of the 'Secretum secretorum', the anonymous translation of the regimen in the 'Breslauer Arzneibuch', and the four independent translations of Konrad von Eichstätt's 'Regimen sanitatis'. Special emphasis is put on a number of 'termini technici' from humoral theory and the way the various translators tackled these terms.
Some students evidently find it difficult to paraphrase the content of a text (particularly a specialist or professional text) after reading it. This inability may have a negative impact on their performance when writing Bachelor theses or when studying in general. This paper therefore addresses the question of how to help students of German develop the important competency of paraphrasing and summarizing the content of texts. The starting point was a small-scale research project conducted among students at the Department of German Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ostrava; the results of the research were analyzed to identify the main problems encountered by students when carrying out these tasks. This analysis forms the basis for an overview of strategies and methods which can be practised by students when paraphrasing and summarizing the content of texts. The article systematizes the key processes and operations for paraphrasing and summarizing with reference to the theoretical literature. The article seeks to contribute to the discussion of a broad range of methods that can be used to help improve the quality of foreign language studies and the study of specialist and professional language
The article analyses three texts which address the same subject (the definition of the word Wort) and aims to demonstrate that it is not only the topic that plays a crucial role in creating the macrostructure and microstructure of a text, but also the communicative situation. The article explores what differences there are in the selection of linguistic means when the same content is being expressed in texts intended for communication at various levels of specialization, and which communication strategies the authors of the texts choose in connection with the text's genre, their intentions and (above all) the communicative situation.