Teodora GHIVIRIG Universitaea Al. I.

Cuza din Iai Romnia

Political terminology in the discourse of Economics

Abstract: Denumirea tiinei/ disciplinei academice in limba romana include i elementul politic (economie politic). Cum economicul nu poate fi transpus n fapt fr sprijinul politicului, terminologia politic va aprea n mod necesar n discursul economic. Lucrarea se orienteaz n tri direcii de analiz: mai inti identific (calitativ i cantitativ) setul de termeni politici care apar n discursul economic, analizndu-le n funcie de cmpuri semantice/terminologice, termeni nrudii. O a doua linie are n vedere preferinele combinatorii ale termenilor identificai. Expresiile reunesc un termen politic i unul economic, fiecare pstrndu-i nucleul semantic i caracterul specific. Au fost identificate puine situaii de utilizare metaforic a termenilor; exemplele de expresivitate lingvistic n cazul termenilor politici snt puin numeroase i nereprezentative pentru discursul economic. Datorit faptului c n multe cazuri aceeai expresie apare i la singular i la plural, posibilitatea de a face diferena ntre cele dou se bazeaz nu doar pe semantica i context, ci i pe statutul su morfologic (ncadrarea ca nenumrabil politics sau numrabil policies). Bazndu-se pe material lingvistic autentic, lucrarea de fa ofer o imagine mai clar asupra terminologiei politice n discursul economic.

0. The interdisciplinary nature of the terminology of politics has been discussed and analysed repeatedly (Bidu-Vrnceanu, 2004, Toma, 2009, Tomescu, 2009 a.s.o.). The various domains from which terms have been transferred into the field of politics have been identified: Economics and especially marketing, the administrative field, legal language (Tomescu, 2009:102), to these, others can be added especially present in the phraseology of political terminology based on metaphors (sports, military, theatre and others, BiduVrnceanu, 2009:11, 12); also possibly history (class clas, hegemony hegemonie). As is the case with other terminologies, to this segment of political terminology, a large group of terms from common language can be added, that accede to the terminology of politics through the process of terminologization (however, this transfer cannot be said to extend to grammar words, such as connectors, see Toma, 2009:95, since they do not turn into terms proper for, among other reasons, they lack the specialized nature, the markedness of terminologies, Cabr, 1999:59). On the other hand, specialized linguistic units transfuse into common language and often coexist with their determinologized forms (Bidu-Vrnceanu, 2008:569), sharing a core of semantic features, yet differing in their degree of specialization. Much has been said about the expressive side of political terminology, especially in the case of phraseology; while it contradicts the tenet of the Wusterian theory of terminology according to which they are expected to lack any expressive quality (Bidu Vr nceanu, 2009:9), its presence has been accounted for through a clear delimitation of the vocabulary of politics from the terminology of politics and the types of discourse in which they can occur

(Tomescu, 2009:101), also through a clear-cut distinction between the strictly scientific and the technical range of the terminology of politics (even in English, the technical terminology of politics, designating specific activities, actors or situations in the political practice includes a number of terms resulting from the connotative use: lame duck (esp. Br.) an elected official or group continuing to hold political office during the period between the election and the inauguration of a successor (Merriam Webster dictionary) or whip in British politics, a written order demanding that party members be present in parliament when there is to be an important vote or demanding that they vote in a particular way, Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary, to give just two examples). As it is, the large bulk of examples illustrating this expressive quality has been extracted from types of discourse other than scientific especially the media discourse on political topics; the role of the media in the introduction and dissemination of politicsrelated vocabulary (and possibly, but not necessarily, of terms from politics) of foreign especially English origin has also been discussed (Stoichioiu-Ichim, 2004, 2006). Therefore, the present paper is interested in the terminology of politics as present in the scientific discourse of political sciences and not in the didactic or mass-media types of discourse. Just as there are economic terms in the terminology of politics, the close intercorrelation between the two suggest political terminology is used in the discourse of economics. The research is conducted on a corpus of 20 texts belonging to the same genre (research article) published in Romanian journals of Economics (Jurnalul economic, ASE Bucureti, Analele Universitii Al. I. Cuza din Iai. Seria tiine economice i Analele Universitii din Oradea. tiine economice) between 2003 and 2007. The corpus contains 70858 tokens (10013 types); it is not annotated information on inflectional forms is extracted with wild cards and refined manually. A corpus of specialized discourse can be relevant starting at a size of a few thousands words (Ahmad & Rogers, 1997 :736) ; its small size is then compensated by its homogeneity: even a (sub)corpus of 10 texts can be representative if they belong to the same genre (Biber 1990, in Semino & Short, 2004:25). The texts were processed with a concordancer (AntConc, version AntConc 3.2.4w). I. The set of terms selected for the present investigation has been restricted to what is known in specialized literature as professional political language (limbaj politic profesionist, Tomescu, 2004:103), while the technical section of political terminology was not taken into consideration since such terms tend to occur in a different type of discourse (technical, related to the actual activities of the politicians). The selected set consists of terms normally occurring in the specialized scientific discourse; the terms are grouped in six terminological fields labelled as a) terms naming types of political organizations (abstract nouns); b) terms referring to political doctrines and ideas (abstract nouns); c) terms referring to followers of such doctrines (nouns); d) terms designating attitudes and mentalities (abstract nouns); e) terms referring to political activities and actions (verbs and abstract nouns) and f) terms designating entities in the political domain (adjectives) (Tomescu, 2004:104). The fact that they belong to the terminology as present in the scientific discourse is revealed in the prevalence of nouns over other parts of speech (verbs, adjective) and in the high ratio of abstract nouns. Given the miscellaneous nature of the terminology of politics and its direct relation with the terminology of economics, I was interested to identify the specialized language units from this set that occur in the discourse of economics (research articles). Of the list used for reference, only the following items were found: coalition coaliie, party partid, anarchy anarhie, democracy democraie, and other lexemes were added to the list: republic republic and state stat; communism comunism, socialism socialism, capitalism

capitalism, liberalism liberalism, protectionism protecionism, totalitarianism totalitarism, voluntarism voluntarism; liberalization liberalizare, (de)centralization (des)centralizare; depolitization depolitizare, democratization democratizare, propaganda propaganda, revolution revoluie; democratic democratic, political politic, communist communist, socialist socialist, capitalist capitalist, liberal liberal, radicalist radicalistic, democratic democratic; a total of 27 terms were identified. Since not only the presence and frequency of certain terms is relevant, but also the conspicuous absence of others, it is interesting to note the absence of terms referring to other political factions ( labour laburist or conservative conservator in line with the terms designating doctrines or parties) and the important number of terms referring to the previous form of political and economic organization in Romanian, i.e. socialism and communism. Of the entire set, political politic() (as a noun and modifier) has the highe st rank (63) and the total frequency of occurrences of the lemma is 277; it is also the only item within the top one hundred lexical units (bar grammar words) which provide the aboutness of a text (Milizia, 2006:47). Next in line are socialism socialism, socialist socialist, state state(lor), liberalization liberalizare, with the rest far below. While this result may be influenced by the size of the corpus, it is still indicative of the topic of the texts; these items can be regarded as elements of keyness in terms of the relation between the two domains just as much as the fact that the first two lexical items in the wordlist are market piaa (rank 24) and economic economice(plural) (rank 30), which clearly indicate the domain Economics. The terms with the lowest frequencies (5 and less) are anarchy anarhie, capitalism and capitalist, protectionist and protectionism, propaganda and radicalist; republic republic is a special case since it occurs only in combinations with a proper name (Republica China, for example). The terminology of politics in the corpus is present as a relatively small cluster of terms with a relatively high frequency (and, as it will be apparent in the next section, with a comparatively high combinatorial potential); the list suggests that the discourse of economics as represented in the corpus attracts only a limited number of specialized items and not the entire range of options. The concepts designated by the terms are the more general, more abstract items. II. One of the features of political speeches that have raised the interest of the linguists is the common incidence of connotative words and word combinations. Apart from a significant group of complex terms resulting from metaphorical transfer from related terminologies (scor electoral, spectacol electoral, ofert politic, eichier politic, to quote just a few examples from Bidu-Vrnceanu, 2009:11), there are also numerous instances (especially in the media discourse) of combinations of expressive value (often derogatory): show politic, troac politic, cafteli electorale etc. (Bidu-Vrnceanu, 2009:13); their reference is highly contextual and they cannot be understood outside the linguistic and extra-linguistic context. Also, considering the examples of this type found in the above quoted article, it is worth remarking on the fact that the first element (the noun) of the combination usually comes from an entirely different layer of the lexis and is in stark contrast with the neological and international (Tomescu, 2009:104) quality of the second. However, such combinations are absent from the texts pertaining to the scientific discourse (political sciences) and thus they are not anticipated to appear in the corpus. The collocations are expected to consist of a term from political sciences and another from economics. The next step is identifying and analyzing these groups. The first item to discuss in terms of number of occurrences is the noun politic (68) which can be interpreted as politics, but in some cases also confusingly as policy since the same unit can appear in both the singular and the plural in collocations: politic

economic (8) and politici economice (9). This overlap is interesting since the same word in Romanian refers actually to two terms/concepts in English: one is politics and the other is policies. The case will be discussed in more detail in section III. A term which is undoubtedly of relevance for the terminology of politics is foreign policy politic extern; it appears either with a modifier of specific reference (politica extern american) or in specific stable collocations politica extern i de securitate and politica extern i de aprare, which designate concepts in politics. Two recurrent phrases are also pertaining to economics, politic monetar (6) and politic fiscal/ fiscal-bugetar (7), similar to a few other cases, with one occurrence only each, namely politic comercial/agricol/distributiv; the terms in the latter group are established economic terms, defined as such in specialised dictionaries (DE, 1999). Among the most frequently used terms are those designating types of political and economic regimes (and associated terms): communism (communist), socialism (socialist), capitalism (capitalist). Most occurrences come in the form of a noun group with comunist as a modifier in postposition since Romanian belongs to the head-first language type (regim comunist, perioad comunist, ideologie/idei/propagand comunist, experiment comunist). One particular instance labele comuniste is a mirror-like metaphor recreated after the fashion of the derogatory Stalinist discourse, fraught with violence, characteristic of the Romania of the 50s: [political classes] that tyrannically laid their communist paws on the countrys wealth (authors translation); surprisingly, the strong insulting phrase is now directed at those who had used it half a century before; needless to say, such language goes a far way from the conventions of academic prose and the research article, to which the text supposedly belongs. Socialism (82) falls under the same category of terms designating general concepts such as regimes and related concepts; interestingly, it occurs mainly independently, with insignificantly few modifiers (socialism real, socialism naional); this may be related to the fact that in presumably all cases the texts refer to the Marxist socialism that had been implemented in Romania after World War II or to the socialist mode of production and not to the political philosophy or the political movement in its various forms that can range from reformism to utopian socialism. Socialist combines with the following heads: economie/sistem/regim/ar/stat/partid/lagr socialist() in stable combinations designating interdisciplinary concepts. In a few cases the head is a noun of a more specific economic meaning: calcul/uzin/planificare/planificator/producia/piaa socialist. Few phrases of expressive value contain the term; big socialist lies mari minciuni socialiste is the most striking example, with an expressive force that still retains the aggressiveness of the Stalinist discourse (where it referred to capitalism); the context where it occurs contains other strong evaluative words Such contrivances are parts of the same big socialist lie; they fail deplorably ... (Toate aceste aranjamente sunt pri ale aceleiai mari minciuni socialiste; ele eueaz lamentabil...) (authors translation). Capitalism (9) and associated terms (13) is next in line, although it is somewhat paradoxical that the texts in the corpus should be concerned more with the previous regime that the country had liberated itself from than with what lay ahead: a different political and economic system. The comparatively stable noun phrases build around specialised meanings: ri/structur/societate/instituie/pia/economie/ntreprinztor; the result is a set of complex terms of strictly denotative value. A term that is related in that it would be the route to take to attain political liberalism and a market economy (capitalism) is liberalization liberalizare and related terms. The noun liberalization liberalizare (49) occurs independently with its basic meaning and is seen as a process contextually associated with

reformation and democratization; the entitites that make the object of the liberalization process are prices/finances/the economy or the economic activity/services (liberalizarea preurilor/finanelor/economiei or activitii economice/serviciilor). The free combinations of this type belong in all cases to the lexic of economics; no expressive use of the terms in question has been identified. The term with the highest number of occurrences, however, is state stat (162); it appears mainly as a modifier of a head noun in a phrase of the noun + de stat type (ntreprindere/firm/sector/politic/monopol/proprietate, or as the head in a non-join compound: stat-membru, stat-hegemon or even stat-leader, stat-naiune (member-state, hegemonic state, leading state, national state), seldom as a component in a proper name (Statele Unite). In many cases it functions as a subject/object with its common determiners. In most cases, the items considered for the present analysis appear as elements of a complex economic term. Many of the phrases are part of stable combinations documented in specialised dictionaries designating an economic or political or concept (regim comunist, economie socialist, liberalizare a preurilor, firm de stat etc.). There are few instances of metaphorical use of the terms resulting in a combination in which the core meaning is extended to accommodate the specificity of the domain of use, economics (price revolution revoluie a preurilor), or some other (political climate climat politic). An extension of the core semantic features to cover the need to adequately express an idea can be traced in the use of the term anarchy anarhie (a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority) when associated to modifiers from the field of economics (anarhie economic, anarhie a produciei): in the case of socialism, the market economy is an anarchy of production or economic anarchy (socialismul, nu economia de pia, este o anarhie a produciei or anarhie economic) (the authors translation) to produce a free combination. The instances of expressive use of items belonging to the terminology of politics are few and far between (communist paws, big socialist lies); hence we consider them unrepresentative of its use in the discourse of economics. III. Linguistic theory has been consistently interested in establishing the differences between common language and the specialised linguistic items (terminologies) in any field of specialised communication. What started as the traditional delimitation of terminology, which ignored issues related to pragmatics or sociology (Desmet, 2007:5), has more recently been approached from a broader perspective. The terms are also regarded as the result of a constant process of creation and re-creation by both the sender and the receiver within the discourse (Gaudin, 2003); further on, the socio-cognitive model accounts for the variability of the term, the concept or the definition (Temmerman, 2000). Hence, the term described as monosemous (within the domain), monoreferential, entirely decontextualized, is seen as an ideal which in many cases gives way to the reality of the discourse where such accidents as polysemy, homonymy, synonymy may occur. The import of terminology from the widely circulated languages, especially from English, is a well-established, though not well liked, fact; some terms are traceable to French (Bidu-Vrnceanu, 2009:11), others a comparatively large batch can be traced to English. It is interesting to note that the discourse of economics in Romanian makes frequent use of English terms: sometimes they are not translated at all, at some other times the Romanian rendition is graphically marked (by quotation marks or other graphic means such as italics); for example, in one text in the corpus the English term hard power (a coercive approach to international political relations, especially one that involves the use of military power Oxford Dictionaries online source) occurs 12 times and its cohyponym soft power (soft power is the ability to achieve goals without employing coercion or payment, Palgrave Online Dictionary of Comparative Politics and Political

Science) 28 times; the term smart power is translated (not quite appropriately) as putere neleapt (placed between brackets): the discourse easily accommodates formally unadapted units belonging to a different code/language. An interesting case is that of the term politic/politici. While in English there are two clearly distinguishable terms politics (defined as the art or science of government) and policy defined as course or method of action selected from among alternatives and in li ght of given conditions to guide and determine present and future decisions) , in Romanian the only lexeme to render both is politic and its plural politici. The semantics of the term(s) has been aptly discussed in Bidu-Vrnceanu (2004), with her remark that politic in the latter sense is not restricted to the terminology of political sciences and may not be even part of any scientific vocabulary, but rather part of the common language; however, the high frequency in the corpus and the collocations selecting terms from the domain of economics suggest that, at least in Romanian, they can be considered as two related yet different items being part of a terminology. In the corpus, sometimes the distinction is explained either by means of context (ex. politica Romniei) or by the presence of the linguistic item as a member of an established complex term (ex. politic extern) and the semantic core of the English term politic politics is traceable. When the plural form occurs (i.e. politici), it may be inferred that it translates the English policy/policies, as in the following examples (politici antitrust, politici financiar monetare). The determiners for the singular (the indefinite article) also indicate the same (se formuleaz o nou politic, [trebuie] s impun o politic coerent, o politic inteligentetc. ). The phrase may occur both in the singular and in the plural (politic economic/politici economice, o politic monetar/politici(le) monetare/politica monetar [de tip keynesist] etc.), so the possibility to distinguish between the two meanings cannot rely on the combinatorial and semantic profile only, it is necessary to resort to its morpho-semantic status with respect to the countability of the term politic/politiciand the respective morphological markers (plural flectionary form, specific determiners). Once more, this case indicates the presence of such phenomena as polysemy and the necessity of a phraseological study of terms in the specialised literature and an adequate treatment in the specialised lexicography of the domain there where a list of simple (decontextualized) terms does not provide the necessary information. Conclusions The name of the science/academic discipline (in Romanian, anyway) includes the political element (Economie politic); considering the inherent interdisciplinary nature of the terminology of politics, the present paper has analysed the presence and behaviour of those linguistic units placed at the intersection between the political and the economic, namely the terminology of politics in the discourse of Economics. Since the economic cannot find its way into life without the support of the political, the latters terminology is bound to infuse the economic discourse. The present paper is directed along three main lines: the first is to identify the set of political terms occurring in the economic discourse, along with quantitative data (frequency) and their qualitative analysis (terminological/semantic fields, related terms). The set of terms considered is restricted to what is known in specialized literature as professional political language (the names of doctrines and forms of social organization, followers of such doctrines, attitudes and mentalities, political activities and actions), with the exclusion of terms found in the didactic or the media discourse. The terminology of politics in the discourse of economics consists of a relatively small cluster of terms which occur with a high frequency; the list suggests that the discourse of economics as

represented in the corpus attracts only a limited number of specialized items and not the entire range of options. A second line of investigation was the collocational preferences of the terms identified previously. The collocations were in most cases found to consist of a term from political sciences and another from economics (ex. politic comercial/agricol/distributiv), each preserving their semantic core and their specificity. Many of the phrases are stable combinations documented in specialised dictionaries designating an economic or political concept (regim comunist, economie socialist, liberalizare a preurilor, firm de stat etc.). There are few instances of metaphorical use of the terms resulting in a combination in which the core meaning is extended to accommodate the specificity of the domain of use: economics (price revolution revoluie a preurilor) or some other (political climate climat politic). The selection of terms is limited to those designating the broader more general concepts (politic/politici/politic, socialism/socialist, comunism/comunist, stat etc.). The instances of expressive use of items belonging to the terminology of politics are few and far between (communist paws, big socialist lies); hence we consider them unrepresentative of the discourse of economics. The third area of investigation was concerned with instances of polysemy of the terms considered, for example the pair of English terms politics/policies generally rendered into Romanian by one term only, politic also politici. Given that in many cases the same phrase occurs in both the singular and the plural (o politic monetar/politici(le) monetare/politica monetar), the possibility to distinguish between the two meanings should rely on both the combinatorial and semantic profile and its morpho-semantic status with respect to the countability of the term: uncountable politic and countable politic/politici and the respective morphological markers (plural flectionary form, specific determiners). Based on genuine linguistic material from the corpus, the present paper provides insight into the terminology of politics in the context of Economics.
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