Business English. Graduation paper

Lomonosov Moscow State University

Philological Faculty

Department of English Linguistics

Anna Andreevna Shvedova

Terminological phraseologisms in Business English vocabulary:
the lexicographic and the functional aspects.

Graduation pape

Academic Supervisor:
Doctor of Philology, Professor T. B. Nazarova

Moscow 2018

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1. Special phraseology in the research works by Russian and foreign linguists.

Chapter 2. Terminological phraseologisms: the lexicographic aspect.

§ 1. Preliminary remarks.1

§ 2. The lexicographic aspect of terminological phraseologisms in detail.

Chapter 3. The functional aspect of terminological phraseologisms.

§ 1. Preliminary remarks.

§ 2. The functional aspect in the research works by Russian and foreign linguists

§ 3.The functional aspect of terminological phraseologisms in business-related articles

Conclusion

Literature

Introduction

Business English is one of the most rapidly developing areas of inquiry, and since the 1990s it has been gathering pace through numerous research projects, publications, and conference discussions. In the present graduation paper, the term Business English is defined following the definition suggested by Professor T. B. Nazarova. According to Business English. A Course of Lectures with Practical Assignments [Nazarova 2004], “Business English is increasingly seen as a symbiotic interplay of a number of functional uses, i.e. registers”. In other words, Business English embraces: Socializing for business purposes, Telephoning for business purposes, Business correspondence, Business documents and contracts, Business meetings, Presentations, Negotiating, and the English of the business media [Nazarova 1997, 2000, 2004, 2009].

Research works in the field have covered different aspects of Business English: the vocabulary of the language used for business purposes, the grammatical aspect of Business English, regional variation in the spoken and written forms of communication, sign and sign systems in Business English. Of particular significance are the lexical strata singled out by Professor T. B. Nazarova in her research work. In the early 1990s Professor T. B. Nazarova introduced and accounted for the functional stratification of Business English vocabulary. The first set of strata comprised General English words, General Business English vocabulary, General Business English terminology, and Specialized terminology [see for details Nazarova 1997]. The research work carried out over the last 10-15 years allowed to expand the first listing of lexical strata. The finalised inventory is derived from T. B. Nazarova’s recent publications [Nazarova 2016, 2017]: General English words, formalvocabulary items, core business terminology, industry-specific terminological systems, special phraseology, business idioms, high-frequency phrasal verbs.

Business English vocabulary is being studied under Professor T. B. Nazarova’s supervision by several researchers: business idioms and, more generally, idiomatic phraseology is detailed in M. I. Vershinina’s candidate dissertation [Vershinina 2016]; phrasal verbs are researched by A. V. Potapova [Potapova 2015, 2016]; idiomatic phraseology and allusive figures of speech in business discourse are investigated by U. V. Zubova [Zubova 2015].

The responsibility of the author of the present graduation paper consists in examining one of the 7 strata enumerated above. This project centres on the stratum that so far has not received all the attention it deserves. The stratum in question is special phraseology or terminological phraseologisms. The choice of this lexical stratum accounts for the current importance and noveltyof the present paper. Very little is known about special phraseology in Business English and Business English vocabulary.

The theoretical significance of the project consists in its attempt to show how terminological phraseologisms evolve and function in business-related articles from the quality papers.

The practical significance of the graduation paper is accounted for by the fact that its materials and results can be used in the seminars for advanced Business English learners to improve their understanding of the world of business and the language used for business purposes.

The object of the investigation is written forms of Business English presented in the quality papers devoted to the world of trade and commerce.

The subject of the study is twofold. First of all, a close look will be taken at the set of terminological phraseologisms found in the dictionaries, which reveals the lexicographic aspect of the present work. Then we will pass on to the next stage of the research project, investigate terminological phraseologisms within the contexts in the fully-fledged business-related articles borrowed from the quality sources like The New Yorker Magazine, the Guardian, Forbes, USA Today and Huffington Post. This material demonstrates the functional aspect of the present graduation paper.

The aim of the work is to discover the frequency of occurrence of the terminological phraseologisms in the contexts related to the world of business and to identify their functions. In the graduation paper an attempt is made to summarise the experience of Russian and foreign scholars in the field of terminological phraseologisms; to describe and analyse the semantics of the terminological phraseologisms, the etymology of the metaphors included in the terminological system; to investigate the material registered in the dictionaries; to study the way terminological phraseologisms function in the contexts of the authentic articles.

The structure of the graduation paper. It consists of Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, 3, Conclusion, and Literature.

Chapter 1 is devoted to the review of the research papers written by Russian and foreign linguists. It involves works in the field of lexicology and lexicography, Business English, terminology, terminography, phraseology and special phraseology.

Chapter 2 details the lexicographic aspect with a particular focus on dictionary entries, meanings and origin.

Chapter 3 is the functional examination of the terminological phraseologisms in authentic contexts.

Chapter 1

Special phraseology in the research works by Russian and foreign linguists

Special phraseology comprises terminological phraseologisms. Here comes a suitable explanation of what is meant by the term terminological phraseologism: terminological phraseologism (or special phraseologism) is a polylexemic unit characterised by both features of business terminology (specialized meaning, definability, terminological links) and idioms proper (figurative meaning or transferred senses) [Nazarova 2016].

As we are to investigate a very complicated matter which has to do with lexicology, lexicography, terminology, phraseology, special phraseology, etc., we have to cover a wide range of academic literature written both by Russian and foreign scholars. Even if they say that Special phraseology is a comparatively speaking new field, we should admit, however, that the roots of the most recent studies can be found in different works of linguists and philologists around the world.

The problem of how to go about phraseological units arose even during the practical task of compiling one of the most famous and reliable English dictionaries by Samuel Johnson that came out in 1755. In the foreword of the dictionary he wrote: “Compounded or double words I have seldom noted, except when they obtain a signification different from that which the components have in their simple state. Thus highwayman, woodman, and horsecourser, require an explication; but of thieflike or coachdriver no notice was needed, because the primitives contain the meaning of the compounds” [Johnson 1755]. A. A. Potebnja tackles the same problem describing Russian compound names of flowers, the semantics of which are metaphors based on one of the features of the flower [Potebnja 1894: 124].

The foundations of Phraseology as an independent linguistic field were laid by the work of Charles Bally, one of the prominent linguists of the 20th century. In his Traité de stylistique française(1909) he had a chapter devoted to phraseology, which paved the road for the development of this field of inquiry.

Professor A. A. Shakhmatov [Shakhmatov 2001: 278] emphasized the importance of indecomposable expressions not to lexicology solely, but to the whole field of grammar as well. He drew attention to the expressions that cannot be divided up into the constituent parts so easily: they form a single notion, and that single notion will be non-existent once its components are taken away.

Later V. V. Vinogradov singled out 3 types of phrasemes: phraseological fusions (a meaning of an idiom is not understandable as the sum of the components; the expressions are used without any change of words); phraseological unities (they are semantically indivisible  without special knowledge, the expressions that are used without any change of words as well); phraseological combinations (one of the components is bound within the idiom, while the other words can be used separately) [Vinogradov 1977: 140-161].

The common name for a phraseme in the English linguistic tradition is a compound [Lipka 1992: 77]. A combination is a compound if it is made up of at least two or three lexical morphemes. That presupposes it is made up of two constituents which can in principle occur in isolation. For example, protrude, protrudes, protruded, protruding are treated as word forms of one lexeme, while “a lexical item is anything which must be listed in a speaker’s mental dictionary” [Aarts et al. 2006: 494]. Compounds have two or more lexemic bases in their internal structures, which can inflect independently and on their own act as the heads of relevant phrases.

As for the pragmatics of compounds, they also obtain interesting features. First of all, compounds are compact. “It is what makes them useful for showing subcategorization, and it also makes them useful as a mechanism for referring back to some past discussion by providing a neat summary of it” [Aarts et al. 2006: 496].

According to Lipka [Lipka 1992: 94], traditional studies of word-formation almost exclusively focused on established complex lexemes that can be found in dictionaries. Although productive patterns and regularities of word-formation were investigated, so-called ad hoc-formations were excluded. After the article on English compound nouns written by Pamela Downing in 1977 [Downing 1977: 810-842], non-established complex lexemes, their usage, and the process of coining came into focus.

New words provided us with a new scope of material to describe. Changes occurred everywhere, and terminology could not help changing. Therefore, new lexical items were carefully investigated in numerous articles. Taking into account the Russian linguistic and philological tradition, we should admit that the contribution of V. V. Vinogradov was seminal as plenty of classifications are based on his works to a greater or lesser extent. For example, Fedulenkova [Fedulenkova 2009] employs a combined classification of Vinogradov [1977] and Kunin [1964, 1996] in her article devoted to the financial management phraseology.

At first, all the terminological vocabulary is split by Fedulenkova into 2 groups: non-phraseological units and phraseological units. Further on, the non-phraseological units fall into 2 categories: words and word-combinations transformed and international terms.

To describe the classification of phraseological units, V. V.  Vinogradov’s classification is to be employed:

1. partly transformed meaning (phraseological fusions),
2. units in which the meaning is more or less understandable through the sum of its components (phraseological unities),
3. idioms.

Tarnaeva [Tarnaeva 2009] uses Vinogradov’s classification as well. In her article devoted to the problems of translation of business terminology, she introduces 2 components of business phraseology: phraseology that lies within General English vocabulary and business idioms.

Business idioms are further split into 6 categories, three of which were first introduced by academician V. V. Vinogradov: fusions, phraseological unities and phraseological combinations. To these categories are added three new groups: set comparisons (“as safe as the Bank of England”) [Tarnaeva 2009], proverbs (“buy low, sell high”) and citations.

Let us now turn to several other classifications: A. I. Smirnitskij [Smirnitskij 1956: 203] singled out phrasemes and idioms, and did not concern himself with special phraseology. N. N. Amosova’s  classification falls into 3 parts, and goes beyond phrasemes and idioms. She divides these units as based on the notion of context. The scholar singles out permanent contexts and changeable contexts. In permanent contexts, parts of a phraseme cannot be substituted by other words: “white day”, “French leave”. Conversely, in changeable contexts one part stays the same, while the other is changeable: “blind man/ cat/  horse/ eyes/ gaze” [Amosova 1963].

A.V. Kunin [Kunin 1964, 1996] introduced another classification related specifically to English phraseology. He emphasized, however, that the system introduced by V. V. Vinogradov is not suitable for the English language. The three parts of phraseology as singled out by A. V. Kunin are as follows: idioms (идиоматика), e.g. “to blow the guff”; semi-idioms (идиофразеоматика), e.g. “chainreaction”(1. scientific term, 2. figurative meaning); phraseomatics (фразеоматика), e.g. “hope for the best”. Phraseomatic items are reproducible but they do not acquire additional connotations.

Meanwhile, different researchers attempted to classify phraseologisms in general and at the same time to look a little more closely at special phraseology, a relatively new branch of lexicology. Sometimes scholars made controversial statements. For example, A. A. Reformatskij and A. M. Pyzh representes completely different points of view as far as idioms and terminology were concerned.

A.A. Reformatskij pointed out that terminology and idioms were poles apart. He claimed that, ideally, a term is monosemic, concrete and logic, while idioms are polysemic, expressive and illogic[Reformatskij 1996: 67]. However, research in the field has shown that terms can be polysemic as well as expressive. A. M. Pyzh highlights that within the legal domain there are different types of idioms: specialised meaning “redbird” (not any “red bird”, but only the northern cardinal), extended meaning“plates and dishes” (in a more general sense, kitchenware), shifted meaning “brown-paper” (special paper for wrapping presents that can be any colour) and transferred meaning “fat cat” (a metaphor of a rich person).

According to T. B. Nazarova, business terms appear as a result of the continuous interaction of different lexical strata within Business English vocabulary [Nazarova 2014: 271-275], the borders between lexical strata being rather fluid. In Professor Nazarova’s classification special phraseologisms follow core business terms and industry-specific terminological systems but precede business idioms. Special phraseologisms, as pointed out by T. B. Nazarova, occupy the borderline area between the terminological stratum and the idiomatic stratum. Special phraseology, thus, is a somewhat unique lexical stratum within Business English vocabulary [Nazarova 2016, 2017].

Detailed classification of special phraseologisms is T. N. Fedulenkova’s based on different types of relationships within special phraseology and covers 4 categories: genetic relationship, transformation relationship, functional relationship, semantic relationship.

Let us take a closer examination of the first type – genetic relationship. Following Kunin [Kunin 1996], Fedulenkova emphasizes that this type of relationship can be observed during the process of phraseological derivation. The emerging new phenomena in the world of business need new vocabulary items to describe them. These units may be restricted by business communication.

However, phraseological units that were originally used in General English vocabulary can develop a new shade of meaning within Business English. There are 3 possible ways of transformation: the phrase from General English does not change its original meaning. For instance, the expression “ahead of the curve”, which signifies “more advanced”, displays the same meaning in business discourse.

The meaning of the phrasal unit can be partly changed. A good example of this type is a phrasal unit “by leaps and bounds”. In General English vocabulary it means “happens very quickly” (Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary), but in Business English it acquires a new meaning “fluctuating”.

A phrasal unit can acquire a completely different meaning. This third group is more difficult to analyse in terms of semantics because the meaning of the phrasal unit is discernable only within the context. The phrasal unit “cats and dogs” is used not solely to describe weather conditions as it is in “it’s raining cats and dogs”, but also to depict the relationship between people: “cat-and-dog life”. In economics and the financial sphere, the expression “cats and dogs” means “speculative stocks that have short or suspicious histories for sales, earnings, dividends, etc” [Investopedia].

Another kind of relationships is transformation. Words undergo numerous changes in the historical development of the language and, very often, they happen to acquire multiple meanings. This utterance seems to be more or less acceptable with regard to the general language, but when it comes to terminology, questions arise. According to A. A. Reformatskij [Reformatskij 1989: 163-198], terms and idioms are incompatible. Authors of classical works on lexicology underline that the main feature of terminology is monosemy. As shown on numerous occasions, however, both terms and terminological phraseologisms can become polysemantic over the course of time.

Terms can be both monosemic and polysemic. Terminology is frequently defined as words and word-combinations having specific meanings in specific contexts. Usually, the specific context in question implies a specialised domain in contrast to everyday language. However, this variation of meaning can be more subtle and sophisticated even within a given specialised domain. This complexity of interpretations ranging from monosemy to polysemy is caused by the intrinsic complexity of language in use.

Let us take a look at the phrasemes “current account” and “grey market” used by T. N. Fedulenkova in her article:

current account

1. (banking) an arrangement with a bank that allows customer to pay in money, and, by writing cheques, draw it out without giving notice;
2. (accounting) an account that shows money going into and out of a business for goods and services.

grey market

a situation where goods are in short supply, but are traded legally; a situation where shares are traded before they are officially issued.

The next type of relationship is functional relationship. Special phraseology can be classified not only in terms of origin and transformation, but also in terms of stylistic use. A. V. Kunin [Kunin 1996] introduced two types of stylistic use: functional-stylistical use, on the one hand, and communicative-stylistical use, on the other hand. To begin with, functional-stylistic use defines a stylistic function of a phraseme (e. g. derogatory, euphemism, formal, humorous, impolite, ironic, jocular, pompous, rhetoric etc). Communicative-stylistic use shows the main spheres of use in communication (e.g. colloquial, literary, poetic).

Yu. M. Skrebnev outlines the functional aspect of special phraseology in a different way. He identifies three levels of style: elevated (e.g. archaic, words that are seldom used), neutral (e.g. literary expressions used in speech of well-educated persons), lowered (e.g. colloquial expressions, slang, etc.) [Skrebnev 1994].

The last type of relationship we are going to look at is the semantic relationship. There are 3 main subdivisions: synonymy, antonymy and hyper-hyponymy.  Synonyms fall into two categories [Kunin 1996]: structural synonyms (partly corresponding components and the same meaning), phraseological synonyms (components do not correspond, but the meaning is similar). A good deal and a great deal are examples of structural synonyms. They have the same component deal and quite similar attributes good and great, both of which possess positive meanings but in different degrees. Keep clear of smth and give a wide berth are phraseological synonyms, for the items under analysis have differing structures, though their meanings are similar.

Foreign researchers in their works concerned themselves with the notion of context and a set of associations which words and word-equivalents evoke.  For instance, Niladri Dash [Dash 2004: 57-79] focuses on context-dependence of semantics. The topical context heavily influences the perception of a phrase.  “For example, in English, based on the variation of topic, the word shot refers to ‘firing’, ‘drinking’, ‘hitting a ball by bat’, ‘kicking a ball’, ‘putting a ball in the net’, ‘distance between a player and the hole’, ‘taking a snap’, ‘giving an injection’, or ‘making love’, etc.” [Dash 2004]. The same effect can be observed in terminological items which are to be treated differently according to the context.

In some articles words and word-equivalents are also described as interconnected components of an “associative field”. Every lexeme is involved in a network of associations. In the article of Adrienne Lehrer “The influence of semantic fields on semantic change” it is shown that even semantic shift and creation of a new combination of words may be influenced by the semantic field. Though the changes are usually inconsistent, we still can see that surroundings of words and their pragmatics are interrelated. This is of great importance as the polylexemic items we are going to deal with in Chapter 2 are often marked as industry-specific.

Before we turn to the lexicographic aspect of the material, several conclusions can be drawn: firstly, phraseology and special phraseology have been studied by both Russian and foreign linguists; secondly, there are more works related to phraseology and less research work devoted to special phraseology; thirdly, it is important to keep the two types of phraseology apart because in special phraseology along with the transference of meaning there is a link with a particular terminological system (and/or special field of inquiry/ industry/ domain).

The phraseological terminologisms (or special phraseologisms) studied in Chapter 2 belong to the world of business and point to specific spheres of business activities.

Chapter 2

Terminological phraseologisms: the lexicographic aspect.

§ 1. Preliminary remarks.

As stated in the Introduction, Chapter 2 of the present thesis is meant to detail the lexicographic aspect of special phraseologisms. The main source of the material in this subsection of the research paper is the Oxford Business English Dictionary; it came out in 2006. Whenever needed, definitions will be borrowed from other dictionaries such as the Cambridge Business English Dictionary, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the Collins International Business English Dictionary, Investopedia and others.

Before I turn to the analysis of the lexicographic material, I would like to dwell upon some of the essential techniques that helped to organise and review the entries from the dictionaries named above. The first technique consists in selecting a representative fragment of the material. The material under analysis includes 150 lexical items from the dictionary entries under the letter L. We have chosen this fragment of the lexicographic material for two reasons. First of all, 150 words and word-equivalents can be regarded a representative sample. The headwords demonstrate all the 7 strata singled out in Business English vocabulary by Professor T. B. Nazarova [1997, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2009, 2014, 2016]. Out of the 150 headwords under consideration, there are General English words – 12, formal vocabulary items – 14, core business terminology – 36, industry-specific terminological items – 41, special phraseologisms – 10, idioms  – 8, phrasal verbs – 19.

The pie chart on page 17 (see Figure 1) graphically presents the volume of every lexical stratum in the material under analysis. Industry-specific terminological items rank highest with 29%. The second most popular stratum is core business terminology, which takes up 26% of the whole scope of thematerial under analysis. Phrasal verbs come next with 14%. Formal vocabulary items, special phraseologisms and General English words are at about the same level with 10%, 8% and 7% accordingly. If we compare the above percentages, it is easy to see that the number of industry-specific terminological items exceeds the special phraseologisms listed under the letter L, the proportion being around 4 to 1.

Figure 1.

The above pie chart based on the representative sample of the dictionary material allows us to draw a preliminary conclusion that Special phraseology is a minority stratum: out of 150 headwords under the letter L only 10 items can be categorised as special phraseologisms. Let me now pass on to the step-by-step examination of these 10 terminological phraseologisms and their systemic properties.

As I move from one special phraseologism to another, I am going to use several techniques: firstly, I adduce the definition of the headword phraseologism from the Oxford Business English Dictionary; secondly, whenever needed, I borrow additional definitions from the other traditional dictionaries and online sources; thirdly, I look at the origin of the special phrseologism under consideration; fourthly, whenever possible, I name synonyms or antonyms; finally, I offer a Russian-based counterpart (or counterparts) and comment on the relationship between the two – the English-based phraseologism and the Russian-based equivalent.

§ 2. The lexicographic aspect of terminological phraseologisms in detail.

The first special phraseologism to be analysed is lame duck.

Oxford Business English Dictionary

1 a person or an organization that is not very successful and that needs help:

 The government gives too much support to lame ducks. | lame-duck industries

2 a politician, a government or an official whose period of office will soon end and who will not be elected again or kept in the same position:

 Her replacement has already been named, making her a lame duck until she steps down. | a lame-duck chairman

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary

1 one that is weak or that falls behind in ability or achievement; especially, chiefly British: an ailing company

2 an elected official or group continuing to hold political office during the period between the election and the inauguration of a successor

3 one whose position or term of office will soon end

Origin

The phrase “lame duck” could be first encountered in the 18 century at the London Stock Exchange, to refer to a stockbroker who defaulted on his debts. The first person to mention it was Horace Walpole in his letter written in 1761 to Sir Horace Mann: “Do you know what a Bull and a Bear and Lame Duck are?” In 1791 Marry Berry claimed that she was “posted up as a lame duck”. The literal meaning refers to a duck that cannot keep up with its flock, making it vulnerable for predators.

It was first recorded in political context in the Congressional Globe (then the official record of the United States Congress) on January 14, 1863: “In no event … could [the Court of Claims] be justly obnoxious to the charge of being a receptacle of ‘lame ducks’ or broken down politicians.”

Russian-based counterparts
1) бирж. банкрот; разорившийся маклер
2) крупная компания, испытывающая финансовые затруднения (нуждающаяся в помощи государства)
3) амер.; полит. непереизбранный государственный деятель

[ABBYY Lingvo Live]

As is obvious from the lexicographic material introduced above, the terminological phraseologism lame duck has several meanings depending on the sphere of use. It is used in business as well as politics. It is obvious that the special phraseologism under consideration is well-rooted in the vocabulary of Modern English. It is used across spheres and, most importantly, across parts of speech, functioning not only as a complex noun-equivalent but also, whenever needed, as a hyphenated adjective to be combined with nouns. The Russian equivalents display what is known as demetaphorisation [деметафоризация].

Let us now move on to landing page.

Oxford Business English Dictionary

(IT) the first page of a website that sb sees:

How many readers have clicked on the hyperlink in the email and got to your landing page?

Cambridge Business English Dictionary

a web page that customers are taken to when they click on a link or online advertisement.

People who click on the ads are directed to a landing page that asks for donations.

Origin

Landing page is a recent addition to Modern English vocabulary. According to Wikitionary [https://www.wiktionary.org/], it was first recorded in 1996. The structure of the resultant word-combination is transparent enough: the word page is a shorter version of a webpage, while landingbeing used metaphorically places this polylexemic word-equivalent among the special phraseologisms of Modern English.

Synonyms

home page, web page.

It follows, then, that landing page adheres to the same pattern of morphosyntactic combinabilitynoun + noun as home page and webpage. Neither does it contradict numerous other combinations quoted in the dictionary entry of the high-frequency word landing: a crash/emergency landing on the one hand, and landing craft, landing gear, landing pad. landing place, landing stage, landing strip, on the other hand (Macmillan English Dictionary, p. 797).  This polylexemic phraseologism is very popular nowadays.

Russian-based counterpart
«целевая страница» [ABBYY Lingvo Live].

laundry list

Oxford Business English Dictionary

a long list of people or things

a laundry list of problems 

There is a laundry list of prohibited investments.

Cambridge Business English Dictionary

a laundry list (mainly US)

a long list of subjects

It wasn’t much of a speech – just a laundry list of accusations against the government.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary

a usually long list of items

the laundry list of new consumer-protection bills

Collins International Business English Dictionary

If you describe something as a laundry list of things, you mean that it is a long list of them.
…a laundry list of reasons why shareholders should reject the bid.

Origin

Initially, the expression was used in its literal meaning: a list of clothing items that are to be laundered. For instance:“Learn how to make out a laundry list and to check it when the laundry comes home”. [Scouting for Girls, 1920]

Later on, however, this polylexemic word-equivalent was more and more frequently used in a transferred meaning as a tedious list of items (see the definitions above) and then even as an unrealistic list of requirements demanded by employers; or an equally unrealistic list of skills and experiences provided by a candidate.

Russian-based counterpart

«длинный список» [ABBYY Lingvo Live]

Some of the dictionaries retain the regional label mainly American English. These days, however, this terminological phraseologism derived from a high-frequency lexical item laundry favours of-constructions (a laundry list of …). The Russian-based counterpart demonstrates what is known as demetaphorization.

late majority

Oxford Business English Dictionary

(Marketing) the group of customers who will only start to use a new product after many other people are using it

Late majority people are sceptical about new products and eventually adopt them because of economic necessity or social pressure.

(HR) the people in an organization who will only start to use a new method, process or system after most people in the organization are using it

Investopedia

The last sizable segment of a population to adopt an innovative technology. The late majority accounts for roughly 34% of the population, and will adopt a new product only after seeing that the majority of the population already has. People in this segment are typically older, less affluent and less educated than segments that more readily adopt innovating products.

Online Business Dictionary
In the diffusion of innovation theory, the majority group (roughly 34 percent) of population, which is just ahead of the ‘laggards’ in trying or adopting a new product. Members of this group are older and less educated than other groups (except the laggards), have below-average socioeconomic status, and adopt innovations only when forced. They are not swayed by advertising and rely primarily on recommendations from friends, neighbours, and relatives.

Cambridge Business English Dictionary
(Marketing) the large group of consumers who buy or use new products only after others have tried them first

The late majority tends to be poorer, ignores advertising, and listens closely to recommendations from friends.

(HR) the large group of workers in an organization who start to use new methods, systems, etc. only after others have already done so

Cultural change can happen if the heads of personnel and recruitment can convince the late majority to adopt the new rules.

Origin

The term was spread with the theory “Diffusion of innovations”. It includes the categories of “innovators”, “early adopters”, “early majority”, “late majority”, and “laggards”. The concepts were popularised around 1960s by Everett Rogers, a professor of communication studies [see Rogers 1960].

Antonym

early majority

We can see the same morphosyntactic pattern adj + noun. As far as metaphorization is concerned, it is carried by the adjective.

Russian-based counterparts

марк. «позднее большинство», «запоздалое большинство» [ABBYY Lingvo Live]

The terminological phraseologism late majority is related to the set of notions mentioned in the diffusion of innovations theory.

latent defect

Oxford Business English Dictionary

(Law) a fault in a product that you notice only after you have bought it
The seller will not be liable for any latent defects.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary
a defect (as in a product or property) that is not discoverable by reasonable or customary inspection

a latent defect excluded from the homeowner’s insurance

Online Business Dictionary
Hidden defect in material and/or workmanship of an item which may cause failure or malfunction, but is not discoverable through general inspection. Also called hidden defect. See also patent defect.

Origin

Although its etymology has not been recorded by any etymological dictionary, one can draw several conclusions:  the terminological phraseologism is derived from the adjective latent meaning “something that is latent exists but is not obvious and has not developed yet” (Macmillan English Dictionary, p. 902), for example: a latent infection | latent anger/ aggression/ violence.

Synonyms

patent defect; hidden defect

Russian-based counterparts

«скрытый дефект», «скрытый недостаток», «скрытый порок» [ABBYY Lingvo Live]

As stated above, latent defect has several synonyms. Literally, the Latin word latent means hidden, so latent defect and hidden effect are synonymous, but one has to take into account the difference between the low-frequency adjective latent and high-frequency adjective hidden.

lightning strike

Oxford Business English Dictionary

(HR) a strike by a group of workers that happens very suddenly

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary

1 (British) a strike by workers that is done very suddenly

2 an occurrence of something being hit by lightning

The forest fire was caused by a lightning strike.

Collins International Business English Dictionary

A lightning strike is a strike in which workers stop work suddenly and without any warning, in order to protest about something.

Bank staff are to stage a series of lightning strikes in a dispute over staffing.

English Oxford Living Dictionaries

a strike by workers after little or no warning, especially without official union backing.

Origin

This special phraseologism has been in use over a long period of time.  One can easily deduce the transference of meaning undergone by this combination of adj + noun. The literal meaning of the word strike is retained, whereas the adjective lightning (meaning “very quick”) develops a new use “without warning”. The nominative noun meaning of the lightning “a natural electrical discharge of very short duration and high voltage between a cloud and the ground or within a cloud, accompanied by a bright flash and typically also thunder” is very important here because it triggers the development of the adjective in at least two directions (they were mentioned above – “very quick” and “without warning”).

Synonym

a wildcat strike
a sudden strike (act of refusing to work as a protest) without any warning by the workers and often without the official support of the unions

We can see here the same pattern of metaphorical interpretation: the word strike is used as a base word, with several shades of meaning depending on the attribute.

Russian-based counterpart

«cпонтанная забастовка» [ABBYY Lingvo Live]

loan shark

Oxford Business English Dictionary

a person who lends money at very high rates of interest

Loan sharks were charging 30 thousand a month.

Cambridge Business English Dictionary
a person who charges very large amounts of money for lending money to someone

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary
one who lends money to individuals at exorbitant rates of interest

Collins International Business English Dictionary
If you describe someone as a loan shark, you disapprove of them because they lend money to people and charge them very high rates of interest on the loan. (informal, disapproval)

English Oxford Living Dictionaries

A moneylender who charges extremely high rates of interest, typically under illegal conditions. (informal, derogatory)

reports of exploitation and deceptive trading practices by loan sharks

Origin

The term possibly appeared in late 19^th-century America. It depicted small lenders providing loans at high interest rates. It was profitable but illegal [Haller et al. 1977].

Russian-based counterpart

«ростовщик» [ABBYY Lingvo Live]

Loan shark is a terminological phraseologism that can be perceived and interpreted with a minimum of background knowledge. Huge and dangerous animals, especially predators, are commonly used in metaphors to describe a situation when one competitor is much stronger than the others. It could be mentioned here that in General English the word shark has developed along with its nominative meaning, a nominative-derivative meaning –  “informal someone who gets money by cheating people” (Macmillan English Dictionary, p. 1305). Loan shark follows the typical morphosyntactic pattern noun + noun (compare loan capital) and allows derivation, e.g. loan-sharking.

low-hanging fruit

Oxford Business English Dictionary

a term used by some managers to refer to easy ways of increasing profits, cutting costs, etc.

A lot of the low-hanging fruit has already been picked.

Cambridge Business English Dictionary
(Workplace) something that can be achieved very easily

At a time when companies all want to seem green, packaging is a low-hanging fruit that shouldn’t be underestimated.

English Oxford Living Dictionaries

A thing or person that can be won, obtained, or persuaded with little effort. (informal)

We know mining our own customer base is low-hanging fruit.

Origin

“Like many latter-day clichés, it began life as a succinct and vivid metaphor, the OED’s earliest citation coming from a 1968 Guardian piece attributed to the writer and poet P J Kavanaugh [sic]: “His work is so appealing to me that I feel almost bashful praising it… He is gentle and stoic and simple, his rare images are picked aptly, easily, like low-hanging fruit, and though he appears to move short distances slowly he really moves far and fast.” [quora.com]

Synonym

debenture

Russian-based counterparts

«в пределах досягаемости», «достаётся без труда», «лёгкий труд», «лежащее на поверхности», «не требует особых усилий» [Academic Dictionaries]

The terminological phraseologism is widely used in different spheres: finance, business and even informal conversation. In each case, the core semantics  ‘something easily achieved’ results from transference of meaning.

low road

Oxford Business English Dictionary

(HR) a method of trying to gain an advantage in business which involves paying workers low wages, giving them poor working conditions and producing goods of low value

He has built a high road tyre company in an industry known for taking the low road. | a low-road company

English Oxford Living Dictionaries

A behavior or approach that is unscrupulous or immoral. (informal)

Cambridge Business English Dictionary
(Production) a way of competing in business by producing basic goods at low cost

Competition pushes companies to take the low road, cutting costs and competing on price.

Origin

high road, low road – “rational approach versus emotional appeal”. The phrase gained popularity during the presidential campaign of 1948, when “Republican Thomas E. Dewey selected ‘the high road’ and let voters made their own conclusions as to what road President Harry Truman was trudging”. [Dennis 2006]

Derivation: a high road or high way is the easy way in English usage. In London today the high streets are the main traffic arteries. However the takes of low roads can sometimes make better time, as the balladeer in ‘Lock Lomond’ indicates: “O ye’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.” From “Safire’s New Political Dictionary” by William Safire (Random House, New York, 1993).

Antonym

high road

Russian-based counterpart
«пойти на все ради победы» [Academic Dictionaries]

Low road and high road are terminological phraseologisms; they are antonyms that can be understood without specialist background knowledge. Their morphosyntactic pattern is adj + noun. One could add that there seem to be two idioms derived from these special phraseologisms – to take the low road and to take the high road. They were not registered in any of the corpora-based dictionaries of idioms, but the combination of verb + low (or high) road recur.

lump sum

Oxford Business English Dictionary
a single payment of money

Workers can receive their vacation pay in a lump sum. | You can take up to 25 thousand of your pension as a tax-free lump sum. | She received a lump sum payment of $7 million on joining the company.

Cambridge Business English Dictionary
an amount of money that is paid in one large amount on one occasion

Her divorce settlement included a lump sum of $2 million.

Investopedia:

“A lump-sum payment is a one-time payment for the value of an asset such as an annuity or another retirement vehicle. A lump-sum payment is usually taken in lieu of recurring payments distributed over a period of time. The value of a lump-sum payment is generally less than the sum of all payments that you would otherwise receive, since the party paying the lump-sum payment is being asked to provide more funds up front than it otherwise would have been required to.”

Origin

One of the earliest recordings of a term was on November 8, 1911 in The Gazette Times. Probably, for the first time it was used as a metaphor opposed to a series of payments over time. As a result of recurring use in the media, it gradually gained popularity and became a part of high-frequency English vocabulary.

Russian-based counterpart
«единовременная выплачиваемая сумма» [ABBYY Lingvo Live]

The structure of the terminological phraseologism lump sum is twofold. Firstly, we have a hyperbolic effect achieved with the help of the word lump – a compact mass, presumably heavy. Secondly, we have a regular word sum which makes it sound more like a terminological item.

Before the material is studied from the point of view of the functions performed by phraseological terms (in Chapter 3), I would like to draw several conclusions. Firstly, this stratum in the vocabulary of Business English is not noted for frequency of occurrence: only 10 lexical items out of 150 headwords qualify as special phraseologisms. Secondly, special phraseologisms follow different morphosyntactic patterns: adj + noun and noun + noun. Thirdly, they display different degrees of transference of meaning and metaphorization. Fourthly, some of them develop synonyms and antonyms; several special phraseologisms recur in combinations with high-frequency verbs and can therefore be discussed with regard to idiomatic phraseology. As far as their Russian counterparts are concerned, what one very often observes in the material under analysis is demetaphorization.

Chapter 3

The functional aspect of terminological phraseologisms

§ 1. Preliminary remarks.

In the previous chapters of the present paper two aspects of special phraseology were looked at – the research works carried out by Russian and foreign professionals, on the one hand, and the lexicographic material from several authoritative sources, on the other hand. In Chapter 3 the functional aspect of terminological phraseologisms comes to the fore. The material under investigation comprises fully-fledged business-related articles from The NEW YORKER Magazine.

§ 2. The functional aspect in the research works by Russian and foreign linguists.

As it was stated in the article by T. B. Nazarova [Nazarova 2016], terminological phraseologisms haveboth features of terminological systems and features of idioms proper: terminological phraseologismsare definable as terminological items, but they also have figurative meanings, and this fact brings them closer to idioms.

Most of the terminological phraseologisms gleaned from the first of the articles under analysis (6 out of 11) are not included in the dictionaries. They were not registered in any of the dictionaries used for the present research project. The exact wording is not set in stone as they have a range of different variants. It means that the process of incorporating the terminological phraseologism into the terminological system is not yet accomplished and the word-combination is perceived as a neologism. According to Garifullina [2006] new terms are used in journalistic style to describe new phenomena and to attract attention to them. Therefore, they have two important functions: the informative function and the novelty effect.

The definition from (Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics, p. 85) runs as follows: “Used very widely of the part that a unit plays in a larger structure.” New terms reflect the introduction of new concepts and new notions.

When a reader comes across an unaccustomed term, it focuses his attention. According to Konurbaev [2016: 96], when we read, we form a map of accents and the new words play an important role in this process: they help to restructure the whole hierarchy of notions, making the new word the most prominent.

In Yufang [2011: 148] two major functions of metaphorical language are distinguished. The first one is “abstract reasoning”. According to G. Lakoff “Metaphor is the main mechanism through which we comprehend abstract concepts and perform abstract reasoning”. [Lakoff 1993: 244]. When abstract ideas arise, a metaphor helps to express the more characteristic features of the underlying idea.

The second function is evaluation and emotive communication. As 5 terms that are found in the dictionaries are labeled as “neutral”, we can state that there is no evaluation or emotive function. Therefore, we will single out three main functions that terminological phraseologisms represent in the articles: 1) novelty effect, 2) informative function, 3) abstract reasoning.

Frequency information for every terminological phraseologism under analysis is provided with the number of words in the individual texts rounded to the nearest hundred.

§ 3. The functional aspect of terminological phraseologisms in business-related articles.

The first set of contexts is provided by The NEW YORKER Magazine. The article under the title “The Moscow Laundromat” is devoted to the involvement of Deutsche Bank in what is called mirror trading. The structure of the article runs as follows: the author Ed Caesar begin by detailing several incidents; he then briefly describes the history of Deutsche Bank and the major names related to the story and, finally, he puts together all the disparate threads of information, which makes the readers’ understanding of the situation complete. To make this text more figurative and multidimensional, numerous terminological phraseologisms are used in various contexts. When they occur for the first time, they are usually given in double quotes. However, all the other occurrences in the given text are not highlighted with the help of punctuation marks.

The first terminological phraseologism under investigation is money laundering. According to Ch. Duhaime, “Money laundering is a process whereby the proceeds of crime are transformed into apparently legitimate money or other assets.” [Duhaime 2011] The title of the article “The Moscow Laundromat” is an allusion related to this terminological phraseologism. It figuratively indicates the most important issue of the whole text.

Let us now pass on to the contexts and focus on the function (or functions) performed by the terminological phraseologisms.

THE NEW YORKER

July 30, 2017

1. “At its most extreme,” the authors explained, the unrecorded capital flight from Moscow included “criminal activity such as tax evasion and money laundering”.
2. Antanta Kapital ceased trading in 2008, and Gaydamak was later indicted in Israel for fraud and money laundering.
3. In March, the Financial Conduct Authority of the U.K. sent a letter to Deutsche Bank, saying that the company’s U.K. branch had “serious M.L. (anti-money laundering), terroristfinancing and sanctions failings which were systemic in nature.”
4. And the mirror trades may exact a heavy fine from U.S. regulators, who take a dim view of activity that looks like money laundering.

The terminological phraseologism money laundering is used in the same manner as the other terminological items such as tax evasion, fraud, terrorist financing, etc. At first sight, it may seem that this terminological phraseologism is not perceived as a metaphor. Let us turn to the dictionaries in search of meanings and labels.

As follows from the table, the terminological phraseologism money laundering is registered in two dictionaries OBED and CBED. The dictionary entries in both of them do not have any labels (stylistic or pragmatic); neither do they mention a specific industry or sphere of use. Theterminological phraseologism has turned into a conventional metaphor. It performs the abstract reasoning function, as it conveys an idea of the underlying process.

The next terminological phraseologism to be studied in detail is mirror trading. Within the business-related articles under analysis, this special phraseologism is noted for frequency of occurrence: the corpus of material collected for this graduation paper includes at least 48 occurrences in different forms – mirror trading (9), mirror trades (37), a mirror trade (1), mirror-trade (5). Mirror trading is a compound verbal noun (mirror trading).

Mirror trade/mirror trades is a noun + noun compound.  A compound adjective mirror-trade is found in several collocations: the mirror-trade scheme, the first major mirror-trade clients, two mirror-trades counterparties, to set up the mirror-trade scheme, the mirror-trade scandal, repeated mirror trades, through mirror trades, their roles in mirror trades, diverted through mirror trades, etc.

THE NEW YORKER

July 30, 2017

1. On the Moscow markets, this sleight of hand had a nickname: convert, which means “envelope” and echoes the English verb “convert”. In the English-language media, the scheme has become known as “mirror trading”.
2. Fourteen former and current employees of Deutsche Bank in Moscow spoke to me about the mirror trades, as did several people involved with the clients.
3. Viewed with detachment, however, repeated mirror trades suggest a sustained plot to shift and hide money of possibly dubious origin.
4. In an internal report, Deutsche Bank has admitted that, until April, 2015, when three members of its Russian equities desk were suspended for their role in the mirror trades, about ten billion dollars was spirited out of Russia through the scheme.
5. In April, 2015, the mirror-trades scheme unravelled.
6. The others were Russian sales traders on the equities desk: Dina Maksutova and Georgiy Buznik. Afterward, Bloomberg News suggested that some of the money diverted through mirror trades belonged to Igor Putin, a cousin of the Russian president, and to Arkady and Boris Rotenberg.
7. In June, 2015, with pressure from shareholders intensifying over the mirror trades and other scandals, the co-C.E.O.s of Deutsche Bank, Anshu Jain and Jurgen Fitschen, announced that they would resign.
8. Mirror trading was an ideal escape tunnel.
9. According to people with knowledge of how mirror trades worked at Deutsche Bank, the main clients who were engaged in the scheme came to the bank in 2011 through Sergey Suverov, a sales researcher.
10. In 2009, top managers at Antanta Kapital formed Westminster Capital Management, which became one of the first major mirror-trade
11. Volkov also began executing mirror trades for several other companies.
12. Colleagues also remember that Hayes asked both Buznik and Wiswell about the mirror trades.
13. Several Deutsche Bank employees in London knew about the mirror trades, even though the orders were taken in Moscow.
14. Buznik became uneasy that Volkov was executing identical buy and sell orders, and twice asked to meet with Wiswell to discuss the propriety of mirror trading.
15. One day in 2011, the Russian side of a mirror trade, for about ten million dollars, could not be completed: the counterparty, Westminster Capital Management, had just lost its trading license.
16. The Federal Financial Markets Service in Russia had barred two mirror-tradecounterparties, Westminster and Financial Bridge, for improperly using the stock market to send money overseas.
17. Volkov resumed calling in mirror trades, on behalf of other counterparties.
18. The apparent willingness of counterparties to lose money again and again a former manager at Deutsche Bank told me, should have “sounded an air-raid alarm” that the true purpose of the mirror trades was to facilitate capital flight.
19. Another British mirror-trades entity, ErgoInvest, was registered in the same office in Hertfordshire where Chadborg was registered.
20. In 2014, Gorbatov bought another Russian brokerage implicated in mirror trades: Rye, Man & Gor.
21. They were brokerages run by Russian middlemen who took commissions for initiating mirror trades on behalf of rich people and businesses eager to send their money offshore.
22. Crucially, the footprint of individual mirror trades was small.
23. Mirror trades never exceeded twenty million dollars a day, and were normally in the region of ten million dollars.
24. Deutsche Bank claims that some of the suspicious trades were “one-way,” meaning that another bank picked up the mirror order—a more laborious but less traceable transaction.
25. In April, I met a broker in Moscow who had worked with clients of the Deutsche Bank mirror trades.
26. He told me that mirror trading was not a new scheme.
27. He did this by expatriating money using mirror trades.
28. The broker found it hard to believe that the wealthiest Russians, such as the Rotenberg brothers, would have used mirror trades.
29. Other people I spoke with disputed the broker’s assessment: U.S. and E.U. sanctions have made it increasingly difficult for Russian billionaires to expatriate money, and mirror tradeshad the advantage of being a quiet method, because of the relatively small amounts involved in each transaction.
30. Another Russian banker, who helped to set up the mirror-trade scheme, told me that much of the money belonged to Chechens with connections to the Kremlin.
31. The Deutsche Bank mirror-trades operation appears to be linked to an even bigger attempt to expatriate money: the so-called Moldovan scheme.
32. The Russian news agency RBC has reported that “the criminal dealings of Promsberbank” and the mirror trades at Deutsche Bank are connected.
33. Reports of Deutsche Bank’s internal investigation into mirror trades do not inspire confidence.
34. Mirror trades occurred for at least two years before anyone raised any concerns, and when red flags appeared it was months before anyone acted on them.
35. According to Bloomberg News, the internal report notes that, in early 2014, a series of inquiries about the propriety of mirror trades had been logged by multiple parties, including Hellenic Bank, in Cyprus, the Russian Central Bank, and back-office staff members at Deutsche Bank itself.
36. Instead, their inquiry was fielded by the equities desk that was performing the mirror trades.
37. A former colleague of Wiswell’s at Deutsche Bank says that, even before the mirror trades, some of Wiswell’s activity as head of the equities desk was questionable.
38. When the mirror trades began at Deutsche Bank, in 2011, revenues on Wiswell’s desk were falling sharply, and Wiswell likely felt pressure to improve performance.
39. For Maksutova and Buznik, at least, there was no obvious financial benefit to performing mirror trades: the extra volume did not affect their bonuses.
40. On an April evening in Moscow, I met with a broker who had intimate knowledge of the structure of the mirror trades.
41. As the broker and I walked across the square, he characterized mirror trades as just one of a thousand ruses employed by smart businessmen.
42. He said that Wiswell had been paid handsomely by clients of the mirror trades.
43. When Moscow regulators looked into the mirror trades, they found little to trouble them.
44. Whatever the outcome of the various investigations into mirror trades, the bank is in trouble.
45. On March 9, 2015, less than a month before the mirror-trades scandal became public, Oliver Harvey and Robin Winkler, two strategists in the research department of Deutsche Bank in London, published a report, “Dark Matter,” which described the vast unrecorded transfer of money among nations.
46. Given Deutsche Bank’s fragility, the mirror-trading scandal could not have come at a worse time.
47. And the mirror trades may exact a heavy fine from U.S. regulators, who take a dim view of activity that looks like money laundering.
48. In the wake of the mirror-trades scandal, one section of the text stands out.

The special phraseologism under consideration is not found in the dictionaries. However, we can find the following comment on Investopedia: “Mirror trading was initially only available to institutional clients but was later made available to retail investors. Its automated nature can help prevent investors from making emotion-based trading decisions”. Because there are no dictionary definitions, we have to make an effort and define this terminological phraseologism: mirror trading is a technique that facilitates capital flight (=shifting and hiding money of possibly dubious origin).

As this term is a recent innovation, it performs the functions of novelty effect and also the informative function, as the reader of the article has to think over the concept to fully understand the meaning of the passage it was introduced in.

The next terminological phraseologism under investigation is capital flight. It appears 6 times in the article from The New Yorker. Unlike the previous items, it did not create any metaphorical links with other notions in the context.

THE NEW YORKER

July 30, 2017

1. The apparent willingness of counterparts to lose money again and again, a former manager at Deutsche Bank told me, should have “sounded an air-raid alarm” that the true purpose of the mirror trades was to facilitate capital flight.
2. In a connected and digitized financial system, how could such capital flight happen?
3. The impact of this capital flight is felt at both ends of its journey.
4. Capital flight also has weakened Russia’s tax base and its currency.
5. The apparent willingness of counterparties to lose money again and again, a former manager at Deutsche Bank told me, should have “sounded an air-raid alarm” that the true purpose of the mirror trades was to facilitate capital flight.
6. “At its most extreme,” the authors explained, the unrecorded capital flight from Moscow included “criminal activity such as tax evasion and money laundering”.

In the OBED and the CBED capital flight is claimed to be applied in Economics. It is not labeled as informal, therefore, it has the abstract reasoning function.

Overall, we can see that in this business-related 1500-word article we can find 60 contexts containing terminological phraseologisms. The most widely used metaphor was “mirror trading”, which produced 48 occurrences out of total 60.

The article Better Business Through Sci-Fi provides us with another item to dwell upon. This is the terminological phraseologism corporate visioning, a differentia specifica extension of vision statement. Corporate visioning or vision statement is “an aspirational description of what an organization would like to achieve or accomplish in the mid-term or long-term future” [Online Business Dictionary]. It appeared in the article only once. However, in the text there are several terms that contain the adjective corporate: corporate consulting, corporate clients.

THE NEW YORKER

July 30, 2017

• Today, his network of a hundred or so authors writes customized stories for the likes of Visa, Ford, Pepsi, Samsung, and NATO. Popper calls their work corporate visioning.

The special phraseologism corporate visioning is relatively new and has different versions. We can come across “vision statement” and “business visioning”. In the table below we can see whether these terms are included in the dictionaries listed in §2 of Chapter 2.

As we can see, the only lexicographically registered term is vision statement. However, we can find corporate visioning on the Internet. The top three most popular search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo provide us with following statistics:

The above table confirms that the term corporate visioning is used in Modern English, though it is not formally registered in the traditional and online dictionaries. This terminological phraseologism produces the novelty effect and performs the informative function. It draws the attention of the reader to the new concept.

The terminological phraseologism corporate visioning is the only one found in the article which contains under 1000 words.

The next set of contexts is provided by The Guardian.

THE GUARDIAN

February 9, 2018

Bear market appeared twice in the article under analysis, both times in the same sentence. This well-known and high-frequency terminological phraseologism has links with several terminological items: the definition from the Cambridge Buisness English Dictionary [p. 66] contains numerous business terms (“bear market Finance, Stock Market a period during which prices in a financial market are going down and a lot of people are selling shares”), for example: price(s), (financial) market, share(s). It has got a terminological antonym bull market. Cf. also: bear position, bear raid, bear run, bear squeeze.

• “When we have a bear market again, and we are going to have a bear market again, it will be the worst in our lifetime,” he told Bloomberg. “Debt is everywhere, and it’s much, much higher now.”

In the Oxford Business English Dictionary bear market is defined as “a period during which people are selling shares, etc. rather than buying, because they expect the prices to fall”. In this dictionary there are entries for bear (a person who sells shares), bearish (showing or expecting a fall in the prices), bear position (a situation in which an investor sells shares), bear raid (an attempt by a dealer to make the price of a share go down), bear run (a situation where the value of shares is falling).

Bear market is related to Finance and Stock Exchange in the OBED. Therefore, it employs the abstract reasoning function.

Bear market is the only terminological phraseologism that was found in the article containing ~700 words.

• Rising bond yields – coupled with a strong signal from the Bank of England that an interest rate increase was on the way – added to expectations that the world’s major central banks were now firmly on course to wind down the emergency stimulus they have pumped through the financial system since 2009, driving an almost decade-long stock market rally.

THE GUARDIAN

February 8, 2018

The terminological phraseologism market rally is not found in the dictionaries. Therefore, we can come to the conclusion that it is a new term that has not been formally defined.

As one studies the data in the grid above, one can see that it is mostly used in American English. On Investopedia and Wikipedia it is described as “a period of sustained increases in the prices of stocks, bonds or indexes”. Also, they provide such examples as a bull market rally or a bear market rally. We encountered the term a bear market as a period when people tend to sell shares, therefore, a bear market rally is defined as a period of declining prices. Bull market is a period of rising prices, a bull market rally has a similar meaning.

The term combines the function of the novelty effect and the informative function. It is the only term that was found in the article containing ~500 words.

• It is difficult to overstate the significance of this colossal land privatisation, and the manifold damages to the social and economic fabric of the nation that have been caused.

THE GUARDIAN
February 8, 2018

Social and economic fabric is a recently appeared term that has several variations:
social-economic fabric, socio-economic fabric, and social and economic fabric.

None of these three polylexemic word-equivalents are included in the dictionaries under analysis. However, we can find the definition in the Online Business dictionary: “The composite demographics of a defined area, which consists of its ethnic composition, wealth, education level, employment rate and regional values”.

As the terminological phraseologism is new, it employs the novelty effect and the informative function.

The next set of contexts was published in Forbes. Even the title of the first article contains a terminological phraseologism: Buffett’s Bet with the Hedge Funds: And the Winner Is…

The terminological phraseologism consists of two nouns, wherein the noun hedge is always singular, while fund can be either in singular and plural. It is quite clear that the word is used as a conventional metaphor, which conveys an idea of a type of fund.

FORBES
March 14, 2017

1. In 2008, Warren Buffett issued a challenge to the hedge fund industry, which in his view charged exorbitant fees that the funds’ performances couldn’t justify.
2. Buffett’s ultimately successful contention was that, including fees, costs and expenses, an S&P 500 index fund would outperform a hand-picked portfolio of hedge funds over 10 years.
3. Not long after the wager started on January 1, 2008, the market tanked, and the hedge fundswere able to show off their strong suit: hedging.
4. Buffett’s index fund lost 37.0% of its value, compared to the hedge funds’9%.
5. Buffett then beat Protégé in every year from 2009 through 2014, but it took four years to pull ahead of the hedge funds in terms of cumulative return.
6. In 2015, Buffett lagged his hedge fund rival for the first time since 2008, gaining 1.4% versus Protégé’s 1.7%.
7. In his shareholder letter, Buffett said he believed the hedge fund managers involved in the bet were “honest and intelligent people,” but added, “the results for their investors were dismal – really dismal.”
8. And he noted that the two-and-twenty fee structure generally adopted by hedge funds (2% management fee plus 20% of profits) means that managers were «showered with compensation» despite, often enough, providing only «esoteric gibberish» in return.
9. In his letter, Buffett estimated that the financial «elites» had wasted $100 billion or more over the past decade by refusing to settle for low-cost index funds, but pointed out that the harm was not limited to 1%-ers: state pension plans have invested with hedge funds, and «the resulting shortfalls in their assets will for decades have to be made up by local taxpayers.»
10. He also raises doubts that fees were the deciding factor, pointing out that the MSCI All Country World Index has performed almost exactly in line with the hedge funds in the bet.
11. «It was global diversification that hurt hedge fund returns more than fees,» Seides concludes.
12. The terms of the bet pit incomparable vehicles against each other – apples and oranges, or as Seides put it, the Chicago Bulls and the Chicago Bears: «hedge funds and the S&P 500 play different sports.»
13. Protégé’s is the average return of five funds of funds, meaning that the fund-of-fund managers who select the choicest hedge funds themselves take a cut.
14. These funds-of-funds have not been disclosed, in line with SEC rules on hedge funds’
15. While the hedge funds and funds of funds – the hares – bound around between exotic asset classes and elaborate derivatives, charging high fees for their troubles, passive index investors – the tortoises – worry about other things while the market, significant short-term turbulence aside, gradually gains in value.
16. Protégé sees things differently, writing before the bet started, «Hedge funds do not set out to beat the market.
17. Protégé argues that «there is a wide gap between the returns of the best hedge funds and the average ones,» which justify the fees at the center of the argument.
18. While Buffett won according to the terms of the bet, the hedge fund side showed the merits of a bit of extra tweaking and pruning following the 2008 crash, which put them ahead of Buffett’s Vanguard fund until 2012.

Hedge fund is included in all the dictionaries. The CBED and the Merriam Webster do not label it as industry-specific or informal, though in the OBED the terminological phraseologism is related to Finance. It is used as a conventional term and performs the abstract reasoning function.

We have 18 occurrences of this terminological phraseologism in the article containing ~600 words.

The next terminological phraseologism is investment horizons. It is a compound that appears both in the singular and the plural forms interchangeably.

FORBES
December 29, 2017

1. In the past 10 weeks, biotechs have fallen while the rest of the market rallied. Todd believes the pullback has created a good entry point for those with investment horizons of more than 1 year.
2. However, over any reasonable investment horizon, the stock market is still the best way to grow your portfolio.
3. Resolve this year to adopt at least a 3 year investment horizon and invest in either index funds or in managers with superior track records.

Investment horizon is not found in any of the dictionaries. We can find the definition on Investopedia: “Investment horizon is the total length of time that an investor expects to hold a security or a portfolio”. Investment horizon is linked to the terms investor, securities and portfolio, which are included in its definition. According to the OBED, investor is “a person who puts money into something in order to make a profit or get an advantage”, securities are “stocks, shares and bonds which are bought as investments” [Nazarova 2006], and portfolio is “a group of different investments held by an individual or institutional investor” [Nazarova 2006].

It is a new terminological phraseologism that combines the novelty effect with the informative function.

There are three contexts with this new terminological phraseologism that were found in the article containing ~600 words.

Another terminological phraseologism is used in the title of the article “The Benefits of Owning Blue Chip Stocks”. The role of terminological phraseologisms in the titles is to make them sound more attractive and catchy. The effect achieved in this case is different from the impact of another title analysed earlier “The Moscow Laundromat”.

Now let us demonstrate how the item functions in the main body of the text.

USA TODAY
February 1, 2018

1. Investing in blue chip stocks can be one of the most profitable things a person can do over their lifetime if they are careful to select a basket of shares in strong companies at reasonable valuations and a history of paying out the increasing profits in the form of cash dividends.
2. Investing in blue chip stocks may have a reputation for being boring, stodgy, and perhaps even a little outdated.
3. Anyone with common sense would want a stake in businesses they not only understand but that have a demonstrated record of extreme profitability over generations, and blue chips certainly fit the description.
4. Measured across long periods, blue chip stocks have minted money for owners prudent enough to hang on to them with tenacity through thick and thin, good times and bad times, war and peace, inflation and deflation.
5. Blue chip stocks often represent companies residing at the core of American and global business; firms boasting pasts every bit as colorful as any novel and interwoven with politics and history.
6. How is it possible, then, that blue chip stocks have long reigned supreme in the investment portfolios of retirees, non-profit foundations, as well as members of the top 1% and the capitalist class, while being almost entirely ignored by smaller, poorer investors?
7. Blue chip stocks don’t belong exclusively to the realm of widows and insurance companies, and here’s why.

As can be seen above, blue chip stocks functions along with blue chips. Chips used in the plural substitutes the plural form of the word stock in the full wording of the term blue chip stocks.

The terminological phraseologism blue-chip is found in all of the dictionaries: blue-chip (also blue-chip (noun) Finance, Stock Market, also blue-chip company) is a large and successful company whose shares are considered to be a good investment. blue chip (also blue-chip) adjective [before noun] Finance, Stock Market relating to a large and successful company, whose shares are considered to be a good investment. blue-chip clients, blue-chip stocks/shares (Cambridge Business English Dictionary, p. 78)

Three terminological phraseologisms are found in the article under analysis containing ~1300 words.

• What Is a Housing Bubble? A bubble is a marked price increase fueled at least partly by an expectation that prices will continue to rise.

HUFFINGTON POST
December 21, 2017

The definition of housing bubble is to be found only on the Internet: “A housing bubble is a run-up in housing prices fueled by demand, speculation and exuberance”. [Investopedia] Even in this extract we can see that the author provided with his own definition of the concept, as he anticipated that the readers might not understand it. Therefore, it employs the novelty effect function as well as the informative function.

The terminological phraseologism housing bubble has links with several terminological items: “bubble Economics a situation that cannot last in which prices rise very quickly and many people make a lot of money” and “bubble economy Economics a temporary situation when businesses grow very fast, the prices of shares and homes, etc. rise and employment increases” (Cambridge Buisness English Dictionary, p. 93).

The article containing ~900 words has employed 2 terminological phraseologisms: housing bubble and a bubble price.

11 terminological phraseologisms have been singled out in the business-related articles analysed in Chapter 3. 6 items out of those 11 were not included in any of the dictionaries available in their traditional or online forms. The remaining 5 terminological phraseologisms were supplied with definitions, labels and illustrative phrases.

We can conclude that 5 out of 11 terminological phraseologisms employ the abstract reasoning function, whereas 6 out of 11 have both the function of the novelty effect and the informative function.

Conclusion

Let us draw several conclusions and sum up the main results of the study of terminological phraseologisms undertaken in the present paper.

Firstly, I have thoroughly reviewed the theoretical aspect of special phraseologisms as reflected in the research works by Russian and foreign linguists. Renowned scholars investigated phraseology using different materials, offered their own classifications of phraseologisms and researched their functions. We have concluded that as special phraseologisms have a link with a particular terminological system as well as the transference of meaning, it is crucial to separate them from general phraseology.

Secondly, I examined the lexicographic aspect of the terminological phraseologisms under consideration. The techniques employed are as follows: a representative fragment of the material was selected, the definition of the headword phraseologisms were adduced, their origin was examined, and synonyms or antonyms named; Russian-based equivalents were suggested whenever possible. I took a representative sample – 150 headwords – from the Oxford Business English Dictionary, provided their definitions from other dictionaries (the Cambridge Business English Dictionary, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the Collins International Business English Dictionary, Investopedia and others) whenever needed. Out of the 150 headwords under consideration only 10 lexical items were categorized as special phraseologisms.  The special phraseologisms in question follow different morphosyntactic patterns: adj + noun and noun + noun. They show different degrees of transference of meaning and metaphorization. Moreover, some of them have synonyms and antonyms. Their Russian counterparts, on the other hand, are very often demetaphorized.

Thridly, the functional aspect of terminological phraseologisms was investigated. 6 items out of 11, that were singled out from business-related articles, were not registered in the traditional and online dictionaries. As to the functions that special phraseologisms perform in the text, I can name three functions at least: abstract reasoning function,  novelty effect and informative function. 5 out of 11 terminological phraseologisms demonstrate the abstract reasoning function, whereas 6 out of 11 have both the function of the novelty effect and the informative function.

When the terminological phraseologism is a recent innovation in Business English vocabulary, it draws a lot of attention to itself and can be employed as a useful device. A new metaphor simplifies one’s understanding of the new notion behind it. Sometimes even a lack of specialist knowledge is not an obstacle for understanding what this or that special phraseologism means. However, as terminological phraseologisms settle down in the lexical system, they tend to lose the novelty effect and acquire the status of a conventional metaphor.

The two articles – The Moscow Laundromat and Buffett’s Bet with the Hedge Funds: And the Winner Is… – rank highest with 60 and 18 occurrences of the terminological phraseologisms in the respective texts. In the other articles the average number is from 1 to 7 out of 700-1000 words. These numbers clearly demonstrate that, with some exceptions, terminological phraseologisms are rarely noted for frequency of occurrence and, generally, could be classified as a low-frequency terminological layer.

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