Language for special purposes and the research of its vocabulary

Abstract

Abstract The aim of the paper is to touch upon the complexity of LSP-related research and to sketch some of its important terminological and methodological issues. The paper also provides an overview of the history, themes, discussions, approaches and outputs in the contemporary LSP-research mainly in French and German speaking countries, but also including a selection of Czech and English authors. The contribution presents a variety of ways how the concept of LSP has been defined in linguistics in the last 50 years, as well as descriptive and modeling efforts with respect to the stratification of LSP. The paper pays special attention to the issue and concept of the so-called Basic Scientific Vocabulary, that is, its various names, definitions and research projects aimed at identifying such a vocabulary, or even, as is the case with German research tradition, a genuine sub-language. The paper concludes with a picture of some French, German and other LSP-related projects that have been launched in the last decades in the direction of corpus-based and -driven research. This tendency shows the importance of rich empirical material (corpora) not only as a foundation for further linguistic research in LSP, but also a basis for the lexicographical and terminographical research.