Semantic relationships in the terminology system of the U.S. higher education (based on the materials from the websites of the U.S. higher education institutions)

Abstract

The article highlights semantic relations (synonymy, antonymy, polysemy) within the terminological system of specialized language of the U. S. higher education. In the study, the authors utilize the definition of the educational term of the U. S. higher education as a standard lexical or syntactic nominative unit with a neutral connotation and communicative, pragmatic and heuristic orientation, denoting a special educational concept and functionally related to the professional sphere of higher education in the United States. The material for the study was the websites of the U. S. higher education institutions as specialized texts, which are characterized by their multimodal nature, providing for various ways of presenting information, including language, graphics, images, sound/music. Being the most important means of ensuring fast and effective communication of higher education institutions with the target audience, a university website as a type of professional text has a clearly expressed pragmatic orientation. It is outlined that the analysis of semantic relations plays an important role in the study of paradigmatic aspects of the nomination of the terminological units of the U. S. higher education. Paradigmatic relations of a term serve as the basis by which terminological units are organized into certain terminological structures.It is stated that the phenomena of synonymy, antonymy, and polysemy, in combination with logical methods of definition and classification, are considered universals of any terminological system. It is emphasized that semantic relations in the studied specialized language and in the national language differ significantly. The conclusion is drawn that while the phenomena of synonymy, antonymy, polysemy are widespread in the lexical system of the commonly used language, in the terminological system under study these phenomena have their own limitations and specificity, which is determined by such requirements for the term as unambiguity, stylistic neutrality, etc., ideally excluding any polysemantic relations.