Paper 2- Language and Occupation- Occupational Lexis

Occupational Lexis

Outcomes

• Become familiar with and correctly use the terms occupational lexis, restricted lexis
• Gain an overview of the research of Micheal Nelson into business English
• Analyse his findings
• Reflect on own experience of occupational English in the light of his own findings

When analyzing occupational lexis we consider lexical items from the semantic field of the occupation

• Teacher- deadlines, homework, exam, revision
• Police Officer- Theft, crime, arrest, 99
• Journalist- dumbing down, hard news, treatment, infotainment
• Author- Characters, plot, setting, chapters

Restricted Lexis- Some occupations use lexis associated with that occupation only

• From the semantic field of the legal profession- primma face, habeas corpus
• From the semantic field of aviation: altimeter, airspeed indicator, course deviation indicator (CDC) as the initialism and radar as the acronym

Occupational lexis that is not restricted is more common. This lexis is used within an occupation in everyday English although they may have a different meaning

E.G. >>>>>> Believing that he was the innocent party, the actor started an action aganist the photogarpher. When the judgement was executed a seizure of the photographer's camera and prints took place

Lexical Item                              This Context                                    Everyday context

• Party        …