Strengthening the Cognitive Capacity of a Standard–Literary Language—the Semiotic Aspect

Abstract

Strengthening the cognitive potential of a standard-literary language (in Polish calls ‘intellectualization’) takes place when the terms which exist so far in the confined sphere of professional discourse, extend the coverage of their usage in the standard literary language. The influx of elements from one language system into another is also the sign by its nature—it betokens the changes of civilization, which are reflected in the language. Due to terms the speech becomes more definite and precise, able to express all the complexity of thoughts and interconnections between them. Scientific and technological changes complicate the very concept of the homogenous language, because except for the above mentioned, we can notice other phenomena: old signs obtain new meanings; new relations with another sign at different levels—phonetic phonological, morphological, word-formative etc. appear; old and new verbal signs acquire new semantic connotations. That clearly means that the process of strengthening the cognitive potential of the standard literary language, has the nature of semiosis, because appearing in this language not only verbal but also another types of signs (special symbols, tables, graphs, numerals, formulas, diagrams, drawings) as well as related to this, various syntactic and pragmatic phenomena reveal the multifaceted character of the semantic function of a sign.

The article is based on my research on the English terminological loanwords in contemporary Russian economic texts. The collected economic terms (mostly Americanisms and Briticisms) allowed to introduce the multi spectual (multi-level) classification of the numerous and diversified material. The classification scales are based on grammatical, structural, lexical-semantic and stylistic attributes as well as the phases of adaptation in the text.