Lexical and semantic specifics of English surgical terminology

Given study aims at revealing semantic and lexical features of English surgical terminology and improving existent dictionary entries by compiling an extended one. The research is based on 148 terms extracted from surgical dictionaries. Moreover, the authors compiled a corpus of 214 contexts retrieved from the British National Corpus. The texts were coded as enumerated example sentences containing the terms. The research novelty is predetermined by a multifaceted approach and developed algorithm to study terminology that can further be applied to various sets of language units. Methods of semantic, contextual, lexicographic analysis, concordance lines, and questionnaire survey were used to study semantic and lexical features of surgical terminology. The research was conducted in five stages accorded with the research questions. Semantic analysis performed on stage 1 showed that based on the core seme terms fall into five groups, namely, surgical needles, types of suture, stitching techniques, types of surgical knots and tools. The nominations of needles and sutures prevail. Revealed frequency induced further studies of names of needles and sutures. On stage two we determined that numbers, participles and adjectives are used to nominate the needles, thus reflecting the functions, appearance, and application site. The nominations of sutures rest on the depth, shape and tissues involved in the suturing process. On Stage 3 collocations with the terms were revealed in the corpora. KWIC search enabled vivid distribution of the units in the BNC, whereas AntConc tool was applied to the txt file of Oxford Handbook of clinical surgery to generate concordance lines with the term needle. The search revealed prevalence of verbs of movement (insert, plunge, pass, advance), adjectives (percutaneous, hypodermic) and set phrases (pins and needles, needle in a haystack). According to the questionnaire survey results obtained on Stage 4, terms needle and suture provoke different associations among medical and non-medical students. The sensual and emotional words (pain, crying, tingling) were given only by non-medical participants. Whereas medical students resorted to wide spectrum of medical terminology related to needles and sutures, namely, tissues, types and location. The data obtained on all the stages was used to compile an extended dictionary entry of the term needle. The entry comprised six zones, namely, entry word, literal and figurative translation, word combinations, set phrases, and examples. The zones were marked and separated to facilitate visual perception and comprehension. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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