Specialized Communication and English Studies:Research Proposals on Specialized Lexicography and English for Specific Purposes

Resumen

In this article, I intend to marshal evidence in order to advocate the leading role that English philologists are called to play in the analysis of specialized communication. Considering that University Degrees are being adapted to accommodate to Bologna guidelines, English philologists, for example, could incorporate into their more traditional fields of research new analyses of special communication, particularly those focused on specialized lexicography and English for Specific Purposes (ESP). With respect to specialized lexicography, the recent publication of the Dictionnaire dápprentissage du français des affaires (DAFA) offer interesting insights as to how the works of pedagogical lexicographers suit the needs of specialists, would-be specialists, and the informed layperson. Regarding ESP, two assumptions merit further interest. On the one hand, disciplinary variation is significant, thus paving the way for more incisive and rather different genre analyses. On the other hand, research with special purpose corpora encourages us to think that the tenets of, for example, Discourse Analysis, can be used to investigate the role played by ideology in specialized communication.