The use of technical terms among engineering students at Lithuanian University of Agriculture

Abstract

Nowadays even more technical terms are appearing, therefore, it is extremely significant not only to name them properly but also to make the necessary corrections. The authors of the article investigate the use of technical terms among the engineering students at Lithuanian University of Agriculture. The aim of the article is to determine how the students understand and define technical terms. The article also strives to determine the competence level of future engineers and aims to prove that it is necessary to make a comprehensive explanatory dictionary of technical terms in the Lithuanian language. The object of the present investigation is one-word technical terms. Moreover, the article advocates a sociolinguistic research embracing the fields of semantics and terminology. The results were obtained by distributing anonymous questionnaires to the first and second year students of engineering. The questionnaire, which included 25 technical terms, was filled in by 101 respondents. Certain terms are chosen because they are typical not only of the language of engineers, but also of the modern standard Lithuanian language. The investigation revealed that the majority of respondents tend to use the terms mechanism and machine, as well as gear, gadget, tool and device as completely synonymous because of the lack of linguistic competence. This is the reason why the respondents are not able to clarify the meaning of the words accurately. In addition, we can state that the term technology is a superordinate term to machine and mechanism, whereas other terms such as gear, gadget, tool and device are hyponyms of the terms machine and mechanism. As well, defining the terms the majority of respondents concentrate upon the function of a particular object.