IV Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2012

English is the language of interoperability. It enables multinational forces taking part in NATO, EU and UN peace support operations to communicate effectively with each other. Army, navy and air forces from many nations need to work together using English as the international language. Meanwhile radio communication systems have been widely used by practically all arms and services throughout the world to enhance communications at the tactical edge which can be crucial for military operations. All this makes studying English terminology of military radio communication systems timely and important.

As it is commonly accepted terminology is the study of terms and their use. Terms are words and compound words that in specific contexts are given specific meanings, meanings that may deviate from the meaning the same words have in other contexts and in everyday language. Technical terminology, in its turn, is the specialized vocabulary of any field, not just technical fields. The same is true of the synonyms technical terms, terms of art, shop talk and words of art, which do not necessarily refer to technology or art. Within one or more fields, these terms have one or more specific meanings that are not necessarily the same as those in common use.

However, most learners of English find understanding technical (especially, military) terminology quite challenging. This may be due to a number of reasons. The first and most important may be the fact that English terminology of such kind abounds in abbreviations, which is typical for any military terminology. But what is significant about terminology of military radio communication systems is that abbreviations include not only letters but numbers as well. Thus having analyzed a number of relevant sources of information (handbooks, articles and manuals on military radio communication systems) we found out that terms used in texts include quite a number of such letter-number abbreviations (e. g. AN/GRC-106 - Army-Navy/Ground Radio Communications system 106, AN/PRC-515 - Army-Navy/Portable Radio Communications system 515, AN/TSC-6O(V)7 - Army-Navy/Tactical Satellite Communications system 6O(V)7). The second group of terms was composed of abbreviations made up of letters only. This was the most numerous group of terms (47 % of all terms), which included terms such as ULF - Ultra Low Frequency, HF - High Frequency, VHF - Very High Frequency, NBFM - Narrow Band Frequency Modulation, AGC -  Amphibious Group Communications. Next comes the group consisting of terminological attributive word combinations like "horizontal half-wave dipole", "polarization diversity", "High Frequency Anti-Jam", "Tactical Digital Information Link", etc. The group containing a limited number of terms can be said to include combinations of abbreviated terms and terminological attributive word combinations. Here belong such terms as "Advanced adaptive HF systems", "HF signal enhancement", "F layer", "sporadic  E", etc.  One-word terms were also not numerous, among the latter being "skywave" (a radio wave that is propagated by means of the ionosphere), "exciter" (an electrical oscillator that generates the carrier frequency (as for a radio transmitter)), "whip" (a flexible vertical rod radio antenna), and some others.

The above mentioned findings let us state that English terminology of military radio communication systems bears all the traits of any military or technical terminology with the only exception: it abounds in abbreviated terms even more than any other sphere of military language. A substantial number of terms in English-language texts on military radio communication systems include not only letters but also numbers.

The peculiarity of military technical language is its brevity and compactness. This can be accounted for by very tough conditions it is most often used in. Terminology of military radio communication systems must be understood by international personnel worldwide. However it`s rather hard to find all the necessary information quickly and easily. This, in its turn, requires all terminology to be stored in a particular repository. Glossaries containing terminology of military radio communication systems can be seen as a way out. However, composing glossaries may require a lot of effort on the part of the learner. Using text-reporting programs such as WordStat or Textanz could be a simple and comprehensible source of data for the above mentioned task.