International Journal of English Linguistics; Vol. 10, No. 1; 2020

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International Journal of English Linguistics; Vol. 10, No. 1; 2020 
ISSN 1923-869X E-ISSN 1923-8703 
Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 
26 
Semantic and Cognitive Communicative Aspects of Abbreviation in 
the Modern English Discourse Varieties 
Alla Petrovna Minyar-Beloroucheva
1
, Polina Igorevna Sergienko
1
, Elizaveta Alexandrovna Vishnyakova
2
& 
Olga Dmitrievna Vishnyakova
1
1
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia 
2
Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University, Tula, Russia 
Correspondence: Polina Igorevna Sergienko, PhD (Philology), lecturer of the Department of English for the 
Humanities, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Areas Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, 
Russia. E-mail: [e-mail] 
Received: October 11, 2019 Accepted: November 8, 2019 Online Published: December 10, 2019 
doi:10.5539/ijel.v10n1p26 URL: https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v10n1p26 
 
Abstract 
The paper focuses on the integrated approach to investigation of abbreviations that are referred to the units of 
secondary nomination. Abbreviations facilitate the communication process due to the principle of economy in 
language. Abbreviation that goes back to ancient times is one of the most actively performed and intensive 
processes in the English language. The use of abbreviations is connected with both linguistic and extra-linguistic 
factors that to a great extent determine a variety of discourse under consideration and ways of decoding certain 
linguistic units of abbreviated form, where context plays the most important role. There exists a number of 
structural types or models, according to which abbreviations are created in order to function as separate linguistic 
units used in the communicative process, where in the course of time they tend to acquire new independent and 
sometimes unique semantic properties. In socially determined professional registers certain regularities of 
abbreviations constructing and functioning are observed. In this paper most of the examples refer to such 
discursive varieties as politics, public relations, business and to a less extent medicine. Interdiscursivity that in 
this particular context means actualisation of the same abbreviated form within different discursive varieties 
seems to be one of the basic features of the abbreviation process under analysis. 
From the cognitive point of view, the study of abbreviated forms is based on the theory of propositional 
structures in the human mind manifestation. The cognitive approach correlates with linguistic semiotic and 
general semiotic issues, as at the iconic level of representation an abbreviation can be considered a starting point 
for creation of new entities and images, based on the results of perception, and the object for subsequent 
interpretation. This involves operation with fragments of reality, subject to reflection in the domain of human 
consciousness. Cognitive communicative approach takes into account different formats of knowledge that 
present the foundation for abbreviations active use and distribution. 
The Internet as a new medium for the language existence, as well as application and formation of human thought, 
plays an important role in optimizing messages as well as the communication process as a whole due to 
abbreviation techniques.