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

C
hief
 
executive officer
,
 
OSCE for Organization 

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ijel.ccsenet.org 
International Journal of English Linguistics 
Vol. 10, No. 1; 2020 
29 
on Security and Cooperation in Europe, etc. Some acronyms are pronounced as words: WHO for World 
Health Organization, WEU for Western European Union, SHAPE for Supreme Headquarters Allied Power 
Europe, etc. 
The prior task for the current investigation is to identify the relevance of abbreviations in different varieties of 
the English discourse, with special attention to business, political and public relations discursive spheres. 
Within the abbreviations linguistic field, it is possible to classify initial abbreviations as well as letter omissions, 
including that of vowel and consonant types. Some abbreviations are created by leaving out all but the initial 
letters of the word. Such abbreviations usually end in a period (as in “univ.” for “university”, and “gov.” for 
“government”). Other abbreviations are made by dropping middle letters of the word as “atty.” for 
“
attorney”
. 
Otherwise stated, among the general functions of abbreviations is their undeliberate use for the purposes of 
saving space in written texts presentations and time preserving when spoken orally, to elude duplication of 
complicated words and phrases, or to conform to conventional usage in certain types of discourse. In applied 
and cognitive linguistics abbreviation process is studied in terms of corresponding texts and types of 
discourse to reveal the lexical structure and cognitive nature of the contracted forms (Minyar-Beloroucheva 
et al., 2018). 
While discussing the problems of abbreviations emergence and functioning in a linguistic cultural environment 
we consider them to be the constituent part of language realized according to its regular norms, that find their 
actualization as well at the discursive level, first and foremost due to their unique functions. For instance, taking 
into consideration the symbolic properties of abbreviations it should be mentioned that in some cases a symbol is 
interpreted as a synonym for an abbreviation which leads the abbreviations analysis out of linguistic 
boundaries and brings it to an interdisciplinary level of study. It is a well-established fact that there is a great 
difference between symbolic and linguistic semiotic issues, as symbolic meaning of linguistic expressions is a 
highly conventional and occasional substance. At the same time some abbreviations, especially in the political 
discourse, clearly distinguished for its manipulative character (Van Dijk, 2008), may acquire symbolic 
functions and be used as the “marked constituents” of the discursive space in question, referring to cultural and 
professional communicative spheres. 
Being faced with the situation one should always bear in mind that in most cases special preparation and deep 
understanding of the content of the statement are necessary in order to decipher the abbreviation and interpret it 
adequately (Vishnyakova, 2018). And quite on the contrary, in a number of professionally controlled and 
restricted situations where certain vocational terms are used both by qualified specialists and by ordinary 
consumers, not provided with special tools to decipher the abbreviated message accurately and unambiguously. 
Abbreviations decoding can be considered to be quite natural and acceptable, or in some cases totally 
unacceptable. Thus, for instance, in some cases of medical information transfer there exist special rules and 
limitations in the abbreviation use so that not to mislead those users who cannot decrypt the abbreviation 
correctly, which can even lead to disastrous consequences. Thus, “Abbreviations are not used on informed 
consent and patient rights documents, discharge instructions, discharge summaries, and other documents 
patients and families receive from the hospital about the patient’s care. No abbreviations of any kind should 
appear in informed consent documents, patient rights documents, and discharge instructions. These documents 
are meant for the patient and every effort should be made to increase the readability and clarity of the 
documents” (URL: https://www.jointcommissioninternational.org/use-of-codes-symbols-and-abbreviations). 
In other words, the area of abbreviation studies seems to be broad and complicated in terms of its cognitive, 
communicative, semantic and functional aspects interrelation and the methods applied for the analysis in modern 
linguistics, that seeks their manifestation in the integrated approach domain.