International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences
Int. j. adv. appl. sci.
EISSN: 2313-3724
Print ISSN: 2313-626X
Volume 4, Issue 2 (February 2017), Pages: 96-105
Title: A study of closure in a nursing textbooks and journals: A corpus based study
Author(s): Mazura Mastura Muhammad 1, *, Sahandri Gani Hamzah 2, Saifuddin Kumar Bin Abdullah 3, Chan Siang Jack 1
Affiliation(s):
1Faculty of Languages and Communication, Sultan Idris Education University, Perak, Malaysia
2Faculty of Human Development and Education, Sultan Idris Education University, Perak, Malaysia
3Department of Polytechnic, Ministry of Education, Putrajaya, Malaysia
https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2017.02.017
Abstract:
The prime aim of the study is to measure the degree of closure of one form of clinical language (specifically nursing textbooks and journals) in order, first, to determine whether these two restricted forms of clinical language can be rightly categorized as a sublanguage; second, to understand better the linguistic features of the language of the nursing domain; and finally, to better understand the nature of sublanguage. In this study, nursing textbook and journal corpora are compared to weather reports and the BNC Sampler. The findings show that none of the linguistic inventories of these corpora approach closure. Investigations conducted on the weather reports show that the corpus approaches closure at many levels. The BNC Sampler, however, behaves exactly as unconstrained language is expected to. The findings show that the nursing textbooks and journals seem to belong in a middle area between highly constrained language and highly unconstrained language. The findings of the study reveal that the idea of a sublanguage is problematic. The original definition of a sublanguage seems to clearly divide sublanguage or constrained language from unconstrained language and placing both as a dichotomy between two discrete categories. However, the findings regarding the nursing textbooks and journals seem to show that there is no explicit or clear-cut boundary that divides constrained language from unconstrained language.
© 2017 The Authors. Published by IASE.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Keywords: Sublanguage, Closure, Constrained, Unconstrained, Clinical language
Article History: Received 28 October 2016, Received in revised form 2 September 2016, Accepted 15 September 2016
Digital Object Identifier:
https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2017.02.017
Citation:
Muhammad MM, Hamzah SG, Abdullah SKB, and Jack CS (2017). A study of closure in a nursing textbooks and journals: A corpus based study. International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 4(2): 96-105
http://www.science-gate.com/IJAAS/V4I2/Muhammad.html
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