A Different Perspective on Professional Vocabulary: Common Words

Abstract

Language has many different uses in daily life. In addition to the words we use in daily life, words related to professions are also among the words we use frequently. Vocational words have an important place in language teaching. Vocabulary teaching is the basic element of language teaching. This issue should also be taken into consideration during the dictionary preparation process. The words to be selected for dictionaries should be determined by taking into account the words that people encounter and use in their daily lives. In this study, field experts were interviewed for basic words from different professional fields. In these interviews, it was seen that there were common words in different sections. These common words constitute the subject of this study. Purpose of the study; The aim is to identify common words in different professions and draw attention to differences in definitions. In this study, interview and document review methods, which are qualitative research designs, were used. Definitions of common words between professions obtained as a result of the interviews are given. Common words and definitions that emerged during the interview process were classified. In this way, 123 common words were reached. When all the repetitions of these words are added, the number reaches 297. 26 randomly selected words are given with their definitions in the professions in which they are found. When common words were evaluated, different similarity rates were observed in different professional fields. The profession of “Nursing” is the profession that has the most words in common with other professions. The profession that establishes partnerships with the most professions is the “Logistics” profession. When the words obtained are examined, it is seen that there are many common words in different professional fields, some of them have the same meaning, some have different meanings, and some differ in terms of perspective. Especially words that have different definitions and perspectives, even if they have the same meaning, are noteworthy. Such words are important in showing how the interprofessional perspective has changed.