NSU Research Contributions
Title : Armed forces register: A study of high-frequency English lexis in Bangladesh Army
Authors : Mohammed Shahedul Haque & Mohammad Mohiuddin
Abstract : This paper is about the high-frequency English lexical resources of the military register in Bangladesh. The researchers first briefly exemplify and classify the English lexis used in the military contexts and then proceed to discover and illustrate the high-frequency polysemantic lexical resources of the military register in Bangladesh Army. The data came from reliable military publications as well as structured communications with about twenty high-ranking personnel of Bangladesh Army. The survey shows that the lexis of the register falls under seven different categories, and the analysis of the interviews shows that the lexis in use is very traditional and polysemantic but impressive, whose implications and semantic transparency are vital to comprehension of the military command, instruction, training and war time operation. The findings, discussed in terms of lexical comparison, reference predictability, and translation feasibility, suggest that the Bengali language, since the Independence in 1971, may have influenced the military concepts of capability, performance, strategy, emotion, administration, and direction in an ascending order of strength in Bangladesh Army, and that good proportions of 42 and 21 percent of the English lexical resources used in the military speech are either intelligible or partially intelligible to a person with a different occupational background, while 37 percent is grossly misleading and unintelligible. The analysis also suggests that the military register used in Bangladesh Army has a strong bias toward the English language. This study thus bears implications for language users of both military and non-military backgrounds as well as for sociolinguists working on register and occupational speech community. Finally, based on the implications of the study, some directions for further research and exploration relating to the military register have been suggested in terms of translatability, lexical competence, total utilization, mutual contribution, lexical frequency, nominal conceptualization, syntactic idiosyncrasy, bilingualism and code switching, and general intelligibility.
| Journal : Panini | Volume : 6 | Year : 2015 | Issue : |
| Pages : 1-40 | City : | Edition : | Editors : |
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