PARADIGMATIC LEXICAL FEATURES OF SECONDARY AND HIGHER EDUCATION TERMS IN THE ANGLO-AMERICAN MEDIA DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article studies paradigmatic lexical features of education terms functioning in the Anglo-American media discourse. The author focuses on the education terminological units in the modern media discourse that illustrate terminological variance, homonymy, hyponymy and hypernymy, and other paradigmatic lexical relations. In the paper lexical and semantic features and structural characteristics of the US and Canadian higher education terms are considered. Special focus is given to those terms which represent euphemisms and dysphemisms. As a result, it is illustrated that in the modern media discourse secondary and higher education terminology has acquired a number of features (lexical and semantic variance, terminological complementarity, specialization of meaning) in the context of various social, economic, and political factors. The proposed framework may be useful for studying and teaching lexicology, terminology, sociolinguistics, sociocultural linguistics, and cross-cultural communication. The research findings may contribute to compiling special dictionaries and glossaries of education terms.