Full name: Hoang Anh Nguyen

Sex: Male

Date of birth:  23 October 1982

Place of birth: Tan Ninh, Trieu Son, Thanh Hoa

Admission decision number: 2577/QĐ-ĐHNN on 06 December 2018 by President of the University of Language and International Studies, VNU 

Changes in academic process: None

Official thesis title: Military terminology used in English and Vietnamese military documents - from bilingual terminology management perspective

Major: English Linguistics

Code: 9220201.01

Supervisors:

Supervisor: Associate Professor. Dr Le Hung Tien

11. Summary of the new findings of the thesis:

The study has contributed to strengthening the theoretical system related to terminology, terminology management and Frame-based Terminology. At the same time, the study contributes to finding out specific semantic relations and proposes conceptual categories of terms in the peacekeeping terminology system. In particular, in order to extract semantic relations from the data base, first of all, semantic analysis was employed with terminological definitions taken from 02 military dictionaries namely DOD Dictionary (edition 2021) and AAP-06 (edition 2021). In addition to this, the comprehensive analysis of the corpus was conducted with the main focus laid on term concordances. The results revealed that 22 fundamental relations were identified with the total number of 19,502 relations, of which 3,475 relations were taken from the definitional analysis and 16,027 relations were taken from the corpus analysis. These relations were type_of, has_function, attribute_of, involves, effected_by, part_of, takes_place_in, affects, takes_place_before/during/after, conducted_by, located_at, result_of, causes, for_reason_of, excludes, subordinate_to, coordinates, phase_of, delimited_by and method_of. Among these semantic relations, three most popular ones were type_of, has_function and attribute_of, taking the first, second and third place with 3,930, 3,724 and 3,677 instances in turn. With the total number of occurrences ranging from 101 to 994, the middle group included 17 relations including involves, effected_by, part_of, takes_place_in, affects, takes_place_before/during/after, conducted_by, located_at, result_of, causes, for_reason_of, excludes, subordinate_to, coordinates, and phase_of. Delimited_by and method_of were identified as the two least frequently appeared relations with the frequency of only 78 and 54 respectively.

From the analysis of term definitions, 1441 terms were conceptually analyzed classified into five main categories namely ENTITY, ACTION, SITUATION, MEASUREMENT and ATTRIBUTE. Among these, ENTITY was the biggest group, consisting more than a thousand concepts. ACTION was the second largest group with about 200 concepts. ATTRIBUTE, MEASUREMENT and SITUATION ranked third, fourth and fifth with the total number of concepts being 78,55, and 53.

Knowledge structures were then built based on information regarding the semantic relations and conceptual categories. All of these findings were validated with the employment of focus group interview and survey questionnaire, the results of which highlighted the final findings of the study.

12. Practical applicability, if any:

First of all, this study adds more empirical evidence to the applicability of cognitive-based terminology theories in general and Frame-based Terminology in particular into terminology management. Although this study is not the first terminology research that employs cognitive-based terminology theories as its theoretical premises, it is its application of Frame-based Terminology and cross-linguistics that makes it the first in Vietnam.  While Frame-based Terminology was actually applied to identify semantic relations and conceptual categories of military peacekeeping terms, the thesis’ cross-linguistic nature was boldly represented through the introduction of Vietnamese equivalences in the proposed knowledge structures.

The methodological contribution of the study lies in the adoption of a mixed method in association with the embedded design of Creswell and Clark (2011). Particularly, the study employed a combination of a semantic analysis, thematic analysis, and corpus analysis to extract information needed to answer the two research questions. Findings were then validated by consulting peacekeepers and experts in the field via applying a focus group interview and a survey questionnaire.

This study’s findings suggest practical ideas for other sub-fields in the military domain such as military medical care, military engineer, military intelligence etc. The research findings supply peacekeepers, sappers, translators, military observers serving both at home and overseas a powerful practical tool. Additionally, this resource, from the point of view of an English language instructor, serves as an effective reference material and could be used in classroom for peacekeepers during their pre-mission language and military knowledge training.

13. Further research directions, if any:

The study paves the way for a new research direction on terminology in general and military terminology in particular. From the results of the study, in the future, researchers can conduct further research on terminology in narrow specialties in the military field, including engineering, military medicine, intelligence, etc. and many other fields.

14. Thesis-related publications:

1. Mối quan hệ giữa loại văn bản và sự lựa chọn phương pháp dịch trong dịch Anh-Việt và Việt-Anh – International Graduate Research Symposium October 2019

2. Applying Frame-based Terminology in military peacekeeping terminology management – International Graduate Research Symposium October 2020.

3. Conceptual categorization of English military peacekeeping terminology – a Frame-based Terminology approach – International Graduate Research Symposium October 2021.