Changes of Lexicon on Lithuanian Administrative Language

  • Rasuolė Vladarskienė
Keywords: administrative language, vocabulary, lexical development, neologism, loanword, international word, word meaning

Abstract

    The article addresses the lexical changes of the administrative language, one of the varieties of the standard language, which took place at the start of the 21st century. They are compared with the situation of the late 20th century. The membership in the EU placed new requirements on the administrative Lithuanian language, resulting in new nomination and expression related needs. We have to describe new phenomena, concepts, institutions, and names. Therefore, new words are borrowed; the semantics of the words that are already in use is expanded; neologisms are coined. However, some of the words fall into oblivion, as the rapid technological development is pushing out the names of items which are no longer used in paperwork. The lexical changes taking place in the administrative language are related to the specificities of the sphere of usage of this language variety. Statistical studies revealed that the vocabulary of administrative style is not varied compared to the vocabulary of other styles. For this reason, lexical renewal does not occur at a very rapid pace in this field of language usage.

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