The use of English initialisms and abbreviations in the field of pharmaceutical business communication in
Spanish
The present paper deals with the use of English initialisms and abbreviations in the professional field of
pharmaceutical business communication in Spanish. This specialized area has not yet been previously examined, and the use of
initialisms and abbreviations is becoming more and more extended. The corpus consisted in an up-to-date list of thirty-seven
shortened forms, which was extracted from a digital magazine addressed to pharmacists. In order to document the use of the
initialisms, acronyms and abbreviations examined in Spanish, a combined analysis was carried out: firstly, the above mentioned
list of initialisms and acronyms from the online magazine www.correofarmaceutico.com provided evidence about their use in written language; and secondly, the
twenty-one pharmacists who answered our questionnaire provided data about practitioners’ familiarity with and the actual usage of
these lexical items.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Objectives
- 3.Method
- 3.1Use of acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations in the written language
- 3.2Questionnaire
- 4.Findings
- 4.1Analysis of the corpus
- 4.2Analysis of a pharmaceutical magazine
- 4.3Questionnaire administered to pharmacists
- 5.Conclusions and discussion
- Acknowledgments
-
References
References
Alcaraz Varó, Enrique
2006 “
Aproximación al lenguaje de la Farmacia”.
Anales de la Real Academia Nacional de Farmacia 721: 343–360.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Aleixandre-Benavent, Rafael, Adolfo Alonso-Arroyo, María González-Muñoz, and Javier González de Dios
2015 “
Comunicación científica (XXIII). Lenguaje médico (1): Usos y abusos de las abreviaturas y siglas en el lenguaje médico y en pediatría”.
Acta Pediátrica Española 73 (5): 134–140.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Alvar Ezquerra, Manuel, and Aurora Miró
1983 Diccionario de siglas y abreviaturas. Madrid: Alhambra.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Balteiro, Isabel, and Miguel Ángel Campos
2012 “
False anglicisms in the Spanish language of fashion and beauty”.
Ibérica, 241: 233–260.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Begg, Colin B.
2017 “
Zero tolerance for acronyms”.
Clinical Trials 14 (6): 561–562.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Casado Velarde, Manuel
1979 “
Creación léxica mediante siglas”.
Revista Española de Lingüística 9 (1): 67–88.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Casado Velarde, Manuel
1985 “
Acortamientos léxicos en el español actual.” In
Tendencias en el léxico español actual, ed. by
Manuel Casado Velarde, 43–69. Madrid: Coloquio.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Domínguez-Gil Hurlé, Alfonso, Enrique Alcaraz Varó, and Raquel Martínez Motos
2007 Diccionario Terminológico de las Ciencias Farmacéuticas. A Terminological Dictionary of the Pharmaceutical Sciencess (Inglés-Español/Spanish-English). Barcelona: Ariel.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Egnal, Bart
2016 Leading Through Language: Choosing words that influence and inspire. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Fenton Kuhn, Ivy
2007 “
Abbreviations and Acronyms in Healthcare: When Shorter Isn’t Sweeter.”
Pediatric Nursing 33 (5): 392–398.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gómez Torrego, Leonardo
2000 Ortografía de uso del español actual. Madrid: SM.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gutiérrez Rodilla, Berta
1998 La ciencia empieza en la palabra. Análisis e historia del lenguaje científico. Barcelona: Ediciones Península.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gutiérrez Rodilla, Berta
2005 El lenguaje de las ciencias. Madrid: Gredos.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Isles, Alan F., and John H. Pearn
2014 “
Acronyms Confuse Everyone: Combating the use of acronyms to describe paediatric research studies.”
Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health 501: 756–758.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
López Zurita, Paloma
2005 “
Economic anglicisms: adaptation to the Spanish linguistic system.”
Ibérica 101: 91–114.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
López Zurita, Paloma
2018 “
El uso de anglicismos en el contexto del vocabulario académico de Marketing.”
Onomazein 391: 114–139.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Luján-García, Carmen
2015 “
Lexical anglicisms: An analysis of commercials addressed to young children on four Television Channels in Spain.”
Onomazein 321: 289–304.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Luján-García, Carmen
2017 “
Analysis of the presence of anglicisms in a Spanish internet forum: Some terms from the fields of fashion, beauty and leisure.”
RAEI 301: 277–300.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Martín Camacho, José Carlos
2008 “
Sinonimia y polisemia en el léxico científico. El caso de las abreviaturas, las siglas y los epónimos.” In
actas del XXXVII Simposio Internacional de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística (SEL), ed. by
Inés Olza Moreno,
Manuel Casado Velarde, and
Ramón González Ruiz, 509–517. Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Martínez de Sousa, José
1984 Diccionario Internacional de siglas y acrónimos. Madrid: Pirámide.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mattiello, Elisa
2013 Extra-grammatical morphology in English: abbreviations, blends, reduplicatives and related phenomena (
Topics in English linguistics, vol. 82). Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin and Boston.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Murcia Grau, Miguel
1998 Diccionario de abreviaturas, siglas y acrónimos. Barcelona: Ediciones Península.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Oliva Marañón, Carlos
2011 “
La creación léxica mediante siglas: un recurso de condensación expresiva en la prensa digital.”
Revista de Comunicación Vivat Academia 1171: 63–76.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco
1975 “
La lengua en la ciencia contemporánea y en la filosofía actual.” In
Estudios de Semántica y Sintaxis, 43–67. Barcelona: Planeta.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rodríguez Díaz, José Antonio
2011 Anglicismos y germanismos en el lenguaje de la publicidad del español peninsular contemporáneo 1998–2007. PhD dissertation, University of Santiago de Compostela.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rodríguez González, Félix
1982 “
Variantes fonotácticas en siglas: condicionamientos lingüísticos y sociolingüísticos.”
RSEL 121: 357–374.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rodríguez González, Félix
1991 “
El uso del artículo en las siglas.” In
Actes du XVIIIe Congrès International de Linguistique et Philologie Romanes (Trier 1986), tomo II1, 360–371. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rodríguez González, Félix
1993 “
Las siglas como procedimiento lexicogenésico.”
Estudios de Lingüística 91: 9–24.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rodríguez González, Félix
2012 “
Anglicismos en el mundo del deporte: variación lingüística y sociolingüística.”
Boletín de la Real Academia Española (BRAE) CXII (XXXVI): 261–285.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rodríguez-Medina, Mª Jesús
Soyer, P.
2018 “
Acronyms, initialisms, and abbreviations.”
Diagnostic and Interventional Imaging 991: 589–590.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Vázquez y del Árbol, Esther
2016 “
Glosario (inglés<>español) de siglas, acrónimos y abreviatu Soyer ras de documentos médicos.”
Panacea 17 (44): 87–97.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Kapralikova, Ivana
2023.
Abbreviations in modern business correspondence and their pedagogical implications.
CASALC Review 12:2
► pp. 5 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.