Professionalism

A professionalism is a word or phrase characteristic of the speech of people of a certain profession or trade, designating special concepts, tools and processes and often having a semi-official, colloquial character compared with standardised terms. Unlike a scientific term, a professionalism is often emotionally coloured, figurative and circulates mainly in oral professional communication. In literature professionalisms reproduce the atmosphere of a concrete industrial or professional milieu, faithfully depict the labour activity of personages, individualise their speech. The introduction of professionalisms lends a work convincingness but requires explanation for the general reader. Professionalisms border on terms and jargon and are studied by lexicology and stylistics in the aspect of the social-professional differentiation of the lexical stock of a language.