The Fragmentation of Professional Discourse

The objective of this article is to discuss the advantages of professional discourse or text fragmenting as a method of detailed study of its cognitive-semantic and pragmatic components. The common review of the previous numerous investigations of fragmenting or fragmentation is given. The scientific discourse or texts making out the study subject are specified as the domains in which the terms are directly involved into the real professional communication. The position developed in the article is that the most relevant aspect of such professional text fragmenting presupposes the inclusion into the fragment a term for some special object corresponding to the chosen field of knowledge or professional activity. For this reason the accentuated text fragment is nominated a terminological fragment. It can be separated and described in diachronic or synchronic aspects. Possible content varieties of such fragments are taken into consideration. The discussed method permits further development of the proper cognitive and pragmatic theory of terms and terminological fragments functioning in discourse and text.