A Corpus-based Study On The Lexical Change Of The STCW Convention

As one of the most influential conventions in shipping industry, STCW Convention has undergone a series of amendment, and each revision will arouse a widespread social concern and academic interests. This thesis intends to study vocabulary change and possible causes for the change in STCW Convention by comparing the STCW Convention 78/95 with the latest version of STCW Convention 2010.The study shows that, the vocabulary in STCW Convention has undergone significant changes during the 15 years in lexical density and word length. Compared with STCW 78/95, the latest STCW Convention 2010 has a larger lexical density and longer word length, which reflects that the latest STCW 2010 has a higher information load. In addition, STCW 78/95-only words (words unique to STCW 78/95), STCW 2010-only words, high frequency vocabulary in STCW 78/95 and STCW 2010 are compared. The study shows that, the dominant vocabulary, which are usually people and society related in STCW 78/95-only words, have given their way to the predominance of vocabulary on navigational safety, science and technology in STCW 2010-only words. The main reasons are the development of science and technology in shipping field and the international concern of navigational safety against the acts of piracy. Further research of word formation processes shows that words in STCW 2010 tend to adopt compounding and derivation than that in STCW 78/95.