Lots of words that we have learnt in the past when used in commercial activities they will have totally different meaning, sometimes we will find that although we can understand each word used in the sentence, we still can’t understand the idea of the whole sentence, as a result, we often have difficulties in reading business papers, under the circumstance, businessmen have to find out the accurate meaning of these words to avoid the misunderstanding of those important papers, so Business English vocabularies must be rigorous when used。 For example, If the forward exchange rate is higher than the spot rate, we call it forward premium, and if it is lower, we call it forward discount。 We can find that words used in this sentence are all very simple to understand, but it is not easy to understand the meaning of this sentence, first, the Chinese meaning of the word exchange in common English is “交换”， however， in this sentence it means “货币兑换”， second, the word spot, we all know it means “点”, but here it means “即期，现货”, third, premium, in common English it means “附加费”, here means “升水”, the last one, discount, we all familiar with its meaning “打折”, but here is “贴水”。
3。2 Polysemy
Business English covers a wide range, it mostly puts efforts on linguistic applications of activities related to profession。 With the creation and fast development of business measures, some old words come out with some new meanings, the same word may have different meaning in different commercial environment。 来*自-优=尔,论:文+网www.youerw.com
The polysemy is very common in Business English, the meaning of words all has basis, the motivation of vocabulary can be reflected in phonetics, grammar and significance。 Cognitive linguistics emphasizes that cognition from people has a undeniable effect on the formation of concept and believes polysemy is that one word has various meanings and each meaning is closely related to another, its research suggests that polysemy is by human beings’ cognitive approaches like metaphor and metonymy, then the main meaning or basic meaning of the word extends to other meanings, it’s consequence of cognitive category and conceptualization from human。 With the fast development of social economy, some concepts will be enlarged and abstracted constantly, and then give new meaning to old words, in the end, polysemy comes out。 Langacker suggests that relationships between meanings of polysemous words are not optional, on the contrary, there is evidence to support this phenomenon。 According to archetypal theory, any one polysemy has a basic meaning, this basic meaning is the prototype of other meanings。 Use the word finance as an example, the first one is 财政，财政学； the second is 财源，资金， when it is used as a verb, it means 提供经费， in practical use, the word finance has at least ten meanings, such as business finance (企业财务)， public finance(财政学)， international finance(国际金融)， financial flows(资金滚动)， and so on。 According to these examples, we can find that although in different phrases the word finance has different meanings, they are all based on its basic meaning, while judging the meaning of one word, we need to pay attention to the surrounding text。
3。3 Terminology
Professional terminology refers to vocabularies used in particular fields of study and to express scientific concepts correctly。 They often have abundant connotations and extension。 Terminology is also called jargon, the professional language of Business English is the veritable expressions in business career, as a result, it requires words that have been used to have single meaning, reject ambiguous words, those words used to express terminology are confirmed and can’t be changed casually。 Some of the terminology in business documents came from the Latin and French, some were combined or by etyma deriving。 The meanings of terminology are stable and accurate。 浅析商务英语词汇特点及其在商务活动中的应用(3):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_83704.html