Sociocultural reasons for variability of terminology in professional discourse (taken on the example of nominations of a pharmacy visitor)

The research is devoted to the problem of terminology variability in professional discourse. The social institute of pharmacy belongs to the field of health care, activities in which are under the mandatory control of the state. For the implementation of professional activities, the World Health Organization has developed an ethical standard for the profession, which is also mandatory for the Russian Federation. The standard provides for certain terms to denote status-role figures in pharmacy communication. Modern society fixes the crisis of institutionalization, which is also reflected in linguistic phenomena. Terminological variability is noted in the designation of the key figure in the pharmaceutical discourse - the pharmacy visitor. Not only in the informal, but also in the official pharmaceutical discourse, there is no terminological uniformity in the nomination of a pharmacy visitor. The most common nominations are patient, buyer, visitor, client. In addition, a large number of lexical substitutes for these nominations are presented, which is associated with the need to personalize the personality of the consumer of pharmaceutical services. The subject of the research is the concept of 'pharmacy visitor' and its representation in the ethical and professional standards of the profession, professional documents and informal professional communication. For the materials of the study, the texts of the following official documents have been used: the concepts of the World Health Organization, orders of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, instructions for the use of medicinal products, as well as posts and demotivators in unofficial pharmaceutical communities in social networks. The author comes to the conclusion that the terminological variation in the nominations of a pharmacy visitor is the result of a change in the status of the profession and the format of the implementation of professional activity. The ethical and professional standards of the profession, enshrined in legislation, are less mobile and are not able to record the social changes, reflected in the linguistic consciousness of native speakers, on due time.