Professional knowledge formation stages and their representation in text (as illustrated by nanotechnology research texts)

The article is devoted to one of complex problems in the sphere of cognitive linguistics, namely the problem of professional knowledge formation, which is considered as a complex process consisting of several stages. These stages are verbalized in texts. As a result, scientific notions are formed. They are closely connected with the notion of concept. The interest to this issue arises from the classical problem of the correlation between language and thinking when language is viewed as providing access to deep structures of consciousness. In this case, the elements of text and the ones of thinking are considered as interconnected. Professional knowledge functions in a professional discourse, which is understood as a verbally mediated professional activity and unites different levels of professional knowledge verbalization. These levels relate to the stages of knowledge conceptualization, the traces of which are found in texts. The author distinguishes four types of professional knowledge representation: content-related type, formal and content-related type, formal type and metaphorical type. This distinction is based on the general formula of derivation that describes the process of knowledge verbalization as the movement from a syntactically complex structure, conveying the meaning of a special notion, to a syntactically simple one, which only names the notion. Each type verbalizes pieces of meaning of a scientific concept in a different way. Knowledge formation in the newest branches of science presents a special research interest due to their integrative character. In the present study, the data for the analysis was compiled by means of texts from the sphere of nanotechnology. The tasks for the empirical analysis were intended to identify the stages of professional knowledge formation, the way they are presented verbally and systematized.