An integrated corpus-based text mining approach used to process military technical information for facilitating EFL troopers’ linguistic comprehension: US anti-tank missile systems field manual as an example

Abstract

Military knowledge is an uncommon research field and is often classified as confidential information. Furthermore, when US military knowledge is adopted by English as a foreign language (EFL) countries, properly interpreting military texts brings about challenges. Taking Asian militaries as examples of EFL countries, not every trooper has sufficient English proficiency and capability to read and comprehend complicated military knowledge databases. In addition, under limited training time and lack of suitable reference materials, it is difficult to popularise and improve the efficiency of the courses that study US field manuals (FMs), which are important books that introduce US military combat tactics and strategies, military operation procedures, weapon systems, and others. Nevertheless, in many EFL countries, English learning is integrated into the education system to promote internationalisation and enhance global competitiveness. Thus, the English proficiency of nationals in most EFL countries is not negligible. Based on these considerations, this paper discusses the integration of the corpus software and cooperation of linguists and military experts to conduct syntax analysis and taxonomy of military terminology to enable EFL troopers with non-excellent English proficiency to understand the intricate US military domain knowledge and develop the military corpus as an auxiliary language training material. The US Army FMs of anti-tank missile systems are adopted as an empirical example to illustrate the proposed approach. Analytical findings will become critical reference indicators for defence language institutes (DLI) of EFL militaries in developing military English training materials and for processing military information.