Abstract
The research is devoted to the study of special vocabulary used in English chess terminology. It analyzes the lexical and semantic aspects, develops criteria for the functional and stylistic differentiation of special units of chess terms, and identifies the appropriate links between special units.
Using the field principle allows the distribution of chess terms to the core, near, far, and extreme peripheries. Chess terms are designed in the form of a ring diagram. The novelty of the research lies in the proposed scheme of systematization of special lexical units of the subject area and the construction of the lexico-semantic field ‘Chess game’ in the English language. The materials for the analysis were taken from modern English, American and German chess sources: British Chess Magazine, Chess Life Magazine, Rochade Europa, Schach Magazin 64 as well as chess dictionaries. The number of analyzed chess terms is about seven thousand, which is 45% of the total number of titles. The author concludes that different types of units in chess terminology are heterogeneous. Chess terms have many characteristics, ranging from highly specialized terms to slang expressions and nicknames.