How specialized (or popularized)? Terminological density as a clue to text specialization in the domain of food safety


Abstract


Terminological density is often mentioned as one of the main lexical features that distinguish specialized forms of communication and their popularized counterpart, i.e. discourse conveying specialized knowledge to an audience of non-specialist readers. The underlying idea is that texts addressed to experts feature a high number of terms that are expected to be understood within the target discourse community, while in popularized texts, vocabulary is chiefly drawn from the general language, and hence density of terms is lower. Though intuitively appealing, the idea that terminological density can provide quantitative evidence as to the degree of specialization or popularization of texts has seldom been investigated empirically. Taking the domain of food safety as a case in point, the aim of this article is twofold. First, it aims to assess the extent to which terminological density reflects the distinction between more specialized and more popularized texts. To do so, it describes a method to operationalize and measure terminological density building on replicable corpus-based procedures and freely available tools for vocabulary profiling. Second, in a more descriptive perspective, it aims to relate quantitative findings to qualitative observations on the discursive strategies adopted in the popularized genres under consideration to target different audiences. The texts analyzed consist of scientific opinions addressed to experts published by the European Food Safety Authority, as well as their popularized versions (factsheets, Frequently Asked Questions and news), also produced by the Authority to disseminate knowledge to the wider public. Results provide evidence that terminological density as operationalized here not only reflects the difference between specialized and popularized texts, but can also point to more subtle differences related to popularized texts’ varied audiences and discursive strategies.

DOI Code: 10.1285/i22390359v29p17

Keywords: specialized corpora; popularization; terminological density; vocabulary profiling

References


Andersen Ø. 1996, Degree of specialization, network density and status - a text typological approach, in Budin G. (ed.), Multilingualism in specialist communication, International Network for Terminology, Vienna, pp. 85-93.

Anthony L. 2014, AntWordProfiler [Software]. http://www.laurenceanthony.net/ (24.04.2019).

Baroni M., Bernardini S., Ferraresi A. and Zanchetta E. 2009, The WaCky Wide Web: A collection of very large linguistically processed web-crawled corpora, in “Language Resources and Evaluation” 43 [3], pp. 209-226.

Bondi M. 2015, Language policy in web-mediated scientific knowledge dissemination: A case study of risk communication across genres and languages, in Plo Alastrué R. and Pérez-Llantada C. (eds.), English as a scientific and research language, Vol. 2, De Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 85-111.

Cabré M.T. 2003, Theories of terminology, in “Terminology” 9 [2], pp. 163-199.

Cabré M.T. 2010, Terminology and translation, in Gambier Y. and van Doorslaer L. (eds.), Handbook of Translation Studies, Vol. 1, Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 356-365.

Calsamiglia H. and Van Dijk, T.A. 2004, Popularization discourse and knowledge about the genome, in “Discourse & Society” 15 [4], pp. 369-389.

Chung, T.M. and Nation, P.
 2003, Technical vocabulary in specialised texts, in “Reading in a Foreign Language” 15 [2], pp. 103-116.

Constantinou M. 2014, Conceptual metaphors of anger in popularized scientific texts. A contrastive (English/Greek/French) cognitive-discursive approach, in Baider F.H. and Cislaru G. (eds.), Linguistic approaches to emotions in context, Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 159-188.

Corpas Pastor G. and Seghiri M. 2010, Size matters: A quantitative approach to corpus representativeness, in Rabadan R. (ed.), Language, translation, reception. To honor Julio César Santoyo, Universidad de Leon, Leon, pp. 111-145.

Coxhead A. 2000, A new academic word list, in “TESOL Quarterly” 34 [2], pp. 213-238.

Delavigne V. 2003, Quand le terme entre en vulgarization, in “Terminologie et Intelligence artificielle”, pp. 80-91.

Freixa J. 2006, Causes of denominative variation in terminology, in “Terminology” 12 [1], pp. 51-77.

Gabrielatos C. and Marchi A. 2012, Keyness: Appropriate metrics and practical issues, paper presented at Critical approaches to discourse studies 2012, Bologna, 14 September 2012.

Gardner D. and Davies M. 2014, A New Academic Vocabulary List, in “Applied Linguistics” 35 [3], pp. 305-327.

Gotti M. 2011, Investigating Specialized Discourse, 3rd ed., Peter Lang, Bern.

Gotti M. 2014, Reformulation and recontextualization in popularization discourse, in “Ibérica” 27, pp. 15-34.

Ha A.Y.H. and Hyland K. 2017, What is technicality? A Technicality Analysis Model for EAP vocabulary, in “Journal of English for Academic Purposes” 28, pp. 35-49.

Krüger R. 2015, The interface between scientific and technical translation studies and cognitive linguistics, Frank &Timme, Berlin.

Kwary D.A. 2011, A hybrid method for determining technical vocabulary, in “System” 39, pp. 175-185.

Marín M.J. 2014. Evaluation of five single-word term recognition methods on a legal English corpus, in “Corpora” 9 [1], pp. 83-107.

Marín M.J. 2016, Measuring the degree of specialisation of sub-technical legal terms through corpus comparison. A domain-independent method, in “Terminology” 22 [1], pp. 80-102.

Myers G. 2003, Discourse studies of scientific popularization: Questioning the boundaries, in “Discourse Studies” 5, pp. 265-279.

Nation I.S.P. and Heatley A. 2002, Range: A program for the analysis of vocabulary in texts [Software]. http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx (24.04.2019).

Pearson J. 1998, Terms in Context, Benjamins, Amsterdam.

Piscopiello M.G. and Bertaccini F. 2009, Densità̀ e ricchezza terminologica: generi testuali a confronto, in “MediAzioni” 7. http://mediazioni.sitlec.unibo.it (24.04.2019).

Rayson P. and Garside R. 2000, Comparing corpora using frequency profiling, in Proceedings of Workshop on Comparing Corpora, held at the ACL conference 2000, pp. 1-6.

Skibitska O. 2015. The language of tourism: Translating terms in tourist texts, in “Translation journal”, October issue. http://translationjournal.net/October-2015/the-language-of-tourism-translating-terms-in-tourist-texts.html (24.04.2019).

Webb S. and Nation P. 2008, Evaluating the vocabulary load of written text, in “TESOLANZ Journal” 16, pp. 1-10.

West M. 1953, A General Service List of English Words, Longman, London.

Williams G. 1998, Collocational networks: Interlocking patterns of lexis in a corpus of plant biology research articles, in “International Journal of Corpus Linguistics” 3 [1], pp. 151-171.


Full Text: pdf

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.
کاغذ a4

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0 Italia License.