Dynamics and terminology: An interdisciplinary perspective on monolingual- and multilingual culture-bound communication

Rita Temmerman, Marc Van Campenhoudt

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

The urge to understand all aspects of human experience more and better seems to be one of the motives underlying cognitive development in many domains of human existence. Understanding more and better is at the basis of knowledge creation and extension. How humans have managed to create understanding and knowledge in the past and continue doing so in what appears to be a never-ending process has been studied extensively in epistemology for thousands of years. One way of getting access to how understanding comes about and how knowledge is the result of a continuous dynamics of understanding and misunderstanding is by studying the cognitive potential and the development of natural language(s) and more particularly of lexical items, i.e. terminology, in specialized domains. The interrelatedness of understanding and terminology creation (and occasional terminology loss) can be demonstrated and has been described in all types of context, i.e. situational context, communicative context, historical context, cultural context, metaphorical context, (multi)lingual context. Thirteen scholars in the field of terminology studies responded to the invitation to share their insights on cultural understanding of terminology and on the impact of intercultural contexts on the dynamics of knowledge and terminology. The authors illustrate how the dynamics of terminology is being studied from several perspectives and how publicly available and specifically developed tools are used by these researchers. All contributors convincingly show how their interdisciplinary perspective and their action research in applied linguistics, related to several real life problems in communication in a variety of domains, yields new theoretical insights in the field of terminology and domain specific language studies. These insights will be valuable for all those involved in the optimization of cross cultural communication in today's multilingual societies like translators, interpreters, terminologists, and other specialists in multilingual communication.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationDynamics and Terminology
Subtitle of host publicationAn interdisciplinary perspective on monolingual and multilingual culture-bound communication
EditorsRita Temmerman, Marc Van Campenhoudt
Place of PublicationAmsterdam
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company
Pages1-14
Number of pages14
ISBN (Electronic)9789027269492
ISBN (Print)978-90-272-2340-1
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2014

Publication series

NameTerminology and Lexicography Research and Practice
PublisherJohn Benjamins
Volume16
ISSN (Print)1388-8455

Bibliographical note

L'Homme, M-C. , Kyo Kageura

Keywords

  • interdisciplinarity
  • multilingual communication
  • terminology
  • dynamics
  • culture-bound understanding

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