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Article In:
Terminology, Ideology and Discourse
Edited by Katia Peruzzo and Paola Catenaccio
[Terminology 30:1] 2024
► pp. 11–34

Term circulation and connotation

A corpus-based study of connotative meanings of terms through the lens of determinologisation

| Université Lumière Lyon 2

This paper investigates the connotations that terms from the field of particle physics acquire when they determinologise. Based on a study performed on a comparable corpus composed of texts that represent various specialised, semi-specialised, and non-specialised communicative settings in French, different types of connotations are identified. The analysis sheds light on the diversity of positive and negative connotations terms can carry in semi-specialised and non-specialised texts, and the multiple factors that can influence the emergence of these connotations are discussed.

Keywords: term circulation, connotation, comparable corpus, distributional analysis, particle physics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Term circulation and determinologisation
    • 2.2When terms take on new connotations
  • 3.Observing connotations in a corpus: Methodological considerations
    • 3.1The principles of Textual Terminology
    • 3.2Corpus and tools
    • 3.3Connotation analysis
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Distributional clues indicative of positive connotations
      • 4.1.1Interactions with medicine
      • 4.1.2Exaggeration of the extraordinary features of certain concepts
    • 4.2Distributional clues indicative of religious connotations
    • 4.3Distributional clues indicative of negative connotations
      • 4.3.1General idea of danger
      • 4.3.2Interaction with fiction
    • 4.4Role of journalists and other vectors of scientific information
  • 5.Concluding remarks and future work
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
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