Social and Political Aspects of Terminology

The Social and Political Aspects of Terminology

• Terminology's study was spontaneously motivated, similar to technology, and theoretically akin to science.
• Terminology became a necessity in the 18th century to address challenges from expanding knowledge, technology, and communications.
• In the 20th century, terminology oriented itself scientifically and gained recognition for its social importance.
• Terminology is the study and compilation of specialized terms.
• Terminology systematically developed its principles, bases, and methodology in recent decades.
• Terminology's social and political significance is recognized nationally and internationally.
• Terminology as understood today took shape in the 1930s.
• Terminology has shifted from amateurism to a scientific approach recently.

Origins of Terminology

• The systematization of terminology with scientific status are recent but its activities extends earlier.
• 18th-century research by Lavoisier, Berthollet, and Linné demonstrated the specialists' interest in naming scientific concepts.
• The need for scientists in the 19th century to formulate terms for disciplines was evident due to science's growing internationalization.
• Botanists (1867), zoologists (1889), and chemists (1892) voiced this need at international meetings.
• Scientists led in terminology in the 18th-19th centuries and engineers/technicians led in the 20th century.
• Naming new concepts and agreeing on terminology was needed due to technology development.
• Austrian E. Wüster (1898–1977) founded modern terminology and the Vienna School.
• Russian D. S. Lotte (1889–1950) founded the Soviet School of Terminology.
• The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the first international standardization association, was founded in Missouri in 1904.
• Linguists/social scientists paid little attention to terminology until the 1950s.
• Linguists focused on language theories but had less concern for language as a communication tool.
• Terminology plays a role in linguistic analysis within this communication-focused approach.

Development of the Field

• In the second third of the 20th century, both theoretical and applied terminology developed due to scientists' and technicians' interest.
• Subject matter and methodology arise from social needs.
• Analyzing societies and ideologies reveals the causes and importance of organized terminology.
• Contemporary society/culture analysts consider the current period transitional marked by societal changes.
• A new civilization has been entered marked by technological control, exemplified by genetic engineering and biotechnology.
• Post-industrial culture in the latter 20th century follows rural society (early-mid 19th century) and industrial culture (late 19th-early 20th centuries).
• Each succession including new factors does not eliminate previous forms but occur in civilizational stages
• The shift from rural to industrial society brought changes in economic patterns and geographic distribution.
• Rural society was characterized by people working the land with decentralized populations, subsistence economies, limited education, hierarchical relationships, and religion.
• Industrialized societies concentrate populations in large cities with industrial complexes.
• Market economies promote production/consumption and undermine the family as an economic unit.
• Population concentration, class awareness, and widespread education democratize interpersonal relationships and political systems.
• Ethnologists call this post-industrial civilization distinct from the previous, due to loss of traditional ideologies.
• Focus has shifted to material possessions, individualism, competition, power and success.
• Cultural change involves technology and the value of information which form language/communication.
• New linguistic ways emerged like products, and professions related to language.
• Industrial period languages were codified with operative standard registers and the concept of a "standard language" developed and consolidated dominant languages from more widespread written communication.
• There's a current paradox as there's tendency towards monolingualism across cultures for direct communication.
• National languages are recognized as natural tools for communication at all levels.
• Asserting cultural identity defends non-dominant languages against linguistic colonialism from dominant languages.
• Efforts are being made to rationalize language through government language planning respecting both cultural identity and international relations.
• Language standardization must respect cultural and formal idiosyncrasies, while allowing language communities to participate and should not force into sterile isolation.

Social Changes That Affect Terminology

• Accelerated science/technology development with new concepts needing names.
• Rapid technology growth pervades society, requiring new communication methods and languages to constantly update, thus the appearance of language industries.
• Mass production drives the importance of standardized products, and "hand-crafted" is outdated.
• Knowledge/product transfer creates new markets and requires addressing multilingualism and standardizing exchange elements (systems/units).
• Information's importance has exponentially increased, necessitating databases for powerful/effective support needing easy access and requiring standardized automatic transfer systems.
• Mass communication disseminates terminology broadly, creating the lexicon, with specialized vocabulary becoming part of mass media culture.
• Scientific/technological creation is mostly in dominant economic powers creating one-way transfers of knowledge/products and large-scale borrowings of vocabulary, then language policies need to counteract.
• This encourages new professions like politically independent ones employ the unstable languages of small countries requiring multiple language professionals.
• Special languages, terminology, are important for language standardization.

The Evolution of Modern Terminology

• Modern terminology emerged in the 1930s with E. Wüster in Vienna.
• In his dissertation, Wüster argued for systematizing terminology methods and standards to eliminate ambiguity in scientific/technical communication.
• Wüster named A. Schloman, F. de Saussure, E. Dresen, and J. E. Holmstrom as the intellectual fathers of terminological theory at the Infoterm symposium in 1975.
• Four periods exist from Auger(1988): origins (1930–1960), structuring (1960–1975), boom (1975–1985), & expansion (1985–present).
• The study of terminology in the initial period of development (1930–1960) was characterized by the methods for systematic term formation.
• "The Machine Tool" (1968) allowed Wüster to check methods he presented in his doctoral thesis.
• In the second stage (1960–1975), terminology's innovations came from computers and documentation techniques.
• At that time the first databanks appeared, and terminology processing principles were internationally coordinated to standardize terminology within a language.
• The third stage (1975–1985) is marked by the proliferation of language planning and terminology projects.
• Former USSR/Israel were earlier adopters as significance of terminology in modernizing a language was apparent and the spread of personal computers brought major changes.
• In the most recent period (1985–present), computer science is a force behind terminology.
• Terminologists have better tools/resources.
• A new market emerged of language industries in which terminology is important.
• International cooperation is broadened, international networks link cooperation to train terminologists.
• The model of terminology linked was so necessary for developing countries.

Scientific and Functional Aspects

• Agreement was reached on the guiding principles of terminology.
• However, the political, socio-economic, and linguistic situation influences terminology objectives and working methods of terminology.
• Not all experts agree that terminology constitutes a separate discipline, nor do all consider it a theoretical subject.
• Terminology is a practice dealing with political/commercial social ends, according to some.
• According to others, terminology is a scientific discipline synthesizing original foundations as its own.
• There are intermediate positions that conceive terminology within other consolidated areas while acknowledging its original theoretical aspects.

The Theory of Terminology

• Scholars in the 18th/19th centuries were alarmed by term proliferation concerned about form diversity and relationships, they were less concerned with new terms' concepts or foundations.
• Theoretical term concerns arose later as a result of practice.
• Wüster worked as a good example, initally compilation and later concetrated on aspects of Theory of Terms
• Terminological theory arose from practical experience motivated by language-based problems.
• Austrian, Soviet, and Czech scholars' 1930s work forms the basis for the start of terminology science.
• Identifying development we identify three approaches that are not exclusive
• The first approach considers terminology interdisciplinary but autonomous, therefore subject to scientific and technical disciplines.
• A second approach primarily interested is concept systems and organizing knowledge, centered on philosophy
• A third approach is centered on linguistics, considers it as a subcomponent.
• A general theory is based upon the first approach regarding relations between names.
• Terminographers assign names to concepts; they move from the concept to the term called onomasiological process.
• Lexicographers start with the word called functional and semantically, start with what is called a semasiological process.
• This view is considered the most systematic coherent theoretical approach, differs from lexicography.
• It differs in the priority of being concerned only with units, and in excluding.
• Wüster considered terminology an independent subject defined as the relation between sciences.
• The autonomy of terminology is directly related, is fully what approach to object
• Terminology shares with logic a basic but is concerned to name and relate.
• Terminology shares with ontology
• Wüster mentions the correlation of computer data.
• Information and terminological way writing
• As results
• Also.

Terminology: A New Practice

• Terminology is subject to change through practice
• Relationship changes from Semantics
• Perspective is adopted well established
• Needs are empirical Dubuc (1985)
• Terminology has a variety it leads.
• Sager (1990 supports the
• There is much support or

The Functions of Terminology

• It is intersections
• Guilbert's L.'s the
• Terminology will addresse