Le rôle du lexique transdisciplinaire dans la constitution des terminologies techniques : le cas de l’industrie de la plasturgie

Abstract

The Role of Transdisciplinary Vocabulary in Technical Terminology Formation: The case of the plastic industry

Our article focuses on the technical terminology formation, more exactly on the formation of plastic terminology and on the role given to transdisciplinary lexicon. In order to offer a global perspective on the plastic terminology, firstly, we have relied on a variety of classifications regarding the technical terms and terminological units, and on examples extracted from documents used in professional environments such as factories, associations etc. The technical terms specific for the plastic industry were classified as follows: operations, products, machines, and materials. We can state that, after examining the contexts and the terminological units used in the technical discourse, the plastic terminology represents a complex terminology and that various fields have influenced it, among them we mention: chemistry, physics, mechanics, informatics, electronics, production management, metallurgy etc. All these disciplines have played an essential part in the formation of the plastic lexicon. The linguistic investigations will enable us to obtain various results regarding the distribution of these terms and terminological units per domain. The results obtained through the intermediary of statistical measures realised with the help of Sketch Engine, a software specialised in automatic extraction of terminology, provides us the opportunity to offer a detailed description of the plastic terminology and essential information concerning the transdisciplinary vocabulary. The investigations carried out and the manual selection helped us present a classification for the transdisciplinary vocabulary and a comparison with the disciplinary vocabulary in order to emphasize the role played by this type of lexicon. Consequently, we will be able to establish the connections between transdisciplinary vocabulary and the formation of plastic terminology. Our research encompasses the idea that we cannot identify equality between the disciplinary vocabulary and the transdisciplinary vocabulary, and we go even further, and we state that the last one occupies a predominant position, being also caracterised by diversity.