Cognitive Approaches to Specialist Languages

The Use of Framing to Conceptualize Specialized Terminology

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examination of an object (or patient), specifically the patients’ symptoms.
The outcome designates the doctor’s diagnosis and suggested methods of
treatment. Again, while such a rough outline may not shed light on the
specific semantics of a term such as hemorrhage (‘bleeding’), it allows a
classification of terminological units in frame components. Example (14)
is adapted from Sánchez, López Rodríguez, Márquez Linares, and Faber
(2012: 58):

(14) Though medical attention is usually required in this circumstance, even a

lay person can assess immediate signs of internal hemorrhaging [lose

blood] in a patient [medical patient], perhaps helping to stave off problems

on the way to the hospital or while waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

From Example (14) we can allocate linguistic realization to the frame
components in Figure 2. There is an explicit mention of the possible
assessor, a lay person. The stage of examination is encoded by the verb
assess. The object under scrutiny is the patient, in particular, the patient’s
specific condition, which is mirrored by immediate signs. Based on this
assessment, the evaluator will decide on the necessary reaction.
Mapping linguistic realizations onto the event frame provides insight
as to whether different scientific domains underlie similar conceptualizations.
A conceptual comparison of specialized fields in turn, allows us to
pinpoint the overall function of specialist language to document the
systematic operationalizations performed in scientific fields. While this
approach by no means accounts for the fine-grained semantics of
individual terminological units, it can contribute to a better understanding
of the conceptual commonalities of languages for specific purposes.

Conclusion

This study aimed to show the usefulness of framing to conceptualize
scientific language. I derived a frame template, drawing on linguistic
information on the level of text type and utterance. Both the text type’s
sequential set-up as well as the sequence of co-occurring lexicalizations
reflect the conceptual relation of participants and activities in the field of
food science. From this, I derived a generic frame template which depicts
the main objectives and activities in sensory science. This frame, while
derived from the terminology in the corpus of journal articles in food
science, serves to conceptually pinpoint terminological units and their
relationships in a larger event frame. Moreover, the generic character of
the frame allows for a potential application across specialized domains as
demonstrated with example of medical research.