Cognitive Approaches to Specialist Languages

(Tina Sui) #1
The Use of Framing to Conceptualize Specialized Terminology
359

While (1) hints to the quality assessment of a baked product based on its
composition, Example (2) mentions the hedonic scale, a core method in
sensory science to capture and compare raters’ value judgments.
The most frequent positions in Table 1 are occupied by lexemes that are
intrinsically tied to the field of food science. As previously mentioned,
research in sensory science is by definition concerned with the assessment
of food products/samples. There are a few lexicalizations which we may
not associate with a specific scientific field, such as different, water, or
low. However, when taking their linguistic environment into account, we
can work out their domain-specific meaning. Exemplifications of such a
context-specific and domain-specific semantics are demonstrated in 3-5:


(3) Firstly, passion fruit juice sample sweetened with sucrose in the ideal
concentration (reference sample) was presented, followed by the samples
containing five different concentrations of each sweetener, through
randomized complete sets. (FST 62.1)
(4) Although amaranth has excellent nutritional value, it has low viscosity. In
contrast, oats have high viscosities and water holding capacities. (FST
63.1)
(5) Subjects in the gradual group with low hedonic sensitivity had decreased
liking at weeks 9-12 compared to baseline (p. = .007). (FQP 40.PartB)

Examples 3-5 show the semantic adaptation of common words to the
specialized context. The lexeme different in (3) can be understood against
the backdrop of the manipulation of a product’s internal set-up, in order to
provide a comparison of different samples. Similarly, Example (4)
contrasts food products (amaranth vs. oats) based on their composition. As
demonstrated in (2), Example (5) again refers to the normalization of
personal (hedonic) assessment. The above examples imply two
dimensions, that of comparison and that of modification/change. They all
refer to a contrastive analysis of some sort–whether concerning a
comparison of various product samples and their composition, or whether
relating to subjects’ differing assessments. Contrastive and discrimination
tests are a common practice in sensory analysis. Further, Examples 3-5
make a reference to a manipulation process, for instance in testing a
product’s viscosity (3) or in tasting/assessing the product at stake.
These exemplifications point to the importance of contextualization in
order to investigate a word’s semantics. Example (4) for instance, shows
the detailed scrutiny of food samples based on their chemical set-up and
reaction.

Free download pdf