The Pragmatics of Multiword Terms: The Impact of Context

This book explores the pragmatics of specialized language with a focus on multiword terms, complex phrases characterized by sequences of nouns or adjectives whose meaning is clarified in the unspecified but implicit links between them, with implications for their use and translation.

The volume adopts an innovative approach rooted in Frame-Based Terminology which allows for the analysis of multiword - compound terms in specialized language, such as horizontal-axis wind turbine - term formation from an integrated semantic and pragmatic perspective. The book features data from a corpus on wind power in English, Spanish, and French comprising such specialized texts as research articles, books, reports, and PhD theses to consider term extraction and the identification of terminological correspondences. Cabezas-García highlights the ways in which pragmatic analysis is an integral part of understanding multiword terms, due to the necessary inference of information implicit within them, with applications for future research on pragmatics and specialized language more broadly.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers in pragmatics, semantics, corpus linguistics, and terminology.

Melania Cabezas-García is Junior Professor in the Department of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Granada, Spain.