A THEORETICAL NOTE ON APPLIED CONCEPTOLOGY: CONCEPTUAL CATEGORIES AS AN ANCILLARY TO METHODS OF DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE-ORIENTED RESEARCH

Abstract

Concepts have again been on the front-burner of theoretical discussion within terminology, as witnessed by conference workshops dedicated to this topic at the 1997 European Symposium on Language for Special Purposes (Copenhagen) and at the 1999 Conference on Terminology and Knowledge Engineering (Innsbruck), among other fora. Without prejudice to whatever new perspectives are brought to bear, preoccupation with the same old issues (what a concept is, whether it can be used for anything practical, etc.) has the potential of preventing research from going in new directions that have applications and implications outside the narrow circle of ‘buffs’ of recondite theory. This article suggests one such direction. Taking its point of departure from conceptual primitives or categories such as underpin the organization of language thesauri, this article demonstrates how work on concepts may be applied to text interpretation in domains of socially inflected discourse, particularly in those contexts where robust interpretation requires the elevation of specific facts to the level of symbols (thus allowing for generalization) and a probing of the relationship between what is stated in a piece of discourse and its opposite in some conceptual scheme. Because both of these activities make it possible for a piece of discourse to transcend its immediate context, they may be said to constitute disarticulations from the specific facts that are articulated. Articulation is synonymous with discursification and textualization. This contribution is in the tradition of Khurshid Ahmad’s research programme which employs heuristics derived from terminology to account for the evolving discourse of scientific communities.