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Description
Terminology has traditionally focused on denotative meaning, reflecting its historical commitment to establishing clear, universally accepted definitions. However, it has generally failed to acknowledge the presence of connotation within specialized discourse. Drawing from ongoing projects, such as EcoLexicon14 and the Humanitarian Encyclopedia15, we explore the fuzzy boundaries of connotation and denotation through the lenses of terminological variation and corpus information. Although the notion of connotation is well-known and described in Linguistics, the same cannot be said for Terminology (Humbert-Droz, 2024, p. 14). Generally speaking, denotation refers to the literal explicit meaning of a word, often related to that expressed in dictionary definitions; whereas connotation encompasses the emotional and cultural associations that a word carries beyond its denotative meaning. Denotation facilitates knowledge sharing, but connotation must be acknowledged as the driving force that builds, reshapes and renegotiates meaning, since both terms and concepts are naturally dynamic (León-Araúz et al., 2013) and can no longer be regarded as static neutral constructs. Connotations may thus make their way into denotative meaning expanding the scope of a concept as new associations and implications arise. Or they can simply be associated with particular terms in particular contexts, thereby giving rise to other non-connoted term variants until they start circulating in discourse. In Terminology, conceptual variation may be understood in different ways (León-Araúz, 2017). It often refers to meaning extension phenomena (i.e., polysemy, metaphor), but it can also be regarded as one of the causes underlying term variation (i.e., as concepts develop new traits, new lexicalizations arise), or it can be understood as context modulation in the sense of Cruse (1986) (i.e., the concept remains the same but context highlights certain semantic traits while obscuring and suppressing others). Term variation can be the result of different causes other than conceptual variation (i.e., functional, interlinguistic, dialectal, etc.), and variants emerge very often from a combination of different causes. Variation, whether term- or concept-based, can thus be said to cause meanings to split, merge, expand or modulate, blurring very often the distinction between denotation and connotation.
Meaning Split
In the environmental domain, certain concepts have split into two different concepts by keeping the same term (i.e., polysemy) or by creating a new one when the original concept started to integrate new traits. For instance, the original concept of conservation gave rise to the similar new concept of preservation. The choice of one or the other has ideological implications: while conservation is more connected to an anthropocentric concern, preservation denotes a greater concern about the well-being of living things other than the human being. However, the current denotation of preservation would presumably be a connotation of conservation in the past, as it appeared as a splitting movement. In terminological resources, this kind of terms require the creation of two distinct concept entries, but usage notes can be used to prevent their interchangeability.
Meaning Merging
The inverse phenomenon can occur when the terms employed to refer to two close though originally distinct concepts are used interchangeably. This means that two concepts are merged into one, especially in semi-specialized settings. One example is global warming which, strictly speaking, is only one of the consequences of climate change, but both concepts and terms are very often confused. Bush’s administration started to use climate change instead of global warming in order to soften the message (Lakoff, 2010), which may have caused the increase of climate change denial. In terminological resources, climate change and global warming must give rise to two concept entries, but in the climate change concept entry, global warming can be included as a term variant accompanied by a usage note warning about their usual confusion but also highlighting the contexts in which effect and intention could privilege its use.
Meaning Expansion
Concepts, regardless of the term they are given, can evolve on their own by expanding their semantic traits. Their definitions may thus not be stable across the same domain, since they may also vary according to scientific discoveries and paradigm shifts. Going back to the concept of climate change, it is currently clear that human activity is its primary driver. What seems to be a connotation for deniers, who still believe it to be the result of natural cycles, has become part of its denotation for the scientific community. Definitions in terminological sources should thus be adapted accordingly.
Meaning Modulation
Modulation refers to the fact that concepts may change their relational behavior and semantic traits according to cultural contexts, but they might not have necessarily been scientifically expanded. Cultural contexts may include distinctions caused by disciplines, geographic cultures or organizations. Recontextualization is proven to be the best strategy for representing meaning modulation in terminological resources (León-Araúz et al., 2013). Instead of representing all possible dimensions of a concept, conceptual propositions are activated or constrained according to their salience in a particular context (San Martín, 2022), which can be informed based on corpus data. Recontextualization can be applied to knowledge representation modes such as conceptual networks, definitions and graphical resources. All these meaning shifts may alter the boundaries between denotation and connotation, and different strategies can be employed to represent this dynamism beyond the usage note in terminological resources. The content of these notes can be enhanced by including ideological frames, corpus metadata, or any other data supporting the causes underlying variation and their impact in communication. Moreover, other data categories, such as conceptual relations or definitions, can also accommodate a more flexible approach and reflect the fuzzy boundaries of connotation in a contextualized way (i.e., recontextualized networks, flexible definitions).
