Properly defined terms can help scientists communicate more effectively and efficiently.
Often, writers uses terminology based on their own concepts and preferences. As a result, the search used to interpret a particular topic may contain different (direct or metaphorical) conventions that certainly affect the linguistic and legal meaning of the search ...
Using specific terms may mitigate the risk of using erroneous terms, which can greatly affect translation.
But how do we guide writers to use standardized terminology at the global level, especially when translating research or rhetoric?
Dear Adil Salhi, I fully understand and share your frustrations. Nevertheless, as a scholar in rhetoric (and therefore I guess also as a person with affinity with semiotics) you have to understand not only that it is inevitable that the meaning of terms develops and therefore time and again language users feel the need to coin new terms or coin terms differently, but also that rhetoric largely is association and dissociation (compare Perelman), and semiotics is deeply connected with identities. So, in some very specific field, to some extent the forum manages to develop some standard terminology that holds for at least a certain period; but certainly for our field, this is not going to happen. As a consequence, automatic searches are a great tool but only as a starting point; inevitably the results need to be carefully evaluated. Also compare my Gold Mining, Chapter 7.2 (downloadable on this site)
Dear Professor Paul Van den Hoven,
Thank you for this helpful and convincing answer. I appreciate your contribution and I appreciate the book chapter that I will study carefully.
Kind regards
I can't provide an answer for rhetoric, but for research, (especially in business environments where it is standard) you might consider providing a glossary of terms with their meanings and/or examples of the environments in which they are used. This can be the last section of the paper proper or provided in an Appendix.
Adil Salhi, this is a fascinating topic and the source of much frustration. I recently read a paper that specifically addresses this topic in the field of psychology where the use of the correct term can be critical for a questionnaire or professional report. I would be curious to hear your reaction. https://www.aclang.com/blog/is-there-inherent-bias-in/
Dear Adil Salhi,
In my opinion, the question concerns particularly important issues for people and for development science. The solution to the differences in concepts and terminology between scientific schools is an important issue to reduce the potential misunderstanding or the creation of incorrect interpretations of the results of scientific research. It's good that there was a discussion in this topic. I believe that research on this topic should be continued.
I wish you the best in New Year 2019. Best wishes
Better interdisciplinary education might help. I suppose we could establish a core repository of definitions, but I don't think that would work.
I write about religion a lot, and I have found numerous papers that fail to establish what they mean by "religion." My overall suggestion is that if a word is highly ambiguous, but is an important aspect of your paper, define the word as you are using it.
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