## Is terminology specialized lexicography? The experience of French-speaking countries

## Résumé

La terminographie se réduit-elle à la lexicographie spécialisée? L'expérience que les pays francophones ont faite de la terminologie donne à penser qu'il s'agit plutôt de deux méthodologies proches, qui puisent en partie, mais non exclusivement, dans les mêmes sources, et qui ont des finalités qui ne sont pas nécessairement identiques. Une part  importante  de  la  distinction  serait  d'ordre  culturel,  et  nous  proposons  une explication personnelle de cette spécificité, qui, en France comme au Québec, lie la terminologie, et donc la terminographie, à la politique linguistique.

## 1. The specialized lexicology/terminology debate

## 1.1. Bergenholtz' challenge

In 1994 the present writer was delighted to hear that at long last a textbook for specialized lexicography had been published by the Danish specialists Henning Bergenholtz and Sven Tarp (1994). The pleasure of discovery  of  this  pioneering  introduction  was  however  somewhat marred, at least for this reader, by what seemed like a blind spot, an almost total silence observed on the point of what terminology has to offer to the making of technical dictionaries. After some searching, it turned  out  that  terminology  was  relegated  to  structuring  extremely detailed vocabulary, a rather minor point.

The position of the authors is made more clear in a preliminary note to their English version of the handbook, perhaps after expressions of surprise  from  the  not  inconsiderable  Danish  terminology  movement.

* John Humbley Centre de terminologie et de néologie LLI, INaLF, CNRS Université Paris XIII F-93430  Villetaneuse

Terminology, at least that part of terminology called terminography, is considered by these authors to be part of lexicography.

The  challenge  as  such  was  issued  in Lexicographica 11,  when Bergenholtz (1995) made clear his point of view. Terminologists are viewed as having hegemonistic designs on specialized lexicography, embodied most notably and officially in the ISO 1087 standard, where it was stated that terminography replaced the older (and thus obsolete?) forms of terminological lexicography and special lexicography , a formulation  which  has  since  been  abandoned.  Terminologists  could  be seen to be making a take-over bid on an important part of lexicography, raising the question of the difference or the identity of the two fields. To clarify the matter, Bergenholtz (1995 : 51) put forward three propositions for a demarcation. The first gives the aims of terminography as a description of special language and the aim of lexicography as a description of general language. The second apportions terminography to terminology, and special lexicography to lexicography, the two having parallel and distinct tasks and methods. The third equates specialized lexicography with terminography, being part of lexicography; terminology is said to have an independent existence, practised in companies and in national or international terminology committees. After examination, he dismisses the first two propositions, and generally accepts the third, tantamount to terminology's take-over bid reversed.

It should be mentioned here that, as Bergenholtz quite rightly points out, terminologists, perhaps perversely and certainly inconsequentially, often use terminology in several different meanings : Bergenholtz (1995: 51) gives four, Bruno de Bessé (1994 : 136) five! We shall henceforth attempt to keep the issue as clear as possible and refer to terminography rather than terminology to refer to 'the recording, processing and presentation of terminological data acquired by terminological research.' (ISO 1087, and Bergenholtz' Terminologie 4 (Bergenholtz 1995 : 52), but terminology will be used when quoting authors for whom this is a superordinate term, encompassing, among other subfields, terminography. The extent to which terminologists use terminology for terminography does indeed suggest that the distinction is not always pertinent, perhaps  because  terminology  implies  terminographical  work  to  a greater extent that lexicology implies lexicographical work.

This  simplification,  though  necessary  for  practical  purposes,  does not reflect other aspects of potential distinctions between terminology and terminography which some French specialists have gone into. For Bruno de Bessé, for example, there is a difference between a terminological  definition  and  a  terminographical  definition.  The  latter  is  the definition found in a dictionary, representing the description of a specialized lexical item in a particular subject field, whereas the terminological definition is that of the creator, or at least the primary definer of the concept, be it a scientist or a legislator (Bessé 1990a : 253-254). Henri Béjoint (1993 : 19) takes up this distinction, under a different denomination, suggesting that a terminological definition can have a normative  function,  this  being  specific  to  terminology,  whereas  the 'cognitive' function of the terminological definition is the same as the lexicographical.  These  two  approaches  suggest  that  the  relations  between terminology/terminography and lexicography, specialized or not, are overlapping rather than inclusive.

The purpose of the following reflections is not to fan the flames of any burning controversy, but rather to examine a question that has not yet been adequately addressed by French terminologists in general and by  the  Centre  de  terminologie  et  de  néologie  in  particular.  Is  there indeed a difference between terminology and specialized lexicography? If  there is,  what is the correct method to adopt for the work that the centre has to do?

## 1.2. The position of the CTN

The Centre de terminologie et de néologie (CTN) was created in 1987 within  the  framework  of  the  Institut  national  de  la  langue  française (INaLF), a federative body of research laboratories concentrating on the  study  of  French  lexicon.  From  its  inception,  the  CTN,  under  the direction of Pierre Lerat, proceeded to map out a set of principles on which to base its terminology work, which have included producing specialized  vocabularies,  recording  scientific  and  technical  neology and  engaging  in  other  works  of  terminology,  notably  with  various official and unofficial French-speaking institutions. The doctrine was based  on  the  works  of  the  Viennese  founding  fathers,  Wüster  and Felber, and on those of the contemporary Québec authors, but corrected by  a  strictly  linguistic,  Saussurian  rereading.  Thus,  the  term  record model adopted by the centre included not only generic/ specific and part/whole  relationships  as  embodied  in  Wüster,  but  also  such  more typically  linguistic  criteria  such  as  typical  predicate,  argument,  thus assuring a linguistic foundation (see Lerat 1988, 1989). This novel mix, or so it was felt at the time, did not preclude close cooperation with the rest  of  the  INaLF,  which  has  long  pursued  both  traditional  and innovative lexicography, and its material realisation, or dictionarics , as its former director, Bernard Quemada (1987), usefully termed it. This collaboration has at times posed both theoretical and practical problems similar to that announced at the beginning of this article. Bergenholtz' provocative stance has thus provided a welcome opportunity to clarify some points of method which have for too long been taken for granted.

## 2. A sociological viewpoint

Bergenholtz  is  certainly  on  strong  grounds  when  he  identifies  the terminologists' striving for recognition in academic circles as a point at which terminology has parted company with specialized lexicography. This  is  an  informal  sociological  or  cultural  explanation,  which  may well  hold  in  some  academic  circles  in  certain  countries,  but  not  in others. Terminology is practised differently, and thus viewed differently from place to place: some language communities have not much gone in  for  terminology  (the  USA  is  a  case  in  point),  others,  the  Frenchspeaking ones in particular, have so much more, and this affects the perception of what terminology is and how it relates to lexicography. Part of the surprise in reading Bergenholtz' criticism comes from the fact that, from a francophone point of view, reality is perceived differently.  It  is  thus  proposed  to  give  a  summary  of  how  terminology  is viewed in these countries, and this account is necessarily a personal one.

## 2.1. Terminology as an academic study in France

In France, terminology as studied in universities before the late 1980's was very much an offshoot of lexicology, for decades a French speciality on the international academic scene. Where else, for example, was  there  an  equivalent  of  the Cahiers  de  lexicologie ,  launched  in 1959? Terminology was also closely if somewhat imprecisely linked with lexicography. The main academic proponents of terminology in France  in  the  period  have  been  Bernard  Quemada,  perhaps  better known as director  of  the  16  volume  general  language  dictionary Le Trésor  de  la  langue  française ,  and  Alain  Rey,  author  of  the Robert dictionaries. Special vocabulary was prominently present in general linguistics too, particularly through the work of Louis Guilbert. Though Louis Guilbert died young, his work was carried on in varying directions,  including  the  important  and  innovative  school  of  socioterminology at the University of Rouen (see in particular Gaudin 1993).

Such  illustrious  proponents  meant  that  terminology  enjoyed  academic recognition if not on a par with lexicology, at least of similar date to the academic interest in lexicography. In 1996 the French national research foundation, the CNRS, created an official research position in terminology, appropriately in the language sciences section. The relations between these three branches of linguistics are however far from being clear-cut or watertight. It is difficult to find in France an aggressive stance on the separate nature of terminology such as Bergenholtz suggests, though such lexicographers as Quemada or Rey draw attention to differences in both aims and methods (see in particular Rey 1979 : 52-54). In French academic life, terminology as a study grew out of lexicology, and not in opposition to it, just as, for Bernard Quemada, dictionarics grew out of lexicography, which itself draws on lexicology.

## 3. Historical development of terminology in Frenchspeaking countries as related to aims

Terminology in France and other French-speaking countries is however not confined to studies carried out in universities. It is also used as a tool to quite specific and practical ends. These are traditionally held to be  standardization,  specialized  translation,  language  planning,  and, more  recently  what  is  sometimes  called  knowledge  engineering  or artificial  intelligence.  Documentation  is  sometimes  claimed  to  be another field where terminology can render services. In pursuing the sociological overview, we now examine briefly how terminology came to  be  used  in  a  more  autonomous  manner  in  these  various  fields  of application. It will be seen that the particular orientation that terminology  took  in  these  countries,  France  and  Québec  in  particular,  was largely due to language planning concerns.

## 3.1. Terminology and documentation

The list of applications which we suggested in 3 only tentatively includes documentation or information retrieval. This is because the rela- tionships between terminology and documentation, at least in the countries  with  which  we  are  concerned,  are  perhaps  most  accurately described as parallel  rather  than  convergent.  While  there  is  much  in common in both the  aims  of  these  two  activities  (producing  sets  of words enabling a user to access information), their methods (culling texts to extract these words) and their experimentation (with computerassisted  extraction),  there  has  been  little  cross-fertilization,  perhaps because of the differing backgrounds of the protagonists : in France, most documentarians have a training in library management, and most terminologists in translation. Where the two methods are found to be presented together, it is in such advanced courses as at the Institut de sciences politiques in Paris, where documentation and linguistics are taught together.

## 3.2. Terminology and standardization

Owing to the international orientation of industrial standardization and its  terminological  back-up,  the  experience  of  French-speaking  countries in this respect has not been specifically different from that of other countries, and it is partly through official standardizing organizations (ISO in general and TC 37 in particular) that the methods held to be typical of terminology were made known in French-speaking countries. As is well known, TC 37 was set up at Wüster's instigation, first in the pre-war ISA and then in the ISO, and the secretarial infrastructure is still provided by Infoterm. It can thus be regarded as fully representative of the approach of Wüster and of his successors, sometimes referred to by the socioterminologists of the Rouen school as 'classical' or 'dominant' terminology (Gambier 1991 : 49). French as one of the official languages of international standards, both of ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission, has probably also led to Viennese terminological methods being disseminated into French and Canadian institutional circles, though the impact on business or university circles has perhaps been lesser.

## 3.3. Terminology and technical translation

The  needs  of  technical  translation  depending  as  much  on  the  field concerned than on the country it is to be found in, the experience of French-speaking  countries  is  special  because  of  language  planning policies.  In  both  France  and  Canada,  but  also  in  Switzerland  and Belgium, it is in the context of translators' courses that most teaching of terminology now goes on, both in translators' and interpreters' schools, and  in  such  universities  courses  combining  such  subject  fields  as economics and commerce with languages, such as the French Langues étrangères appliquées . Most of these courses which do not yet have a terminology component plan to introduce one, and all in all there is today  more  teaching  of  terminology  in  French-language  higher  education  than  there  ever  has  been,  though  in  many  cases  terminology tends to be very much a service course. Courses in lexicography on the other hand have tended to be more specialized, such as the international post-graduate  course Diplôme  européen  de  lexicographie run  by Danielle Corbin in Lille, and there are fewer of them.

The particular orientation of terminology in French-speaking countries comes from the use to which it has been put in language planning situations.

## 3.4. Terminology and language planning

In establishing the now classical distinction between status and corpus language  planning ,  Kloss  (1969  :  81)  mentions  terminology  as  the main though not exclusive area of concern of the latter branch, and it is not  by  chance  that  this  distinction  was  made  while  Kloss  was  in Canada.  This  activity,  now  usually  referred  to  as aménagement  linguistique , since Corbeil (1980 : 9), was incorporated as an integral and major part of Québec's 'révolution tranquille' of the 1970's. The role terminology  played  in  this  process  gave  it  the  prominence  it  enjoys today on both sides of the Atlantic. For an appreciation of this role, the reader  should  refer  to  the  many  very  thorough  studies  done  by  the Conseil de la langue française (for example M.-E. de Villers 1990), and the Office de la langue française (for example C. Loubier 1994). The few points made in the following merely highlight the emergence of terminology as an autonomous entity.

## 3.4.1. Terminology in language planning in Québec

It will be remembered that one of the major claims in 1970's Québec was the right to work in the people's mother tongue. French had been effectively  used  in  schools,  courts  and  church  since  the  British  con- quest,  but  economic  life  had  been  progressively  confiscated  by  the English-speakers, resulting in a large-scale anglicisation of broad sections of the economy. It was quickly found that it was not enough to convince companies to use French, as even where the good will existed, it became evident that where the technical vocabulary was missing, the effective  use  of  French  was  heavily  compromised.  The  solution  that was eventually found was to produce the technical vocabulary necessary for its efficient functioning in French, in collaboration between the company and an official organization, the Office de la langue française. The Office produced small dictionaries, often of a few hundred terms, which covered the various vocabularies used in a company or a branch of the economy. The terms actually chosen were in principal those of standard French, though suitable accommodation was made for North American reality. The result was to acquaint many Quebeckers with terminology both as a tool for social change or means of democratic evolution, and as a factor in economic life, which accounts at least in part for the high profile it enjoys in that part of the world. It also gained social  recognition  from  the  new  needs  generated  by  the  presence  of French-medium organizations active in largely English-speaking North America, and the consequent need for large numbers of technical translators, a challenge which the universities had to meet from the 1970's on. Many of the larger translation departments in firms or government organizations found it judicious to institute a division of labour between those involved in translation and those whose job it was to provide the terminology which the former group needed. The creation of terminologist as a job description was another factor in establishing terminology not only as a new subject field, but also as a career opening.

From a theoretical point of view, the Quebeckers were undogmatic : the theory of both terminology and language planning was developed as it was needed, and quite often theory followed practice, providing tools for analyses of on-going programs rather than a preconceived framework. As terminology was actually implemented at the level of an organization, private or public company or administration, the systematic aspect of its elaboration, as proposed by Wüster, was largely followed. However the unit was often the sector of activity, rather than the subject field, as is usually assumed to be the case in terminology, though as mentioned, the printed vocabularies tended to be small and systematic, meaning that several could be necessary for a large firm. It is important to note here that this pioneer terminography was at least partly userdriven, and not purely subject orientated, as is sometimes suggested for terminology (Bergenholtz 1995 : 55).

The  need  to  train  competent  translators  and  terminologists  led  to courses in terminology being organized in the universities of Québec, and a number of handbooks were produced, notably those by Robert Dubuc (1992) and Guy Rondeau (1983). These introductions did not recognize specialized lexicography as such, and adopted the view that lexicography  concerned  general  language  and  terminology  special language, much in the same way as the handbooks published in Vienna.

## 3.4.2. Terminology and language planning in France

In France, terminology has also gained a relatively high profile through language  planning  action,  rather  differently  than  in  Québec,  even though the experience in that country profoundly marked both official and academic terminology throughout the period from the 1970's on. The official recognition of terminology came in the form of the Commissions  ministérielles  de  terminologie,  committees  created  within government departments to replace English borrowings used in their area  of  competence.  Starting  in  the  early  1970's,  these  committees worked  with  varying  methodologies,  and  varying  effectiveness.  In some fields, such as computers and data processing, they were quite effective in reaching their goals, possibly by working in close cooperation with the industry, as most of the words proposed have effectively been adopted, though it is not clear as to whether this was by direct or indirect  means.  One  of  the  results  of  the  association  of  terminology with  the  Commissions  ministérielles  de  terminologie  was  to  equate terminology with language planning, or even language protection, often to  the  exclusion  of  its  applications  to  industrial  fields,  such  as  specialized translating. One of the significant singularities of terminology associated  with  language  planning  in  France  is  the  non  systematic treatment of vocabulary, and general absence of reference to the Vienna school of terminology.

Whether  terminology  in  general  in  France  has  profited  from  this association is open to question, but it has contributed to giving terminology and terminography a different image from that of lexicography. For example, Fabienne Cusin-Berche (1993 : 145) divides specialized dictionaries  into  two  classes:  technical  (such  as  the Dictionnaire  de management et de contrôle de gestion )  and  terminological  ( Dictionnaire des néologismes officiels ), i.e. a relegation of terminology to the language  planning  sphere.  Her  analysis  brings  out,  however,  more similarities between these two types of dictionaries than with what she terms lexicographical, or general language dictionaries, more particularly from the onomasiological approach, but also in means of legitimisation. While this viewpoint is perhaps somewhat extreme, it is indicative of how terminology can be captured by one of its applications.

## 4. Terminography and specialized lexicography : differences of degree, not of kind

We  suggest  that  lexicography  and  terminology  are  variable  sets  of composite  practices  rather  than  homogeneous  blocks;  this  way  of looking at the issue means that there are some activities or viewpoints that  can  be  considered  more  terminological  than  lexicographical,  or vice  versa,  according  to  the  ressemblance  to  an  archetypal  view  of terminology/terminography and lexicography. To present the relativity of the differences between the two, we quote the fourfold distinction that Rondeau makes (Rondeau 1983 : 62-63), and argue the relativity of each point. Though Rondeau's statement is both clear and typical of francophone thought on the subject in the 1980's, it must be admitted that the distinction he is drawing is between terminology as a whole, and  not  simply  terminography,  compared  with  general  language lexicography, and not special lexicography.

## 4.1. The object of study

The  object  of  the  study  is,  for  Rondeau,  the  word  in  the  case  of lexicography, and the term in that of terminology. This distinction is taken up by the other handbooks, often with differing emphasis, and the relative nature of the distinction is obvious. Firstly, terms are words, so that terminology can be claimed to be a subset of lexicology (Cabré 93 :  86).  Cabré  claims  that  the  goal  of  lexicology  is  to  account  for  the native speaker's competence in the lexicon of his language, whereas that  of  terminology  is  to  describe  those  words  belonging  to  a  given field.  Words  or  groups  of  words  thus  become  terms  when  used  in specialized  fields  and  correspond  to  the  concepts  of  those  fields, defined in relation to those fields From this rough and ready definition, it is clear that a word can be a term in certain contexts and not in others. Criteria  given  by  various  terminologists  to  distinguish  words  from terms are ones of degree rather than kind. One of the major distinctions is  that  of  a  drive to reduce polysemy and synonymy, which we shall briefly examine in order to bring out the relativity of the distinction.

That one word particularly represents a concept of a subject field, and  that  this  concept  is  regularly  represented  by  one  word,  called  a term, is a basic postulate of both terminology, and other related fields, such as automatic information retrieval. The term is also more independent of context than ordinary words (Lerat 1995 : 45). The degree of difference  however is  sometimes suggested to be so tenuous that its pratical use is compromised.

Taking the question from the point of view of artificial intelligence, Daniel Kayser for one finds little difference between words and terms as far as ambiguity is concerned. In the non specialized context of the account of an accident, it is  found  that rond-point ('roundabout') is used for the whole of the traffic installation and for the central part of the installation (Kayser 1995 : 24). But even in a specialized context, that of instructions for a computer program, the term champ ('field') is found to correspond to a variety of referents. The means of disambiguation and measures of 'glissement de sens' suggested are not those of classical terminology.

To sum up Rondeau's first distinction, we can say that the word/term dichotomy is a matter of setting: the term is viewed as a special word, the linguistic representation of the concept set in its subject field.

## 4.2. Point of view

Rondeau  calls  his  second  criterion point  of  view :  lexicography  is descriptive, terminology normative or prescriptive. Once again, it is not only easy to find examples of prescriptive lexicography and descriptive terminology, but the whole issue is more complex than this expression of dichotomy would suggest. Descriptive terminology is what F. Riggs (1988) recommends as a norm for the human sciences, for the INTERCOCTA project, as he regards prescriptive terminology as completely utopian,  and  finally  of  little  use.  It  would  seem  more  logical,  if  terminology is viewed as a methodology, to consider that it is the appro- priate tool for one of its prime uses : that of standardization. Standardization  using  terminology  need  not  take  place  in  a  national  or  international context : it can be used within an organization simply to make clear the concepts used. These may be extremely limited, such as the transport body Union des transports publics (1988) which produced a terminology of bus rotation, or more general, such as a review of certain terms  used  in  the  commercial  sector  in  a  large  company  (cf.  Alory 1995). This activity is obviously different from lexicography, though lexicography may be used to commit the results to paper.

Among the other aspects of prescriptivity that Rondeau brings up is the question of neology. This places Rondeau's approach firmly within the language planning framework, in the context of French in Québec: if a term was not available in French to express a concept which had an English equivalent, then an appropriate term would have to be found in French. Extensive research was carried out on determining the most effective  way  of  forging  new  terms  ( néologie ).  Such  an  approach  is obviously wholely prescriptive and untypical of lexicography, though not unknown. Not all terminology work in French-speaking countries includes what L.-J. Calvet calls in-vitro neology (Calvet 1993 : 112113), so while it is not an obligatory part of terminology, it is an optional one, and this would thus constitute another difference as regards lexicography, albeit again a partial one.

## 4.3. Method

The third criterion is the method : onomasiological for terminological, semasiological  for  lexicography.  The  relativity  of  the  different  approachs has become more and more patent over the years as far as terminology is concerned. Whereas it may be argued that early terminologists  such  as  Schlomann  and  Wüster  were  subject  specialists,  and made up their terminology structure from their own intimate knowledge of  the  field  they  were  treating,  the  same  cannot  be  said  today  of terminologists with a linguistic or translation background, who are not subject  specialists.  They  proceed  semasiologically  picking  out  term candidats from texts, be it either by hand or assisted by computer, often helped by the linguistic evidence of termhood given by the author of the text, for which there is a rich literature in French (see Chukwu, Thoiron 1989, Candel 1993). The onomasiological demand of terminology is met however in various indirect ways, the main one being that of the tree diagram. This representation is designed to enable the terminologist to ascertain whether the terms/concepts of the subject field have been  exhaustively  treated  and  are  put  in  relation  one  with  another. While the tree diagram is a practical rather than a theoretical construct, it has been refined to include multidimensionality by such researchers as Ingrid Meyer et al (1992), a form of terminology close to artificial intelligence (knowledge bases), but not alien to lexicographical traditions either. The tree diagram of the specialized field is alternatively thought of as a particular kind of semantic network (Melby 1991 : 19), different from those of general language.

## 4.4. Lexicographical treatment

Rondeau's final criterion (suggesting indirectly that terminography is indeed part of lexicography) is that of lexicographical treatment. Two of his points will be considered here : the first containing the representation of the headword, the second the form of the definition. The headword in terminology is treated as a unit for multiword terms, and not broken up into component parts. Thus the artificial intelligence term of conceptual dependency theory will be represented in French as théorie des dépendances conceptuelles (Otman 1991) in a terminology style vocabulary, and not as dépendances conceptuelles, théorie des or even conceptuelles, théorie  des  dépendances as  in  a  lexicography  style dictionary. Electronic dictionaries do away with such considerations, as it is possible for the user to access any part of the word group, and for paper  dictionaries,  both  terminology  and  lexicographically  inspired dictionaries would do well to take a leaf out of documentalists' book in as far as the permuted lists are concerned, at least used as an index.

As  to  the  form  of  the  definition,  terminologists  use  Aristotle's definiens  definiendum  principle,  perhaps  simplistically  conceived. Rondeau  claims  that  terminologists'  definitions  are  more  systematic than those of lexicographers. This could be so, to judge by one of the comment in Bergenholtz and Tarp (1994 : 153), where the authors recommend giving varying styles of definition to make for easier reading. In terminology, the cohesion of the concept structure is expected to be reflected in the definition, so strict adherence to what are in fact purely lexicographical  conventions  is  recommended  (for  example  Gouadec 1990 : 165 'Adopter une norme de construction de définition'). This means that exactly the same formulation of the definiens is sought, and the definiendum is chosen to distinguish the term in question from any other of the subject field on the same level of abstraction. This criteria leads  to  a  distinct  separation  of  encyclopedic  information  from  the definition itself. Bruno de Bessé (1990 : 253) indeed talks of an encyclopaedic definition as being different from a terminological definition in as much as they start off as a lexicographical definition and finish with encyclopaedic, non-defining material. The strict, highly controled nature  of  the  terminological  definition  leads  some  terminologists  to question just who is supposed to use it; the expert knows the definition already and the lay person has not the subject field knowledge to cope with the elements of the definition, and finds more help in the encyclopedic notes, which the terminologist keeps strictly separate (Gouadec 1990 : 174).

All four distinctions thus seem quite relative and depend on the aim of the project in hand, suggesting that terminology and lexicography are both methodologies, and both closely related.

## 5. Terminography and specialized lexicography as sets

A variation of Bergenholtz' second proposal for a distinction between terminology  and  specialized  lexicography  will  be  attempted  here.  It will be remembered that this postulate stated in the first part that terminography is part of terminology and specialized lexicography part of lexicography, and in the second part that the two had differing aims, methodological  procedures,  and  theoretical  suppositions.  From  the point of view of many French-speaking countries, it would seem that the first part of the proposition would hold true, if being part of larger sets were not seen as exclusive. Terminography obviously owes its very basis  to  lexicography,  and  grew  out  of  it  in  France  in  the  situations which we have described. Specialized lexicography has, in the words of Bergenholtz himself, gained much from such common practices among terminologists as use of computers for data bases for storing and sorting data, and disquettes and CD-ROMs for its use (Bergenholtz 1995 : 53). But terminography in the French language tradition is part and parcel of terminology, such as it was developed over the last thirty years, and the original links with lexicology/lexicography have been weakened.

The second part of the postulate could be reformulated to include both methodologies drawing on other disciplines. Many writings on ter- minology from about 1990 on have pointed out weaknesses and insufficiencies  of  the  Wüster-based  terminology  and  terminography,  but these  have  not  so  far  come  from  lexicographers.  The  first  school  of thought of sociolinguistic persuasion reproaches traditional terminology with not paying attention to the social conditions in which terms are produced and used and with obscuring the traits of dominence which terms carry (Gambier 1991). The second, text-linguistic orientation, is perhaps best represented by J.C. Sager (1990 : 140), who prefers to investigate the possibilities given by exploiting large specialized corpora rather than to attempt to formalize relations with the tree diagram or similar methods. The third is a practical reproach from translators, who cannot find enough 'phraseology' in concept-oriented terminographies, and who have demanded new forms of terminological dictionaries  which incorporate the syntactic information (local grammar) to enable  them  to  put  terms  into  discourse  ( Terminologies  nouvelles 1993). These are only three of the attacks made on classical terminology in the last few years, though perhaps the main ones, and it is interesting to note that the dichotomy of lexicography/terminology has, to our  knowledge,  never  been  raised  in  these  exchanges.  It  would  be possible  of  course  to  say  that  the  use  of  text  linguistics  has  been pioneered by lexicographers, such as the Institut national de la langue française in France and the big language banks in England, or that the insistance on phraseology is a desire to see in specialized dictionaries such  combinatory  information  as  is  available  in  say The  BBI  Combinatory Dictionary of English , which is quite true. But the opposition has  not  been  seen  as  one  between  a  terminological  and  a  lexicographical tradition.

It  would  thus  seem  more  in  conformity  to  the  perception  of  terminology/terminography  versus  specialized  lexicography  in  Frenchspeaking countries to say that both belong to - or at least should belong to and partake of - sets partly made up of the same components, and partly of different components.

## 6. A special language non terminological dictionary

Should there be a distinction made between special language lexicography and terminography? One such possible differences can be gauged from a current project of the Institut national de la langue française, a dictionary of scientific French, under the direction of Danielle Candel. This project is defined according to a lexicographical orientation, and not a terminological orientation, simply because the focus of the dictionary is the words of science, and not the concepts of science. It is thus a language dictionary of words which are mainly terms, but which are treated from a predominantly linguistic, and thus lexicological point of  view.  The  aim  of  the  dictionary  is  to  describe  the  vocabulary  of scientific  French,  so  the  criteria  for  selection  is  representative  rather than  exhaustive;  it  is  not  proposed  to  include  the  vocabulary  of  all branches  of  science,  only  the  most  significant  ones,  and  it  is  not intended to give an exhaustive coverage of the vocabularies of those branches chosen. The corpus is firmly text based, with all examples being  taken  from  specialized  texts  on  the  subjects  concerned,  in  the same manner as the Trésor de la langue française was elaborated. Like terminology however, all definitions are vetted by subject field experts, and  where  appropriate,  standards  are  quoted.  In  the  eyes  of  those responsible  for  the  project  the  work  is  lexicographical  rather  than terminological, simply because of its language oriented focus.

## 7. Collaboration according to project in hand

The emphasis on the relativity of the differences between terminography  and  specialized  lexicography  is  in  large  part  a  recognition  of Bergenholtz' postulate. Terminography can indeed be seen as a subfield of lexicography. However, terminology teaches us that one concept can have  more  than  one  superordinate  concepts,  and  terminography  is  a case in point: part of lexicography indeed, but also part of terminology, and part of linguistics. Daniel Blampain (1992) suggests that terminology (and terminography especially) is most effective in highly specialised fields, called micro-domains (1992 : 461), which are homogeneous enough  to  lend  themselves  to  an  adequate  structuration.  Specialised lexicography  is  more  often  thought  of  in  vast  fields,  such  as  those envisaged by Bergenholtz and Tarp. It is obvious that this distinction is again one of degree and not of kind.

One conclusion which may be drawn from this review of francophone points of view is that terminology/terminography and lexicology/lexicography are overlapping sectors of activity, part of both being linguistic, and part extra-linguistic, though in varying proportions. The obvious  drawback  of  strict  segmentation  is  that  those  who  consider themselves  terminologists  will  only  read  terminology  journals  and those  who  consider  themselves  lexicographers  only  lexicographical publications, with the result of mutual impoverishment. But is this effect any worse than the current language and language-group cleavage, which leaves European linguists in ignorance of the research carried out in the country next door or next door but one? One possible solution is the  publication  of  such  multilingual,  multidisciplinary  collaboratory efforts such as the present volume.

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