METAPHORS IN TECHNICAL-SCIENTIFIC TEXTS

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to present metaphor from a different perspective: not as a stylistic or rhetorical element, used in literary texts, but as an important means of creating specialized terms in technical and scientific language. The role of metaphor in terminologization has been highlighted by many linguists, who have analyzed the complexity of this procedure and concluded that figures of speech used in technical communication must be distinguished from those used in works of fiction, because, although the conceptual mechanism is the same, being based on the transfer of meaning from one reality to another, the value is different; in technical-scientific texts, metaphors are not meant to embellish an otherwise plain or dull style, but to assign terms to concepts in a way that is both precise and easy to understand by the speakers. The dichotomy between metaphor as a stylistic device in LGP (i.e.
language for general purpose) and metaphor as an element used in terminologization in LSPs (i.e. languages for special purposes) is rooted in the distinction between the rhetorical and the semantic value of a word or term. Therefore, a thorough study of this figure of speech implies various perspectives on the multiple possibilities of expression based on metaphors. This paper provides only an overview of the complex issue of metaphorization in Terminology, to which I intend to dedicate a large part of my future research.