Review of Alexiev (2011): Knowledge-Oriented Terminography

Abstract

Reviewed by José Manuel Ureña Gómez-MorenoBoyan Alexiev's (2011) Knowledge-Oriented Terminography is a concise though enriching volume, which provides a set of useful guidelines for successful terminological knowledge extraction and organization. These guidelines are for building multilingual learner glossaries for translation and LSP teaching purposes. Alexiev concludes his book with a proposal for an extended model of an English-Bulgarian learner's glossary entry.The book consists of an introduction and three large sections. In the introduction, Alexiev supports the claim made by leading information scientists and terminologists that Terminology is currently undergoing a shift from the area of computer science to the field of knowledge organization (KO) (cf Dahlberg 2009). As Alexiev argues (p. 9), the latest developments in terminology processing for terminographic purposes, namely, term extraction and semantic (conceptual) relation extraction, aim at extracting not only linguistic data but also domain-specific knowledge. Terminology and KO should thus go hand in hand in terminographic projects. Accordingly, Alexiev speaks of terminological knowledge items instead of terminological data. Knowledge items for terminographic processing can be classified in the following categories: (i) conceptual knowledge items (concepts and concept relations); (ii) lexico-semantic knowledge items (mainly collocational and lexico-grammatical relations); (iii) contextual knowledge items (contexts containing items). Part I: Terminology as organized knowledgeChapter 1 opens with a definition of KO, which should be best understood in its broadest sense as "the production and dissemination of knowledge", in other words, as "the social division of mental labour" (Hjorland 2008a). This loose conception of KO is one of the aspects that enable Alexiev to tie KO in with Terminology in Chapter 3. Alexiev then goes on to discuss the two major theories of KO, i.e. the modern view and the postmodern view. The modern (or positivist) view argues for a pre-existing arrangement of thoughts and ideas, independent from social and individual contexts. In contrast, the postmodern (or pragmatic) view is in favour Terminology 18:2 (2012), 274-281. DOI io.iO75/term.i8.2.o8ure