A cognitive sociolinguistic approach to metaphor and denominative variation: A
case study of marine biology terms1
José Manuel Ureña Gómez-Moreno (University of Castile-La Mancha)
Pamela Faber (University of Granada)
This research applied corpus analysis techniques to a corpus of marine biology texts in
Peninsular Spanish (PS) and Latin American Spanish (LAS). The results explain why
these varieties of Spanish have different designations for the same sea organism. The
focus of our research was thus on types of formal onomasiological variation (Geeraerts,
Grondelaers & Bakema, 1994) and its pervasiveness in Spanish scientific discourse.
Also addressed was the incidence of metaphor in specialized concept formation and
designation. Domain-specific and standard strategies were used for the semi-automatic
retrieval of metaphorical terms. The resulting qualitative and quantitative account of
terminological diversity reflected the pervasiveness of intralingual denominative
variation in scientific language and also identified its causes.
Keywords: intralingual variation, cognitive sociolinguistics, metaphor
Metaphor and denominative variation in science
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1. Introduction
Cognitive Sociolinguistics (e.g. Geeraerts, Kristiansen & Peirsman, 2010; Kristiansen &
Dirven, 2008; Speelman, Grondelaers, & Geeraerts, 2003) is a field of research that
focuses on the interaction of conceptual meaning and variational factors as reflected in
the analysis of corpus data (Geeraerts et al., 2010, p. 1). This model draws on empirical
methods to measure lexical-semantic as well as constructional language-internal
variation. According to Geeraerts (2006, p. 30), language variation has been studied in
Cognitive Linguistics and related disciplines from many perspectives: (i) a diachronic
perspective (Bybee, 2001; Geeraerts, 1997); (ii) a cross-linguistic and anthropological
perspective (Levinson, 2003; Pederson, 1998); (iii) a developmental perspective
(Tomasello, 2003). However, until recently, intralingual and sociolinguistic diversity
has been largely ignored.
This is also true of research on conceptual metaphor where introspective research has
been done from a monolingual perspective (e.g. Feldman, 2006; Lakoff & Johnson,
1980, 1999) and a cross-linguistic perspective (e.g. Kövecses, 2005, 2006). However,
now there is increasingly more research that uses statistical and corpus-based strategies.
Monolingual corpus studies on metaphor include Koller et al. (2008), Sardinha (2008),
and Semino (2006), whereas examples of cross-linguistic studies are Charteris-Black &
Musolff (2003) and Chun (2002). Nevertheless, none of this research addresses
language-internal variation.
In Terminology, there is a growing number of corpus-based studies that provide
statistical data on conceptual and linguistic metaphor in architecture (Caballero, 2006),
civil engineering (Boquera, 2005), and marine biology (Ureña & Faber, 2011). In fact,
in the same way as in Cognitive Linguistics, Terminology has also experienced a
Metaphor and denominative variation in science
3
sociocognitive shift, which brings communication-oriented and discourse-centered
research to the forefront (Temmerman & Kerremans, 2003). For instance, Ureña &
Tercedor (2011) establish a typology of sociocognitive patterns for marine biology
metaphor and highlight how they reflect interlinguistic differences and similarities.
Such research complements and enriches monolingual work on the sensorimotor
underpinnings of terminological metaphor (e.g. Ureña & Faber, 2010).
It is only recently that language-internal variation has started to be addressed in depth
in domain-specific and specialized language. One of the sociolectometric studies that
address the convergence and divergence between intralingual varieties in domainspecific discourse is Da Silva (2010) for Brazilian and European Portuguese in football
and clothing. There are studies on terminological diversity in different specialized
knowledge domains, such as energy fields (Dury & Lerva, 2008) and American Legal
English (Goźdź-Roszkowski, 2011). To further research in terminological variation, this
study examines a corpus of marine biology texts in Peninsular Spanish (PS) and Latin
American Spanish (LAS). The results explain why these varieties of Spanish have
different designations for the same sea organism. The focus is thus on types of formal
onomasiological variation (Geeraerts, Grondelaers & Bakema, 1994) (i.e. intra-lingual
denominative diversity) and its pervasiveness in Spanish scientific discourse. Also
addressed is the incidence of metaphor in specialized concept formation and
designation.
The difference between synonymy and variation has always been a controversial
topic. According to the standard view, synonymy concerns lexical change whereas
variation involves syntactic or morphosyntactic order change, morphological change, as
well as orthographic and typological change (Freixa, 2002). Nevertheless, Suárez (2004,
Metaphor and denominative variation in science
4
p. 65) claims that there are currently no conclusive criteria that differentiate variation
from synonymy. For this reason, variant and synonym are used interchangeably in this
paper. All types of variant retrieved from the corpus were considered and computed,
except for orthographic and typological change (e.g. seafan, sea fan, sea-fan).
Our vision of synonymy is closely linked to context. According to Hamon and
Nazarenko (2001, p. 200), two terms X and Y are synonymous in a context C if both
terms are syntactically identical and semantically substitutable in that context. This
assumption is central to our analysis because as reflected in our corpus data, the
meaning of single-word terminological variants can vary or even be deactivated when
the term is decontextualized.
The application of domain-specific strategies previously used for semi-automatic
metaphorical term retrieval (cf. Ureña & Faber, 2011) provided qualitative and
quantitative evidence of regularities in language-internal terminological variation. In
this sense, our study explains the causes of specialized language variation with a
particular emphasis on metaphor. This paper also shows how both variation and
metaphor operate to channel conceptualization and knowledge transfer in scientific
communication.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the materials and method used
in the study to find terminological variants, identify their metaphorical nature, and
quantify them. Section 3 explains how the research method was applied and discusses
the qualitative (3.1) as well as the quantitative results (3.2) obtained. Finally, Section 4
summarizes the conclusions that can be derived from this research.
2. Materials and method
Metaphor and denominative variation in science
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2.1 Research objectives
Our research study had the following objectives:

To obtain the onomasiological range of a set of concepts referring to sea
organisms, namely the nearly total set of expressions that occur as designations
of each of these concepts in a text corpus (Geeraerts & Speelman, 2010).

To quantify the incidence of the types of intra-linguistic term variation in the
corpus. In this regard, particular attention was paid to geographical variation,
interlinguistic borrowings, and cognitive perspective.

To quantitatively determine the significance of metaphor as a trigger of
terminological heterogeneity.
To achieve these goals, a corpus of marine biology texts was processed and analyzed.
Details about this corpus are provided in section 2.2.
2.2 The corpus
The search for observational patterns inevitably involves examining authentic corpus
data, regardless of the theoretical model chosen. This type of bottom-up methodology is
the foundation of usage-based linguistics (Langacker, 1999, 91). The analysis of
authentic data is even more important in metaphor research because corpus evidence
helps users to detect cases of inactive conventional metaphors and compensates for the
arbitrariness of dictionaries (Charteris-Black, 2004, p. 19).
Accordingly, we compiled a corpus of texts from Spanish academic journals on
marine biology and environmental science. Some of the journals are included in the
Journal Citation Reports2, which provides an objective means to rank the world’s
leading journals with quantifiable, statistical information based on citation data.
Metaphor and denominative variation in science
6
Although the other journals in the corpus did not have a JCR ranking, they were
considered to be quality publications because they were published by official organisms
or because they appeared either on the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) or
the Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina, el Caribe, España y Portugal
(Redalyc) websites. These websites have a strict set of norms, guidelines, and selection
criteria that guarantee the quality of the articles3.
Geographical parameters are a major cause of intralingual lexical variation
(Geeraerts et al., 2010). In this study, geographical distance was a particularly
productive cause of intra-lingual terminological diversity. For this reason, the journals
were grouped according to the country or region whose sea life is described. In this
sense, not only were Peninsular Spanish (PS) and Latin American Spanish (LAS)
compared, but also the varieties of each that were spoken in a country or region. Table 1
lists the journals in this study.
Table 1. Spanish academic journals and the number of research articles and tokens in
the corpus
Mexico
JCR Citation
Index
0.041
Number of
articles
11
Chile
0.032
57
450,335
Spain
0.028
64
609,998
Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas
Spain
—
1 (book)
152,208
Investigaciones Marinas
Chile
—
56
449,506
Costa Rica
—
33
252,069
Colombia
—
28
276,371
Journal
Origin
Ciencias Marinas
Revista de Biología
Marina y Oceanografía
Instituto Español de
Oceanografía
Revista de Biología
Tropical
Boletín de Investigaciones
Marinas y Costeras
Tokens
74,792
Metaphor and denominative variation in science
Multequina – Latin
American Journal of
Natural resources
Argentina
—
6
44,584
Total: 256
Total:
2,309,863
7
2.3 Lects and causes of variation in this study
To quantify intralingual variation in marine biology, it was first necessary to gain
knowledge about the different causes of this variation. Table 2 shows Freixa’s (2006, p.
69) typology, which helped us to carry out our study. The left column lists six types of
variation and the right column, two or three subtypes for each. Paying attention to this
classification enabled us to subsequently focus on those causes that were expected to
have a significant impact on the marine biology terminology (see below).
Table 2. Causes of terminological variation
Type
Subtype
1. Preliminary causes
Linguistic redundancy
Arbitrariness of the linguistic sign
2. Dialectal causes
Geographical variation
Chronological variation
Social variation
3. Functional causes
Adaptation to the level of language
Adaptation to the level of specialization
4. Discursive causes
Avoiding repetition
Linguistic economy
5. Interlinguistic causes
Cohabitation of the “local” term and the loanword
Diversity of alternative approaches
6. Cognitive causes
Conceptual imprecision
Ideological detachment
Differences in conceptualization
Based on corpus data, we estimated the importance of these causes and evaluated
their overlap. A language-internal variant is also known as a lect, a general term used to
Metaphor and denominative variation in science
8
refer to a wide range of language varieties, such as dialects, regiolects, national
varieties, registers, styles, and idiolects (Geeraerts, 2006, p. 30). Our aim was to explore
how lectal variables in marine biology texts pattern with each other as well as with
linguistic variables (Geeraerts, 2010b, p.6).
As previously mentioned, not all of the subtypes in Table 2 were considered in the
corpus. In this regard, we only focused on terminological hetero-variation (when
different experts name the same concept in different ways) and excluded self-variation
(when an expert uses different designations for the same concept) (Freixa, 2006, p. 52).
Self-variation normally occurs for discursive and stylistic reasons (e.g. avoidance of
repetition). In contrast, hetero-variation typically emerges from geographical, cognitive,
and interlinguistic factors (Freixa, 2005), which are more relevant to denotational
synonymy in scientific discourse. This study thus explores the characteristics and
relational structure of concepts (cognitive causes) in which metaphor plays a leading
role. Accordingly, it analyzes conceptualization and its relation to the sociocommunicative factors that have an impact on term choice (geographical and
interlinguistic causes).
This study complements previous research by providing quantitative empirical
evidence of the most recurrent types of denominative terminological hetero-variation in
specialized language. This is all-important because currently there are no reliable data
on the importance of any of these causes.
2.4 Method
We applied a set of corpus-searching techniques devised in a previous study (Ureña &
Faber, 2011) to retrieve English-Spanish metaphor term pairs. These techniques were
the following: (i) extraction with target domain keywords; (ii) extraction with source
Metaphor and denominative variation in science
9
domain keywords; (iii) extraction with lexical markers. This third technique was found
to be particularly useful for the semi-automatic extraction of language-internal
synonyms.
Lexical variation has rarely been studied as a sociolinguistic variable because there is
the problem of determining whether two words are semantically equivalent and whether
they designate the same concept (Geeraerts, 2010a). The lexical markers provide a
solution for this problem.
Furthermore, a tagging system was used to quantify the occurrences of synonyms.
This quantification also involved measuring and parameterizing terminological
divergence in PS and LAS as well as between more local varieties within the continent.
One of the very few sociolectometric studies that address the convergence and
divergence between intralingual varieties in specialized discourse is Da Silva (2010) for
Brazilian and European Portuguese. Unlike our study, Da Silva addresses domainspecific rather than specialized terminology, and does not specify which strategies were
used to retrieve variants from his corpus. Moreover, his study is diachronic, whereas
ours is synchronic.
Finally, it was necessary to identify the metaphorical basis of the terminological
variants drawn from the corpus. Metaphor identification is often understated in current
research, and this applies to specialized language as well (Caballero, 2006, p. 65). This
can lead to somewhat unreliable results since metaphor identification is far from easy.
From a linguistic perspective, studies of terminological metaphor are mostly based on
intuition and random inference to determine the metaphorical nature of terms. However,
there are strategies that can be used to avoid subjective choices.
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 10
We used two strategies to obtain objective evidence of metaphorical usage. The first
strategy involves exploring the linguistic context of the term in academic article(s) and
online marine biology databases, such as Fishbase (http://www.fishbase.org), in search
of an explicit or implicit explanation. Context analysis was performed by using the View
Text option in the Concord module of Wordsmith Tools. This function displays a cotext of 400 words for single concordance lines, as shown in context (1). This context,
which was extracted from an academic journal published in Cuba, contains an explicit
explanation of the figurative meaning of pez león [lionfish]. As specified in (1), this fish
“belongs to the family Scorpenidae, which means little scorpion in Greek due to the
pointed protuberances that inject potent venom”.
(1) El pez león (Pterois volitans) […] pertenece a la familia de los Escorpénidos o
peces espinosos, del griego skorpaina (diminutivo de escorpión), por sus
prolongaciones espinosas y la potencialidad de su veneno. (Revista Cubana de
Medicina Militar 42(2), 235-243)
Context (2), which was extracted from an academic journal published in Venezuela,
explains that “scorpion fish have strong, short, erectile spines with anterolateral
poisonous glands showing elongates cavities”.
(2) Los peces escorpión del género Scorpaena […] poseen espinas o púas eréctiles
cortas y fuertes (12-13 en su aleta dorsal, 2 en la pélvica y 3 en la anal), las
cuales tienen en su porción antero-lateral glándulas de veneno con cavidades
alargadas. (Investigación Clínica 49(3), 299-307).
This is thus an explicit explanation of the same metaphorical basis of pez león. In this
case, however, the term defined is pez escorpión [scorpionfish], which designates a fish
of the same family as pez león. These examples anticipate more cases of terminological
variation found in this study.
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 11
Context (3) provides an implicit explanation of why pez mantequilla [butter fish]
receives its name. It is argued that “a rectal excretion of a greasy substance after
consumption of certain fish with high fat content” is analyzed, concretely, “after intake
of butterfish”. The metaphorical nature of pez mantequilla can thus be inferred from this
description.
(3) Se conoce como keriorrhea la emisión rectal de una sustancia grasa anaranjada
tras el consumo de ciertos peces con alto contenido en grasas. Se presenta el caso
de dos niños que manifestaron este cuadro tras consumir un pescado llamado
"pez mantequilla". (Revista de Pediatría y Atención Primaria 14(3), 49-52).
When the contextual analysis was not sufficient to attest the metaphorical motivation
of a term, it was necessary to examine the image of sea organisms in the electronic
database consulted as well as on the Google image search engine. This study includes
pictures of sea organisms, some of which were crucial to finding the metaphorical
motivation of their terms (e.g. Picture 7).
By applying these two strategies, we were able to test the metaphorical nature of
marine biology terms against empirical data.
3. Results and discussion
This section explains how lexical markers and tags facilitated the retrieval of
intralingual terminological variants in Spanish.
3.1 Qualitative study
As previously mentioned, lexical markers were used to retrieve terminological variants.
These markers, which recovered literal and figurative common names from the corpus,
were both domain-specific and standard. The domain-specific markers were taxonomic
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 12
designations4 and the standard markers were the phrases (localmente) conocido/a como
“(locally) known as”, denominado/a (comúnmente) como “(commonly) named”, and
(también) llamado “(also) called”. Both types were concordanced with the lexical
analysis program Wordsmith Tools®. The collocational horizons of the search word
were five words to the left and five words to the right of the node.
3.1.1 Domain-specific markers
As evidenced in the concordances and collocates, taxonomic designations were
extremely productive lexical markers for common-name terms. This was crucial for the
identification of metaphorical PS-LAS variants because no theory of metaphor can
predict which word forms will be used more often metaphorically (Sardinha, 2008, p.
128). Taxonomic designations were collected from the co-texts of extracted terms and
from the checklists in the academic articles (see Figure 1 for a species list from a
Mexican estuary). Although taxonomic designations are used to guarantee referential
accuracy, the corpus data showed that synonymy is frequent in specialized discourse.
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 13
Figure 1. Checklist of fish species in the Tuxpan-Tampamachoco estuary, Mexico.
The concordance lines showed significant convergence in the way the two speech
communities designate the same concepts. However, the concordances also reflected
many denominative differences. This can be observed in concordance lines (4) and (5),
which include the pair yubarta and ballena jorobada, both of which are Spanish terms
for humpback whale. Although the quantitative analysis revealed that both terms are
commonly used by experts in Spain and Latin America, it was also evident that PS
biologists tend to favor yubarta (81 hits across a range of articles) over ballena
jorobada (35 hits). In contrast, LA biologists clearly prefer ballena jorobada (97 hits) to
yubarta (1 hit).
The comparison of each term in the onomasiological range of a concept in the marine
biology corpus is one of the three criteria that were used as evidence of terminological
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 14
variation mediated by geographic fragmentation. The other two criteria were the
following: (i) the lexical markers (localmente) conocido/a como “(locally) known as”,
and (también) llamado x en y “(also) called x in y” (where x stands for the commonname term and y stands for the place where the term is used); (ii) the first author’s
knowledge of scientific terminology. In the previously mentioned case, it was the
taxonomic designation Megaptera novaeangliae that helped to identify the variants
yubarta and ballena jorobada in examples (4) and (5).
(4) Este último es el caso de la YUBARTA (Megaptera novaeangliae) que, aun siendo
habitual en los océanos de todo el mundo (Fernández-Casado et al. 2001), en raras
ocasiones se adentra en el interior del MAR MEDITERRÁNEO (Aguilar 1989) (IEO <
Galemys 18(1-2), 2006, Notas, 40-42)
(5) La BALLENA JOROBADA del Pacífico suroriental (Megaptera novaeangliae) migra
entre el área de reproducción, principalmente en las aguas de ECUADOR Y
COLOMBIA, y el área de alimentación alrededor de la península Antártica. (Rev.
Biol. Mar. Ocean.41(1), 2006, 11-19)
The metaphorical motivation of these terms indicates that this is a terminological
doublet, i.e. a term pair in which the semantics of one term is transparent whereas the
other is Latin in origin, and thus, opaque (Suárez, 2004, p. 64). Accordingly, yubarta
comes from the French jubartes, which in turn stems from gibbus (Latin for Spanish
giba/joroba, ‘humpback’). Ballena jorobada, ‘humpback whale’, is a transparent
metaphor. In both cases, a physical feature is compared with the curve of the whale’s
back when diving. However, despite its opaque meaning, the formal term, yubarta, is
more frequent in PS scientific discourse.
Visuals greatly assist experts in explaining specialized concepts (Fernandes, 2004).
This is true for concept names based on resemblance5 metaphor concepts (see Picture
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 15
1), which illustrates the motivation for the metaphorical transfer of the synonyms
yubarta and ballena jorobada.
Picture 1. Humpback of the ballena jorobada/yubarta.
The terms in contexts (4) and (5) are examples of how geographic fragmentation
prompts intralingual variation, even when the cognitive perspective regarding the
motivation for the naming of the concept (i.e. metaphorical transfer) is shared by the
two speech communities. Other examples in this study show that geographic
fragmentation and cognitive preferences generally go hand in hand since different
cognitive perspectives often involve different speech communities, which are separated
geographically.
The concordances also show the influence of English on Spanish, which triggers
term variation in Spain and Latin America. This influence was reflected in the corpus by
interlinguistic borrowings, adaptations of the English terms, and literal translations.
These three types of borrowing are what Bertaccini, Massari & Castagnoli (2010, p. 16)
call pathological synonymy. Unlike physiological synonymy, pathological synonymy is
arbitrary (i.e. not functional), involves the coexistence of a foreign and a native term,
and gives rise to a wide range of equivalent expressions.
An example of term adaptation is the LAS term macarela in (6), which stems from
mackerel. As shown in (7), this adaptation is an example of intra-lingual variation
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 16
because the PS designation of this fish (Scomber scombrus) is caballa, the Latin word
for Spanish yegua and English mare. This is a metaphor originally based on the jumping
and flying ability of the fish Cheilopogon heterurus (Exocoetidae family), whose
morphology and striped dorsal skin partially resemble that of the Scomber scombrus
(Pictures 2 and 3). This physical resemblance caused the Scomber scombrus to also be
known as caballa (Coromines & Pascual, 1997).
(6) La abundancia relativa de la MACARELA (Scomber scombrus) fue
significativamente mayor en la REGIÓN DE LA ISLA PATOS, respecto a cualquier otra
región. (Revista de Biología Tropical, 56(2), 2008, 575-590)
(7) La pretensión de esta tesis es tener un conocimiento más amplio de las
características biológicas de la
CABALLA
Scomber scombrus L., 1758 del
Atlántico nordeste en el norte y noroeste de la PENÍNSULA IBÉRICA. (IEO, PhD
dissertation)
Picture 2. Exocoetidae fish (flying fish)
Picture 3. Scomber scombrus (caballa)
A case of direct borrowing that causes PS-LAS variation is turbot, which was
extracted by concordancing the taxonomic designation Psetta maxima. As shown in (8)
and (9), LAS biologists use the terms rodaballo and turbot with a preference for the
latter. In contrast, PS experts prefer rodaballo. Turbot and rodaballo occurred 51 and
10 times in the LAS texts, respectively, whereas the PS texts yielded 73 occurrences of
rodaballo with no hits for turbot.
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 17
(8)
La alimentación de juveniles de Paralichthys adspersus ha sido provista
tradicionalmente por dietas formuladas para juveniles de RODABALLO o TURBOT
(Psetta maxima Linnaeus, 1758), bajo el supuesto que los peces planos tienen
hábitos de vida similares (Alvial and Manríquez 1999). (Rev. Biol. Mar.
Oceanogr. (1), 2011, 9-16)
(9)
Trataremos en particular los problemas patológicos de especies conocidas de
peces planos en cultivo, como el RODABALLO (Scophthalmus/Psetta maxima),
lenguado (Solea sp.), fletán (Hippoglossus hipoglossus), así como de otras
especies. (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2000)
Interestingly, (9) shows that denominative variation is not only present in scientific
common names but also in taxonomic designations (Scophthalmus/Psetta maxima).
Concordances of Tursiops truncatus, a type of dolphin, reflected that terminological
diversity in Spanish can be caused by literal translations from English. Figure 2 was
extracted from an article in Ciencias Marinas, a bilingual Latin American journal. This
format was extremely helpful in identifying not only literal translations, but also other
types of borrowing. Figure 2 shows that LA Spanish is more influenced by English than
peninsular Spanish. LA biologists use the metaphorical term delfín nariz de botella,
which is the literal translation of bottlenose dolphin. This name refers to the dolphin’s
snout, which is short and stubby in comparison with that of the rest of members of the
Delphinidae family (see Picture 4).
Figure 2. Extract from a bilingual article in Ciencias Marinas (36 (1), 2010, 71-81).
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 18
In contrast, the corpus data reflected that peninsular Spanish has less of a tendency to
adapt or incorporate English names. Context (10) shows that PS biologists
metaphorically refer to Tursiops truncatus as delfín mular ‘mule dolphin’. The dolphin
is compared to a mule because of its robust appearance as well as its energetic and
hardy nature. In fact, this species is the most common in aquaria, where it is in close
and constant contact with people.
(10) […] las aguas que rodean el ESTRECHO DE GIBRALTAR, del 8 al 26 de julio de
1993, se realizaron períodos de observación para el avistamiento de cetáceos. Se
hicieron 62 avistamientos que correspondieron a las siguientes especies: delfín
común Delphinus delphis Linnaeus, 1758 (31 % de los avistamientos); calderón
Globicephala sp. (26 %); delfín listado Stenella coeruleoalba (Meyen, 1833) (23
%); DELFÍN MULAR Tursiops truncatus (Montagu, 1821) (18 %) (IEO, 24, 1997,
65-73)
The corpus revealed that LA scientists also make use of the alternative term tursión
(11), an adaptation of the Latin tursio ‘porpoise’ and the Greek ops ‘face’, which
combine to form Tursiops. Curiously enough, truncatus, the second constituent, also
refers to the shortness of this animal’s snout in that it appears to be cut off or truncated.
(11) El primero corresponde a un grupo observado junto con TURSIONES (Tursiops
truncatus) y calderones de aleta corta (Globicephala macrorhynchus) en bahía
Cumberland, isla Robinson Crusoe frente a CHILE CENTRAL. (Rev. Biología
Marina y Oceanografía, 38(2), 2003, 81-85).
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 19
Picture 4. Short snout of the bottle-nose dolphin.
These corpus examples provide evidence that Tursiops truncatus has three
metaphorical common names. In this case, variation is largely due to the influence of
the English language on LAS. Different cognitive perspectives are associated with the
geographical distance separating LAS and PS.
3.1.2 Standard markers
Standard markers were very productive in identifying synonyms on an intracontinental
scale. For instance, the phrase también llamado ‘also called’ in (12) revealed the
presence of the terms flecha de plata and matungo, together with pejerrey. All three
terms designate a fish typically found in Argentina and Uruguay.
(12) Unos años más tarde, en 1960, se transplanta oficialmente en nuestro medio
acuático una especie más, el PEJERREY (Odontesthes bonariensis) o también
llamado vulgarmente «FLECHA DE PLATA» o «MATUNGO», oriundo del RÍO DE LA
PLATA, RÍO PARANÁ y URUGUAY MEDIO E INFERIOR y LAGUNAS DE LA CUENCA DEL
RÍO SALADO (BUENOS AIRES)
(Ringuelet, 1967). (Multequina 4, 1995)
Although the three are LAS variants, pejerrey is a generic term, widely used across
Latin America. This supports the claim that lectal varieties are not necessarily discrete
entities with well-defined characteristics and strict isoglosses (Kristiansen, 2008, p. 59).
However, terminological diversity is a fact since flecha de plata and matungo are
mostly used in Argentina and Uruguay. In fact, the geographical range (Geeraerts &
Speelman, 2010, p. 32) of matungo is specified in its non-figurative general language
sense in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española:
ARG. y UR. Dicho de un caballo: Que carece de buenas cualidades físicas.
‘ARGENTINA and URUGUAY. Of or relating to a horse in poor physical condition’
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 20
More specifically, matungo is a Latin American word with an African origin. This is
a common linguistic phenomenon in the Latin America because of the importation of
African black slaves that began in the 15th century (Lapesa, 1942, p. 534). Matungo thus
reflects that borrowings from indigenous languages even exist in scientific terminology.
These borrowings may in turn be the cause of intralinguistic variation affecting the
geographical continuum of a speech community, as is the case of matungo with respect
to flecha de plata (typically Argentinean and Uruguayan) and pejerrey (a more
widespread term). According to Geeraerts & Speelman (2010, p. 23), lexical variation in
a geographical or social continuum occurs because societal and material factors trigger
the interaction of different language systems.
In studies on metaphor, the significance of borrowing has been discussed in a range
of knowledge fields. For instance, Trim (2011, p. 84), who conducts a diachronic
analysis of the evolution of conceptual mapping, argues that a great deal of borrowing
takes place in drug terminology as a result of its international nature. However, research
in metaphorical borrowing in marine biology is yet to be exploited. In our case, the
phrase que carece de buenas cualidades físicas ‘in poor physical condition’ in the
definition of matungo is a cue for the metaphorical motivation of the term since it
establishes a comparison between an enfeebled horse and a fish with a thin elongated
shape (Picture 5).
The metaphorical motivation of pejerrey is also grounded in the shape and physical
appearance of the fish. However, rather surprisingly, the cognitive perspective in this
case is positive instead of negative. The explanation lies in the term itself, which reflects
the fact that specialized language is subject to the same rules as general language. More
specifically, pejerrey is combination of pej6 (phonological adaptation of pez ‘fish’ and
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 21
rrey (orthographic adaptation of rey ‘king’). Consequently, the term, pejerrey “king
fish”, foregrounds the slimness and elegance of this fish. In fact, its elongated shape and
shiny gray color is also the metaphorical motivation of the term flecha de plata ‘silver
arrow’. Therefore, the same fish can be named from a negative, positive, and neutral
cognitive perspective. Unlike the term pair, ballena jorobada-yubarta, the
onomasiological range of Odontesthes bonariensis reflects different cognitive
perspectives, underlying the geographic fragmentation of the designations.
Picture 5. Fish known as pejerrey, flecha de plata, or matungo.
When pejerrey was concordanced, the data showed that this term designated a
different fish in peninsular Spanish, as shown in context (13).
(13) Aspectos de la biología reproductora del PEJERREY o GUELDE BLANCO Atherina
presbyter Cuvier, 1829 (Atherinidae) en GRAN CANARIA (Islas Canarias) […] En
Canarias, esta especie, denominada comúnmente GUELDE BLANCO, es utilizada
como cebo vivo en la pesquería de túnidos desarrollada por la flota artesanal.
(Boletín Instituto Español Oceanografía 17(3-4), 2001)
This example supports our claim that the meaning of a single-word term can change,
depending on the context. Accordingly, pejerrey can refer to different fish species
(Atherinopsidae or Atherinidae), if it appears in a PS article or in an LAS article.
However, not surprisingly, the same metaphor has been lexicalized in both speech
communities because the two fish families belong to the same order. Atheriniformes
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 22
have an elongated and slender shape, and furthermore, the Atherina presbyter is grayish
in color (see Picture 6).
Picture 6. Atherina presbyter.
Interestingly enough, the standard marker denominada comúnmente ‘commonly
known as’, together with the more specific geographical marker en Canarias ‘in the
Canary Islands’, showed that the generic PS term pejerrey has a lectal variant, guelde
blanco ‘white guelde’. Consequently, geographic fragmentation also affects PS texts.
The geographical origin of the term was confirmed by the entry for guelde in the
Diccionario Básico de Canarismos (2010, p. 227):
(Atherina presbyter) Pequeño pez pelágico de color plateado […] Los
pescadores lo suelen utilizar como carnada […] En algunas zonas de Canarias
se conoce con los nombres de “longorón” y “ruama”.
‘(Atherina presbyter) Small pelagic, silvery fish […] Fishermen generally use it
as bait […] In certain areas of the Canary Islands, this fish is known as longorón
and ruama’.
This dictionary entry is relevant for three reasons. First of all, this entry contributes
two more lectal variants for Atherina presbyter, i.e. longorón and ruama. Secondly, the
Canary Islands term, ruama, is a variant of ruana, which means grayish in color
(Diccionario de la Real Academia Española). The terms guelde blanco ‘white guelde’
and ruama are thus examples of social categorization (Kristiansen, 2008, p. 417), which
is a cognitive process involving the accentuation of intragroup similarities and
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 23
intergroup differences on a continuous dimension. In this sense, white and gray are
colors that overlap in a transition zone of the dimension of color. The color of Atherina
presbyter (light gray or grayish white) lies in this transition zone (see Picture 6). One
group of Canary Islanders originally perceived the color of this fish as light gray
(ruama), whereas another group perceived the color as dirty white (guelde blanco).
Thirdly, the dictionary entry states that fishermen use this fish as bait. The term guelde
evidently resembles gueldo, which is defined by the Diccionario de la Real Academia
Española as follows:
Cebo que emplean los pescadores, hecho de camarones y otros crustáceos
pequeños.
‘Bait used by fishermen, which consists of shrimp and other small crustaceans’
The term guelde must thus be an insular lectal variant of the general language word
gueldo, which designates not only small crustaceans, but also fish.
These examples not only show that geographical fragmentation in specialized
language occurs in PS and LAS, but also within Spain. The corpus also yielded
instances of country-specific LAS variation in which metaphorical thought figures
prominently. For example, the keywords conocida como ‘known as’ in (14) show that
the species Fissurella crassa is called lapa de sol ‘sun limpet’ in northern Chile,
whereas it is called lapa ocho ‘eight limpet’ in central and southern Chile. This means
that the maximal geographical range (Geeraerts & Speelman, 2010, p. 32) of the term
lapa ocho is wider than that of lapa de sol.
(14) Con este propósito se ha escogido a Fissurella crassa, conocida como “LAPA DE
SOL”
SUR
en el NORTE DE CHILE (Bretos 1978) o “LAPA OCHO” en la ZONA CENTRAL Y
del país. (Revista de Biología Marina y Oceanografía, 33(2), 1998: 223–239)
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 24
Again, metaphor is a cognitive cause underlying geographical fragmentation in intralingual diversity. Lapa ocho refers to a limpet whose shape is more ellipsoid than
normal, and which resembles the number eight (Picture 7). In contrast, lapa de sol is not
metaphorical, and refers to the fact that this limpet usually clings to rock clefts where it
is easily reached by the sunlight.
Picture 7. Lapa ocho [eight limpet].
The physical and behavioral characteristics of marine organisms have been shown to
have a crucial bearing on their conceptualization and lexicalization. In fact, certain
concept features enhance onomasiological heterogeneity not only in everyday language
(Geeraerts & Speelman, 2010, p. 24), but also in specialized language. By the same
token, the different cognitive perspectives adopted to conceptualize marine biology
entities through metaphor demonstrate that “experience affects representation” (Bybee,
2001, p. 67). In other words, these perspectives are an integral part of the dynamics of
cognition in specialized language, according to which “cognition is a dynamic process
in which concepts and conceptual structures adapt to the speakers’ cultural, social and
situational environment” (Fernández-Silva, Freixa & Cabré, 2001).
3.2. Quantitative study: Corpus annotation and term quantification
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 25
The second tool used was a manual tagging system. Corpus annotation has been shown
to yield optimal results concerning different aspects of metaphor description. Manual
tagging is the most frequent type of corpus formatting. For instance, Semino (2006)
annotates her corpus to describe a specific kind of metaphorical speech act annotation,
whereas Sardinha (2008) annotates his corpus to compute the probabilities of each
candidate word form being a vehicle metaphor. Another body of research relies on
artificial intelligence, which offers automatic semantic field annotation tools, such as the
UCREL Semantic Annotation System for English texts (Koller, Hardie, Rayson &
Semino, 2008; Hardie, Koller, Rayson & Semino, 2007), and metaphor extraction
systems that exploit the codification of pre-defined semantic relations between units in
lexical databases, as is the case of CorMet (Mason, 2004).
Although convincing results have been obtained, the approaches of these studies are
not suitable for our research. First of all, it is not clear how the USAS could be
systematically exploited to reflect intra-lingual differences of resemblance metaphors in
Spanish, something that is guaranteed by our tag set. Secondly, the procedure used in
projects such as CorMet is only valid for verbs7, whereas this study focuses on nouns.
All instances of intra-lingual variants in the PS and LAS corpora were annotated with
one of the tags used in Ureña & Faber (2011). Accordingly, TAXO was placed next to
each taxonomic designation co-occurring with a figurative or literal common name
term. Concordancing this tag with Wordsmith Tools was particularly useful since it also
facilitated the retrieval of those PS and LAS terms that were not metaphorical in nature.
The next step was to analyze the TAXO-tagged terms and their co-text to identify
cases of language-internal synonymy. Needless to say, non-specific markers, such as
conocido como ‘known as’, were also of great help for this purpose. The goal was not
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 26
only to quantify PS and LAS terminological synonyms, but also to classify them based
on geographic fragmentation and interlinguistic borrowings8. For this purpose, the
following tags were added to the variants identified:
-
Tags indicating geographic fragmentation:
o INTER: for terms reflecting PS-LAS variation
o LAT: for terms reflecting varation in LA countries or regions
o PEN: for terms reflecting variation on the Iberian Peninsula and Islands
-
Tags indicating English-Spanish interlinguistic borrowings:
o DB: direct borrowing
o ADA: adaptation
o LT: literal translation
In addition, the tag METAPH was crucial for the computation of Spanish-language
metaphorical variants.
Figure 3 is a Wordsmith Tools screenshot of some of the concordances from the
corpus by concordancing the tag INTER. This procedure facilitated the retreival of LASPS terminological synonyms. The cotext of many of the terms reveals that they are used
in Latin America or Spain.
Figure 3. Concordances of the INTER tag with PS-LAS term variants.
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 27
In Figure 3, concordances 1 and 2 include the synonyms tortuga golfina ‘gulf turtle’
and tortuga olivácea ‘olive turtle’, mostly found in PS texts, and their variant tortuga
lora ‘parrot turtle’, only found in LAS texts. Concordances 3 and 4 (Fig. 3) show the
LAS term tortuga cabezona ‘big-head turtle’ and tortuga boba ‘loggerhead turtle’,
widely used in the PS texts. Concordances 5 and 6 (Fig. 3) include the PS term lampuga
[no translation] and its LAS synonym pez dorado ‘golden fish’. Concordances 7 and 8
(Fig. 3) show the term ostión del Pacífico ‘giant oyster from the Pacific’, used in
peninsular Spanish, and the LAS variant ostra rizada ‘curly oyster’. As can be seen,
many of these terms are metaphorical in nature.
Figure 4 shows concordances of the tag LAT, which contain terminological variants
in Latin America. Concordances 1 and 2 (Fig. 4) retrieve the term pargo manchado
‘stained snapper’, used in Costa Rica, and pargo lunarejo ‘spotty snapper’, which
appears in a Mexican article. Concordances 3 and 4 (Fig. 4) include the Mexican,
Colombian and Ecuadorian synonyms, pata de mula ‘mule-leg (clam)’, piangua [no
translation], and concha prieta ‘swarthy shell’, respectively. These synonyms were also
retrieved by concordancing the lexical marker conocido como ‘known as’.
Concordances 5 and 6 (Fig. 4) contain the two common name variants of Nodipecten
subnodosus in the corpus, escalopa (no translation) and almeja mano de león ‘lion’s
paw clam’.
Figure 4. Concordances with terminological synonyms in Latin America.
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 28
Figure 5 includes concordances obtained with the tag PEN, which was used to
retrieve PS synonyms. Again, the cotext indicates the origin of the terms. Concordances
1 and 2 (Fig. 5) show the Canary Islands metaphorical synonyms sebadales ‘barley
field’ and manchones ‘soiled field’, which are variants of the standard Spanish term
pradera marina ‘marine meadow’. Concordance 3 (Fig. 5) contains chanquete
‘transparent goby’, used in Murcia to designate the species Aphia minuta. Concordance
4 (Fig. 5) shows that the standard term besugo americano ‘American sea bream’ is
called alfonsiño ‘dear/little alphonse’ and fula de altura ‘deep-sea fula’ on the Canary
Islands. Fula is a term used in Canary Islands to designate the bell-shaped umbrella of a
jellyfish (Alvar, 1975, p. 432). In Concordances 5 and 6 (Fig. 5), the standard term
boquerón ‘whitebait’ is called anchoa ‘anchovy’ in the north of Spain, including the
Cantabrian region. In concordances 7–8 (Fig. 5), the standard term pargo ‘snapper’ is
called bocinegro ‘black snout’ in the Canary Islands.
Figure 5. Concordances including terminological variants in Spain.
Figure 6 includes concordances of the tags, LAT DB and INTER DB, showing
instances of direct borrowings from English. Only a few examples reflected PS-LAS or
LA terminological divergence. Concordance 1 (Fig. 6) shows an example of direct
borrowing, halibut, extracted from an LAS article. As can be observed in the taxonomic
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 29
designation in concordance 2 (Fig. 6), this borrowing is synonymous with the
metaphorical term lenguado del Atlántico ‘tongue-shaped (fish) from the Atlantic’.
Since this term appeared in both LAS and PS publications, the tag LAT/INTER was
inserted. Concordance 3 (Fig. 6) includes the metonymic direct borrowing redclaw,
which is synonymous with the standard term langosta australiana de agua dulce
‘Australian freshwater lobster’ in concordances 3 and 4 (Fig. 6). Concordances 5 and 6
(Fig. 6) contain the metaphorical PS term pez reloj ‘clock fish’ and its LAS synonym,
orange roughy, a direct borrowing from the English language.
Figure 6. Concordances with examples of direct borrowings and their synonyms.
Figures 7 and 8 show concordances of the tags LAT LT and INTER LT, which contain
terminological synonyms that are literal translations of the English terms. They were
obviously literal translations because most were extracted from English-Spanish articles
in the bilingual journal Ciencias Marinas. In other cases, the original English terms
were found in English-language articles in JCR academic journals, such as Marine
Biology and Environmental Biology of Fishes. Concordances 1 and 2 (Fig. 7) include
two LAS metaphorical variants of the seal species Otaria flavescens: lobo marino ‘sea
wolf’ and león marino ‘sea lion’. Lobo marino is the standard name in LAS and PS. As
for león marino, it is hardly a coincidence that the English common name for this
species is sea lion, as shown in (15).
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 30
Figure 7. Terminological variation in Latin America caused by the influence of English.
(15) Several major breeding areas have been defined for the South American SEA LION
(Otaria flavescens) along the Atlantic Ocean including the Uruguayan and
Patagonian coasts. (Marine Biology, 158(8), 2011: 1857-1867)
Figure 8 includes PS-LAS terminological variants. Concordance 1 (Fig. 8) contains
tiburón limón, which appeared in many LA articles, and is a literal translation of the
metaphorical English term, lemon shark (the shark is yellowish in color). Concordance
2 (Fig. 8) shows the metaphorical variant tiburón galano ‘gallant shark’ in a PS text.
Concordances 3 and 4 (Fig. 8) include the PS term langostino blanco ‘white prawn’,
and its LA synonym camarón rosado, which is the literal translation of pink shrimp.
Finally, concordances 5-6 (Fig. 8) show the PS term rabil [a type of mill] and the LA
atún aleta amarilla, which a calque of yellowfin tuna.
Figure 8. PS-LAS variation due to English.
Finally, two adaptations from English were found. Of these two, only macarela
reflects a PS-LAS divergence. In contrast, marlín/marlines (adaptations of marlin) are
used in both Spain and Latin America. Figure 9 is a concordance of the tag ADA with
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 31
the term marlines. This concordance also contains two metaphorical terms used by both
speech communities, pez vela ‘sailfish’ and pez espada ‘swordfish’.
Figure 9. Spanish adaptation of marlin.
All the corpus common names, including the previous examples, were classified and
quantified based on the tags and lexical markers. The results showed that the corpus
contained 15,327 metaphorical terms for sea organisms. Table 3 shows the figures
obtained for (metaphorical) variants of different types.
Table 3. Figures/distribution of tokens of terminological variants.
2,309,863
Tokens
Variants
and %
Metaphorical
variants and
%
PS-LAS variants
(metaphorical)
and %
PS variants
LAS variants
(metaphorical) (metaphorical)
and %
and %
11,589
9,468
3,189 (2,472)
3,791 (2,273)
4,609 (4,723)
0.5%
0.4%
0.14%
0.16%
0.2%
Table 3 shows the number of tokens rather than of types to provide a more accurate
quantification of Spanish-language synonyms in marine biology. This methodology was
applied by Geeraerts & Speelman (2010, p. 36), who prefer a token-based measure of
diversity. Although the terminological variation in the corpus is fairly low, the figures
still reflect the presence of synonymy in specialized language. As shown in Table 3,
intra-continental and country-internal variation outnumbers intercontinental variation. A
possible explanation for this is that in international communication scientists tend to use
standardized terminology to avoid ambiguity.
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 32
It is also evident that metaphor is a recurrent cognitive mechanism of term creation,
especially in Latin American Spanish. In all likelihood, the reason for this is that LAS is
more influenced by English as well as indigenous languages. In fact, the corpus
revealed a good number of terms of indigenous origin (as many as 29 terminological
units of this type were identified by means of the semi-automatic strategies applied in
this study). However, many of them did not generate synonym pairs, probably because
the organisms designated are only found in Latin America. For example, (16) contains
the huachinango, which clearly stems from Quechua. Even its taxonomic designation,
L. peru, indicates the origin of this species.
(16) Se identificaron registros de pesca completos para 18 especies de importancia
comercial pertenecientes a ocho familias (tabla 1). La especie más capturada en la
Bahía de La Paz entre 1998 y 2005 fue el HUACHINANGO L. peru, con 43% de la
captura total.
Also found were PS terms with no correlates in the LAS texts (as many as 45 terms
of this type were identified). In some cases, the reason was cultural (19 metaphorical
terms were found to be culture-dependent). An example is ochavo (no translation) in
(17), a metaphorical term that designates a fish typically found off the coasts of Spain,
and which has a roundish shape (Picture 8). This shape prompts the comparison
between the fish and an ochavo, a coin used in Spain from the reign of King Philip III
until the 19th. This clearly shows that culture affects conceptualization and designation
of specialized concepts through metaphor (see Ureña & Tercedor, 2011 for a finegrained classification of culture-bound metaphorical terms). It should thus not be
surprising that this fish did not appear in the LAS texts.
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 33
(17)
EL MAR DE ALBORÁN,
que está delimitado al oeste por el ESTRECHO DE GIBRALTAR
y al este por la línea imaginaria que une el CABO DE GATA (ESPAÑA) con el cabo
Figalo (Argelia), ocupa una superficie de unos 54 000 km2 y su fondo posee una
compleja topografía con variadas subcuencas, altos estructurales y plataformas.
[…] En la zona costera septentrional han estado presentes, a lo largo de todo el
ciclo estacional considerado (primavera, verano y otoño), las larvas de peces de
diferentes grupos taxonómicos (mictófidos, espáridos, góbidos, callyonimidos,
blénidos y bótidos) y de la especie Capros aper (OCHAVO). (IEO, Microfichas,
1997).
Picture 8. Ochavo (Capros aper).
The corpus contained 32 PS variants from the Canary Islands. The geographical
distance of these Islands from the Iberian Peninsula is certainly a major cause of
variation. Table 4 shows the number of variant pairs/triples produced because of
geographical fragmentation and types of borrowing.
Table 4. Pairs/triples of terminological synonyms and their causes.
PS-LAS synonym
pairs/triples
PS synonym
pairs/triples
LAS synonym
pairs/triples
65
83
111
Direct borrowing
from English
9
0
3
Adaptation from
English
1
0
1
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 34
Literal translation
from English
16
2
21
Those pairs/triples that do not fit in any of the three borrowing types are triggered by
different cognitive perspectives, which are primarily shaped by metaphorical thought.
As many as 206 pairs/triples of this type were retrieved from the texts, including 13
terms stemming from indigenous languages (it should be noted that not all terms of this
origin could be coupled to their corresponding equivalents since these latter were not
always found in the texts). Adding up, 259 pairs/triples were identified in the corpus.
4. Conclusions
Language-internal variation remains a little studied area in general language (Geeraerts
et al. 2010, 6) and even more so in terminology research. To fill this gap, this paper
presented the results of a corpus-based study on language variation in peninsular and
Latin American Spanish in marine biology. The qualitative and quantitative results of
the study show that although the percentage of terminological variation is not
significant compared to the total number of tokens in the corpus, the number and types
of synonyms reflect that denominative diversity is a common phenomenon in
specialized language.
The strategies for the semi-automatic retrieval of (metaphorical) terms focused on in
this study were found to be highly productive since they effectively provided the
onomasiological range of the set of sea organism concepts extracted from the corpus.
The strategies also enabled us to quantify the incidence of the types of intra-linguistic
term variation. The results show that geographical fragmentation, reinforced by the
influence of languages other than Spanish (especially English, but also indigenous
languages), is a crucial factor that triggers inter- and intracontinental variation. The
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 35
figures show that in contrast to PS, LAS has a greater tendency to incorporate terms
stemming directly or indirectly from the English language (25 and 2 terminological
variants of this type were found in the corpus, respectively). Indigenous languages
(particularly Quechua) have an influence on term coinage in LAS, which further
increases terminological diversity. In fact, the results of this study provide evidence that
LAS is more prone to producing terminological variants (4,609) than PS (3,791). In our
opinion, it is not only the geographic closeness between North and Central/South
America that prompts this phenomenon, but also the fact that in Latin America, there is
more of a willingness to embrace new terms. Peninsular Spanish is more conservative in
this regard though an exception is evidently the role of dialects from the Canary Islands
(42 PS variants were identified).
Inter-continental diversity, which is regarded as an effect of geographic
fragmentation as well, is a less common phenomenon. Experts’ observation of
international standardization is most likely to be a crucial factor. In any case, the
number of PS-LAS variants obtained — 2,472 — is significant.
The quantitative analysis also revealed the pivotal role of metaphor in prompting
denominative diversity. In fact, as many as 9,468 metaphorical terms out of 11,589
variants were identified in the corpus. Again, it is LAS that is more open to
metaphorical denominations than PS (4,723 and 2,273 variants, respectively). The
occurrence of metaphor in LAS-PS pairs/triples is also representative (2,472 terms were
extracted). It can thus be argued that conceptual salience significantly influences the
occurrence of onomasiological heterogeneity in specialized communication as well. As
reflected in this research, metaphoric thought is instrumental in helping experts to
highlight and recall the physical and/or behavioral features that characterize sea
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 36
organisms. A direct consequence of this might be that experts referred to such
organisms more easily than using taxonomic designations, which are longer and opaque
names. However, this is something that requires validation.
Notes
1
This research was carried out within the framework of the projects RECORD (FFI2011-22397) and
VARIMED (FFI2011-23120), both funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
2
3
http://www.scimagojr.com/index.php.
The SciELO website’s criteria for journal evaluation and selection can be accessed at
http://www.scielo.org/php/level.php?lang=es&component=44&item=2.
4
The taxonomic designation of a species is the Latin name in binomial nomenclature used by the
scientific community to classify such a species into a specific taxon. The first and the second constituents
of the binomial refer to the genus and the specific name, respectively. Both constituents must be written
in italics (e.g. Dicentrarchus labrax).
5
Resemblance metaphors arise from physical and/or behavioural analogy. In contrast, non-resemblance
metaphors are grounded in more abstract aspects (Lakoff, 1993), although they also involve the retrieval
of mental images (Ureña & Faber, 2010).
6
As the corpus showed, this phonological adaptation is widespread in the marine biology terminology,
giving rise to different names, such as pejerrey and pejesapo “toad fish”. This finding supports the claim
that “some systemic factors in the terminology of a domain determine the formation of new terms and the
growth of terminology” (Kageura, 2002, p. 34).
7
CorMet identifies metaphors by finding systematic differences in selectional preferences between
domains. A selectional preference is “a verb’s predilection for a particular type of argument in a particular
role” (Mason, 2004, p. 23).
8
The third cause, cognitive perspective, was not quantified because it is comprehensive. Each of the
common names included in one onomasiological range offers a distinct cognitive standpoint, which may
or may not be figuratively motivated (tagged with METAPH in the corpus). Moreover, it is pointless to
tag those synonyms that have the same cognitive perspective (e.g. doublet-terms).
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 37
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Authors’ addresses + emails
José Manuel Ureña Gómez-Moreno
Department of Modern Philology
University of Castile-La Mancha
Faculty of Arts
Avda. Camilo José Cela, s/n, University Campus
13071 Ciudad Real, Spain
josemanuel.urena@uclm.es
Pamela Faber
Department of Translation and Interpreting
University of Granada
C/ Buensuceso, 11
18071 Granada, Spain
pfaber@ugr.es
About the authors
José Manuel Ureña obtained his PhD in Translation and Interpreting from the
University of Granada. He is currently a Junior Professor at the Department of Modern
Philology of the University of Castile-La-Mancha, Spain, where he teaches Translation
and Academic English. His main research interests lie in (socio)cognitive semantics and
Terminology, with a special focus on figurative language and English-Spanish
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 43
contrastive studies. He has published in high-impact journals, such as Cognitive
Linguistics, Metaphor and Symbol, Terminology, and Language Sciences.
Pamela Faber holds degrees from the University of North Carolina, the University of
Paris IV, and the University of Granada where she has been a full professor in
Translation and Interpreting since 2001. She is the author of various articles and books
on Lexical Semantics and Terminology. She is also the Head of the LexiCon research
group, with whom she has carried out various research projects on terminological
knowledge bases, conceptual modeling, ontologies, and cognitive semantics.