La métaphore terminologique filée en français et son rôle dans les textes de vulgarisation scientifique

Abstract

Metaphor consists of the transfer of meaning based on resemblance, and as such it has long been widely explored in literary style. However, metaphor is also one of the sources of polysemy and one of the powerful terminogenic processes, which consists of naming a concept on the basis of the resemblance with another concept already existing in day-to-day language or within the framework of the terminology of a special field. This article focuses on extended metaphor, i.e. metaphor consisting of a sequence of metaphors from the same semantic field, as used in popular science texts. The authors studied metaphors based on military terminology, in a corpus of texts available on the site of Pour la science, a French popular science magazine presenting scientific and technological news intended for general readership. Most of the military terms identified in popular science texts come from common military vocabulary, some designate military formations, tactics, positions, types of weapons, and functions. In most cases these are terms made up of a single unit, and short terminological syntagms. The terms are mainly nouns, with verbs, adjectives, and participles occurring to a lesser extent. In popular science texts the terms lose their strictly terminological meaning, and the metaphor fulfils the explanatory (or didactic) function, elucidating abstract concepts and making the texts more attractive to the reader. The target domains in which semantic features of the source domain – namely military terminology – are the most often transposed include biology, medicine, virology, bacteriology, microbiology, ethology, and neuroscience.