Pollution in Environmental Law: Comparative Corpus Analysis

Abstract

Abstract Environmental Law has been mostly ignored in terminological knowledge bases (TKBs) on the environment. EcoLexicon, a multilingual and multimodal TKB on the environment, has recently begun to include information on this transversal domain. In this study, comparative corpus analysis is carried out in Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2014) to analyse the differences between Environmental Law and Environmental Science from the theoretical and methodological perspective of Frame-Based Terminology (Faber 2012, 2015). More specifically, the focus is on multidimensionality: how concepts change their behaviour according to the context in which they participate. The results show that different facets of the Pollution frame are highlighted and its participants change in the Environmental Law domain as compared to Environmental Science. Finally, the complex multidimensional nature of the Pollution frame is represented in EcoLexicon with a combination of graphical and linguistic expression in conceptual networks and definitions.