Building an ethnorelative semantic model for multilingual ICC terminology management. The case of English and Spanish

Abstract

The main objective of this thesis is to produce a semantic model that is effective to define, compare and link intercultural communication (ICC) terms across languages and cultures, placing its focus on the language pair English-Spanish. The cross-linguistic and cross-cultural applicability of this model aims to contribute to the development of the first multilingual ICC terminological database within the ICoMuTe project, a resource that will help experts and learners in their professional and academic tasks. The present research follows a corpus-based approach, using the terminographical methods of corpus management, term extraction, term definition, and terminological record filling. Such methods are supported by theoretical accounts in terminology (Cabré, 1999; Temmerman, 2000; Diki-Kidiri, 2022). The creation of the tag system, aided by terminographical methods, is grounded in lexicological works (Goddard & Wierzbicka, 1994, 2002; Žolkovskij & Mel’čuk, 1965; Kahane & Polguère, 2001), which are adapted and expanded for the specificities of ICC. The outcome of this thesis is a culturally neutral set of ICC tags that can be applied to all terms in a multilingual terminological database, in spite of terms being anchored in diverging languacultures. The proposed semantic model allows the identification of similarities and disparities in terminological meaning across languages and cultures, with the goal of enhancing intercultural understanding.