Exploring the interface between scientific and technical translation
and cognitive linguistics : the case of explicitation and implicitation

Krueger, R

Abstract

This thesis aims to explore the interface between scientific and technical translation (STT) and cognitive linguistics (CL), placing particular emphasis on the translationally relevant phenomena of explicitation and implicitation. The two concepts are regarded as potential indicators of translational text-context interaction, which may be of specific importance in the knowledge-intense field of STT and which can be modelled within the CL framework. Parallel to the microscopic attempt to give a coherent account of explicitation and implicitation in STT from a CL perspective, the thesis follows a macroscopic approach that aims to highlight the wider potential which cognitive linguistics holds for the field of scientific and technical translation. Translationally relevant elements of the CL framework include a coherent and cognitively plausible epistemological basis that explains the stability of scientific knowledge, the concept of common ground, which can be used to model the shared knowledge of specialized discourse communities, the field of cognitive semantics, which has developed tools for modelling the organization and representation of specialized knowledge, and the concept of linguistic construal, which allows the description of various linguistic aspects of STT (explicitation and implicitation among them) from a cognitively plausible perspective.
The first part of the thesis takes a macroscopic perspective, being concerned with scientific and technical translation, cognitive linguistics, the philosophical grounding of the two fields and their interface. The perspective is then narrowed down to the two specific phenomena of explicitation and implicitation, which are reconceptualized in cognitive linguistic terms so as to fit into the overall framework of the thesis. The interface between STT and CL is then illustrated in a qualitative corpus-based investigation of explicitation and implicitation as indicators of text-context interaction in translation. The qualitative discussion of the results of the corpus analysis then brings together the theoretical strands of the thesis.

Citation

and cognitive linguistics : the case of explicitation and implicitation. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jun 28, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 28, 2014