Introduction

This presentation takes the form of an hypothesis based upon the experience and observation of a relative newcomer to the field of terminology work. As an hypothesis, it is made up by a number of propositions forming two main groupings:

. propositions establishing the case for National funding.

The first set of propositions, from 1 to 20, form the hypothesis leading to the proposition in the title and are grouped to treat the issues involved.

. propositions relating that case to the conference themes.

The second set of propositions 21 to 28 have been added specifically to show how this hypothesis contributes to the purpose of this conference in drawing attention to problems in the field of terminology and the need for a co-operative way forward.

Terminology work is defined in ISO/DIS 1087:1997 as:

work concerned with the systematic collection, description, processing and presentation of concepts and their designations.
NOTE terminology work should preferably be carried out on the basis of established principles and methods. Terminology work includes term excerption, concept harmonization, term harmonization and terminography.

Therefore

1) terminology work, is clearly involved in the production of terminologies, glossaries, thesauri etc, involving some form of special language for specialist subject fields,

but also

2) terminology work extends to critical communication of any kind, involving special language for a special purpose (critical communication means -communication carrying a significant risk of harm if its information/knowledge content is misunderstood).

Proposition 2 is in the initial stages of being tested by action research carried out under the auspices of the MLIS DINT/Leather Infocode project. Recent experiences have reinforced the belief that there is a need for the principles and techniques of terminology work to be applied to the preparation of critical communication. Work instructions referring to one requirement using differing phraseology can be found, selection of inappropriately complex words and grammatical structures can cause the failure of a work force to understand a vital company policy, and many more examples can be easily recalled.

3) terminology work is capable of beneficially impacting everyone's communication needs to a greater or lesser extent.

Throughout this presentation it will be unashamedly reiterated that the rigour of terminology work will have little or no part to play in the vast majority of human communication where natural language is not only adequate, it is best. It is naturally assimilated from the language games played out in the various forms of life of which people have become a part over time. This is the conclusion of Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations.
However, the reverse is also true. Where subject field specialists create terminology or other special language products by applying natural language methodology, they are most likely to make errors. A terminology work expert or a subject field expert with sufficient specialist terminology work knowledge would be less likely to make mistakes.
The proposition that terminology work methodology is equally helpful in forming phrases, paragraphs and whole documents of critical communication, if proved to be true, adds to the importance of this proposition and to the main proposition of the presentation that its promotion should be funded at National level

Terminology work standards:

have been created by ISO/TC 37, the Technical Committee of the International Organisation for Standardisation charged with producing standards for the harmonisation of the terminology of standardisation.

4) Terminology work standards form a systemic family of subject specific standards.

Three sub committees are involved in producing the full range of standards which, between them, make up the principles and practice, tools and techniques that can be made to cater for the terminological needs of any organisation by a selection of the most appropriate standards for the purpose. This is the purpose for adding the word "systemic" to the proposition, it will hardly ever be the case that reference to a single standard will be sufficient.

5) Terminology work standards provide guidance for systematic terminology work in two senses.

First, these standards provide a systems approach to the creation of terminology. This is very important for the purpose of removing the quality problems presented by idiosyncratic creation of variable terminology usually resulting from an ad hoc approach. Secondly, the standards advocate that the terminology itself should be created through the development of relational concept systems as opposed to individual word-smithing of definitions made by an ad hoc approach.

6) Terminology work standards lead to systematic management of terminology work, providing consistently accurate and unambiguous, effective and efficient terminology.

Effective and efficient management of terminology work is a reality in the long term though not necessarily apparent in the short term. Once the difficult "setting up" period has been completed the efficiency of creating accurate and unambiguous terminology is very noticeable to all directly concerned.

7) Use of terminology work standards delivers a manifestly more satisfactory result than maintaining an ad hoc, unsystematic methodology providing inconsistent and comfortably irrelevant terminology.

The reference to comfortably irrelevant terminology is a personal conclusion arrived at by experience of almost impossibly erroneous terms and their definitions somehow managing to go unnoticed. The following example has lasted at least five years in perhaps the most popular standard of all time. This is the definition of "contract" in the ISO 9001:1994 quality assurance standard. Further examples are given in the notes to proposition (16)

8) Terminology work standards are in good shape as subject field specific standards dealing with a meta subject field.

It may be that some of the ISO TC/37 set should be revised to become meta-standards following or improving on the revision ISO 9000:2000 family model. This is a proposition for another forum to debate.
It has become clear that there are a number of important differences between subject field specific standards and meta-standards. Subject field specific standards are mostly product or industry based standards. Meta-standards mainly deal with management systems related to organisational production and apply generically across all organisations and to many people who are not subject field specialists.
Two differences in requirements for the standards are relevant here. First, subject field specific standards are written for subject field specialists using the terminology developed and used by them for their own purposes. Meta-standards need to be written in such a way that subject field specialists can use them yet at the same time they should be readable and easily understood to meet user needs of many types of non subject field specialists. Secondly, it will often be the case that product (including service) standards contain prescriptive and precise norms of what must be done and how. The meta-standards are often guidance standards or lay down norms which provide a framework for what must be done without being prescriptive as to the contents within that framework. Both should provide a means of accurate communication between organisations.

Terminology work standards amounting to a science?

9) If Collins English Dictionary [1998] definition number (4) providing- "any body of knowledge organised in a scientific manner" is acceptable, then terminology work standards amount to a science.

There are some people who claim that there is a terminology science and there are others who find this claim amusing and refute it. Even if proposition 9 is not good enough to establish the claim as being well founded, there is no need to expand the debate here. This is because the systemic content of the ISO/TC 37 standards provide a sufficient body of knowledge to be treated as a science for the purpose of the propositions of this presentation.

10) Most terminology work is conducted ad hoc and without use of systematic or scientific terminology work.

11) Most people have no experience of the precision provided by terminology work and are consequently wary of it to the point of rejection at first sight.

The term "science" is an apt designation to differentiate terminology created within the guidance of the standards and terminology created in an ad hoc manner by subject field specialists with no understanding of the terminology work methodology to be found in these standards.
Propositions 10 and 12 adopt a negative method of arriving at the idea that we are dealing with a "science". Take the creation of terminology in accordance with the standards and the extent to which "ordinary" people find it all too much to try to come to understand even the basics of the knowledge required. Then add a fairly wide refusal to exercise the mind sufficiently to cope with the accuracy of the product. The totality goes a long way to proving that we are dealing with a subject field of sufficient complexity to be designated a science.

12) Yes terminology work IS a science, but unless the science, its results and its applications become part of global culture through availability at appropriate depths of detail, its potential for good shall remain largely unknown.

The ramifications arising from this proposition that go beyond the obvious are dealt with when commenting on "problems" below.

Should terminology work be funded as a national overhead?

13) The problem of unsatisfactory critical communication and special language exists.

Personal experience of the truth of this proposition together with indications of consequential damage has become an almost a daily occurrence.

14) The means to remedy the situation have existed for over 50 years if not longer but very few people know or seem to care.

ISO/TC 37 started its work in the 1930s and yet, not only are the standards not well known and used in industry, they are not even widely or properly used within ISO or the national standards bodies of member states.
The problem in (13) and failure to look for the remedy (14) is a recurring theme in the development of the main proposition of this presentation. Underlying reasons may become apparent by using a twist to Wittgenstein's example of the beetle in the box to illustrate:
I have a beetle in my box that I am discussing with 10 people. For everyday communication purposes it is likely and effective for me to refer to my beetle as a beetle without further description. At the other end of the scale it may be that we are discussing a beetle that is deadly to humans, animals and plants, the criticality of my communication has become of the highest importance. The effectiveness of my communication will depend on the level of precision with which the "beetle" is described.
The following matrix is intended to provide a perspective of the problem. The suggestion being that the highs and lows of numbers for each category is dependent on the individuals concerned in the activity.
A system reduces reliance on individual differences but never removes it.

 

15) Production of ambiguous, confused or meaningless critical communication may occur:

a) deliberately, with intention to mislead,
b) recklessly, not caring that misunderstanding will result,
c) negligently or accidentally, not realising that there is a problem or remedy.

The usual ratios probably apply to the levels of malice aforethought attached to such production; the vast majority of cases will fall under (c) with (b) forming a large group and, hopefully very few examples of (a). The production in group (c) arises through a mixture of ignorance and culturally encouraged blindness expanded upon in proposition (17) below.

16) Deliberately misleading or meaningless communication often employs the most serious forms of terminological error.

The glossary within a medical insurance policy in present use affords two such examples:

1.2 alcohol abuse
a mental or physical condition partly or totally caused by alcohol abuse

This polysemetic circularity includes the interesting twist that the designation chosen is the least likely to naturally fit this definition. They have chosen to allocate this designation to a medical condition that is the result of alcohol abuse, i.e. just about possible but unlikely. Most people would expect this designation to be used for the cause of the medical condition). Finally, of course, the obvious terminological remedy is probably that the definition is that which is the important concept required for their needs, applying a more appropriate designation, such as alcohol addiction would leave it open for them to retain the definition unchanged and then perhaps define alcohol abuse as a cause.

medical condition
Any disease, illness or injury covered by this policy

This extensional definition could be acceptable as an interpretative prescription in the circumstances of the case if it was possible to discover WHICH diseases, illnesses or injuries ARE intended to be covered by the policy. There are no such references to be found anywhere. In other words, this presents an extraordinary working example of an extensional definition without any extension at all - it makes the more usual incomplete extensional definition errors through missing concepts or listing concepts without definition look good. In this form, it is of course incapable of having any meaning and can therefore be interpreted to have any meaning when called upon to do so.

One wonders what the "helpline" staff do when asked about the meaning of these terms. There are 350,000 customers of this organisation's insurance products.

17) Debatable activities of politicians, judicial systems, officials and sales techniques have fostered an almost universal lack of awareness.

The existence of a culture blind to the problem or its solution stems from the number of situations in which people in a subordinate position to authority are subjected to denial of true knowledge held accurately or inaccurately by the person in authority. What constitutes "True knowledge" is probably best found by consensus through dialogue not, as is usual in these circumstances, "what I, the authority, decide to be true knowledge". This person, is then able to "interpret" the truth for the "benefit" of the person in the subordinate position in a prescriptive manner, either accurately or inaccurately. It is probable that the Pareto principle will apply to this situation so that 80% of people will not question their subjection to this form of "mushroom management". 20% of the people will either be those in the authoritative decision making position or be among the very few who are never negligent and submit the communication to analysis, find it wanting, and query it till they discover the truth.
English Common Law presents a good example of this aspect of Foucaultian reversal history. English Common Law has been working very well for over 900 years with relatively little criticism from the 80% and yet its basis is "dog's law" - there is no method of finding out whether an action not covered by statute or the existing common law is lawful or not. The only way to find out is to take the action and wait to see what happens. The positive picture put on this situation is that there is freedom to do anything until it is declared to be against the law - only those who know (20%), know that the declaration comes after the event and is then retrospective in effect for all time! English statutory law and European continental civil law systems are not too far behind in being inaccessible in their differing ways. Of course the maxim ignorantia lex non excusat applies in all cases.

18) to reverse the lack of awareness and creation of ad hoc terminology will require a massive change in education and training.

Experience of the major revision of the ISO 9000:2000 vocabulary for quality management systems has shown that it is necessary to prepare the USERS of precise terminology for its coming before trying to deliver it. There are at least two main sets of user for this purpose: 1) the text writers who must learn how to use terminology accurately and unambiguously in their text, and 2) the final users who are the readers of text for the purpose of knowledge acquisition.
There is also the problem to be faced that there are not sufficient people with the basic knowledge of scientific terminology work in the wider use of the concept. Most terminology scientists are already very busy as translators or interpreters, academics or a mixture of all these and more.
This aspect is developed further in the notes to propositions (27) and (28).

19) any thought of enlisting industrial finance for the purpose is unrealistic until it can be proved that there IS more to gain than to lose.

Everybody but everybody agrees that terminology is vitally important until they are asked to financially contribute towards its development. The eyes hood and it becomes something that any specialist can deal with in his or her spare time. Exaggerated maybe but not overly so. The few companies that do take terminology work seriously usually have a reason, having found that the importance does stretch to carrying out terminology work properly using professionals in order to improve relations and save money in the long run.

20) The necessary pump priming of the shift to serious treatment of terminology work must therefore rest in the hands of governments.

Major problems for terminologists and terminology work are:

21) Lack of awareness that critical communication is more obfuscated than necessary and that it need not be continues to allow widespread abuse of power.

There is no doubt that knowingly or unknowingly there are numerous situations in which power is maintained in the hands of a superior by their manipulation of knowledge affecting relationships with a subordinate.

22) Lack of awareness that critical communication is more obfuscated than necessary and that it need not be continues to cause unmeasured and possibly immeasurable economic loss

Action research being undertaken under the MLIS DINT/Leather Infocode project with the help of volunteer companies should begin to show us, in practical terms, the extent to which this proposition relates to a can of worms. Keep an eye on the DINT project for developments by visiting http://www.qa9000.com periodically.

23) Lack of awareness that critical communication is more obfuscated than necessary and that it need not be continues to make sensible dialogue impossible.

Using a variety of forms of ambiguity and inaccuracy, people in positions of authority retain the upper hand provided by having "the knowledge". Obfuscation and the unaware culture we live in make it possible for the subordinates to "think" they know and so long as this suits the authorities all is fine. If at any time a dispute concerning the meaning of "the knowledge" arises, the authority will dispense a prescriptive interpretation. There can be no dialogue possible where there is unequal access to the knowledge upon which it is to be based.

24) Harmonised globalisation will require networks of dialogue within organisations between people and between organisations, nationally and internationally.

Prescriptive discourse from any source cannot lead to harmony among the myriad groupings of the world. Dialogue based upon equal access to information and knowledge genuinely attempting to be understandable by all is needed. Only then can the harnessing of the strengths of cultural diversity through truly harmonious communication happen. Even when scientific terminology work is adopted, achieving certainty is known to be impossible but reducing the elements producing uncertainty would amount to a great step forward. When applying scientific methodology, the process achieves much simply by forming consensual agreement between languages and cultures on the reality of objects en route to arrival at their concepts for definition.

Solutions and co-operation

25) Most communication requires no special action. Dialogue by natural language is the most effective and efficient method.

There is no need for special care of any kind for the vast majority of communication whether within one language or across languages. Exactitude is not an issue. Reference to the beetle in my box as a beetle will be sufficient for our discussion. If it is not sufficient, the question of criticality begins to enter into perspective culminating in a need for risk analysis to be applied. Wittgenstein established the truth that there is no use in creating a special language for communication because the special language would have to be taught using natural language! Natural language games suitable for each form of life are without doubt best. [For another occasion it can be shown that terminology science is itself a language game and that it also produces natural language - natural descriptions of natural objects for specialised purposes by a specialised game!]

26) The major part of the relatively small amount of communication requiring special language needs attention by a small army of terminology workers if true dialogue is to become a reality.

This has been alluded to twice before. If there is no co-operation between European Union member nations followed by wider alliances to cover the world, the revolution in attitude, use and creation of terminology work in its widest sense cannot take place. There will be no true enlightenment in the middle of the information/knowledge age, just continued discourse and a mushroom existence for the majority of our people. Planning and implementing the change from industrial society to information society also requires more open access to precise information and knowledge

27) Co-operation is required by those working in the field to prepare the army.

An international committee prepared the standards, and co-operation towards consensus is part of their teaching. It would seem to need a cascading approach from some group such as this to national and international teams if a near crisis is to be averted.
Taking the suggested breakdown of population in proposition (15) as likely and adding a guess at the likely Pareto split, a strategy for treatment commends itself:

Category (b), the group who appears to have been reckless in their use of ambiguous and inaccurate terminology will be among the 20% who have the authority to be prescriptive as to the meaning of that terminology when a need to do so arises.
Category (a), the group who appears to be intentionally producing terminology that is ambiguous and inaccurate to the point of meaninglessness will certainly be among those in the 20% who are in a position of authority.
Category (c ), the group who negligently or accidentally create ambiguous and inaccurate terminology will generally be among the 80% which of course, includes all who are the compliant subjects.
Targeting category (b) first with a suitably attractive programme would clearly provide optimum returns: a relatively small group, possibly open to persuasion and having an existing power base in case of a successful campaign.
Next would have to be category (c), the bulk of people mostly requiring awareness level training and education to become effective in policing their own and incoming critical communication.
With successful campaigns against the two susceptible categories there would be no need for treating category (a) since their ability to operate in their old ways will no longer be possible.

28) Co-operation within nations and between nations is required if adequate resources are to be found.

We finish with the hardest part to swallow. As with the PROPER implementation of any management system, there WILL be a relatively high, initial one-off cost to get the system in place, followed by a long-term pay back that continues for ever. Given the nature of the problems, it cannot be left to individual nations to decide on action within their jurisdiction alone. There has to be a co-operative approach throughout, maybe through the agency of national standards bodies.