"Insights into the lexicon of vision in domain-specific English"

Lexicological and lexicographic studies of domain-specific languages typically focus on features of specialized lexis (Gotti 2003, 2005, Bathia 1993, Cortese and Riley 2002). However, we strongly believe and would like to claim that specialized discourse also influences the general lexicon of domain-specific texts by providing a frame which constrains the internal organization of the whole text as a system. The theory of lexical complexity (Bertuccelli Papi 2003, Bertuccelli Papi and Lenci 2007) can account for the processes at work at the lexical level, not only in technical terms but in the lexical texture of the whole text. The lexicon is seen as a complex dynamic system and the single lexical items as complex dynamic microsystems in which “nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed” according to general organizing principles whose nature has been discussed at some length in Bertuccelli Papi and Lenci (2007). In specialized discourse the system is reorganized so as to constrain the construal of specific meanings of lexical items due to the fact that it acts as an overarching frame which favours processes of foregrounding/backgrounding of conceptual semantic components and the selection of the relevant frame. These processes are evident in the behaviour of verbs of vision in specialized texts, where only some meaning components are foregrounded and participate in the construal of the final reading whereas other components are left in the background and are not activated. In the following sections we discuss and exemplify our argument through a corpus-based study of the verb observe in economic and scientific discourse.