Cultural Context and Multimodal Knowledge Representation: Seeing the Forest for the Trees

Context, especially cultural context, has long been neglected in Terminology. Even though recent approaches have acknowledged the relevance of culture in specialized communication, the development of culture in Terminology is still marginal. Culture is also underrepresented in terminological resources, which may respond to the complexity of reflecting the cultural component in the description of terms and concepts. However, conceptualization is dynamic and changes from culture to culture and, for that reason, an in-depth study on how the nature of human perception and cultural cognition influences the representation of concept systems and terms in specialized knowledge contexts is needed. Furthermore, to facilitate knowledge acquisition, contextual and conceptual information should go together with multimodal information, as the combination of textual and visual material improves understanding. This study integrates different types of context (i.e., semantic relations, frames, and culture) to describe a methodology for the selection and representation of multimodal information for culturally bound concepts such as forest in terminological knowledge bases, based on the theoretical premises of Frame-Based Terminology. Different ideas of forest in European countries were analyzed and represented by means of culturally adapted images, which are best suited to disseminate knowledge and foreground the role of culture in specialized communication.

Automated summary

Even though the relevance of culture in specialized communication has been acknowledged, it is still neglected in Terminology. The representation of cultural component in terms and concepts is complex, which makes it underrepresented in terminological resources. A comprehensive study on the influence of human perception and cultural cognition on the representation of concept systems and terms is needed. In addition, combining contextual and conceptual information with multimodal information can improve understanding in knowledge acquisition.