Denominative variation in the terminological representation of Women's Health

Abstract

Medical language is characterized by its veracity, precision and clarity (Navarro, 2003). However, due to the different communicative situations and contexts in which it is used, it is one of the special languages with more terminological variation (Bowker and Hawkins, 2006). From the point of view of terminology work, in any of its applications: language planning, standardization or translation, the first steps consist of structuring the subject area and accurately define the conceptual field (Cabré, 2005; ISO, 2022; Wright, 1997), and variation is usually an obstacle during this stage. This paper presents the findings of a study for the elaboration of terminological resources on Women’s Health from a corpus of specialized academic articles in English. Preliminary results reveal a lack of uniformity in the identification of the most representative lexical units regarding issues that specifically affect Women’s Health. This analysis offers a typology of denominative variation in the subject field of Women’s Health in academic journals in English prior to initiate the delimitation of the conceptual field in Spanish and standardize terminology equivalence in order to ensure efficient communication.

Keywords

• women's health
• denominative variation
• terminology management
• medical language