Préoccupations normalisatrices et démocratisation terminologique

Technological advances and the increase in international communication have led to the emergence of new terminological needs in information technology. The standardization of technical vocabulary is a delicate step in the dissemination of knowledge; it often leads to debate since it does not take adequate stock of the circulation of terms. Standardization means that one term only should designate an entity, thus eliminating alternative terms. However, language users are often seen to ignore the guidelines of standardizing bodies advocating the use of terms univocally designating well-defined concepts. Standardization may contribute to avoid terminological anarchy but it has an essentially persuasive function. The enlargment of the EU has led to an increase in the use of English and a parallel, significant decrease in the prestige and use of French. A comparison between the terms published in the Official Journal (in the ‘IT and Internet’ and ‘email’ sections) starting from 2 December 1997 and the actual use of terms as recorded in the IATE term bank shows that standardizing efforts at national level have had some degree of success, even though not all official terms have been embraced by users at EU level. In giving recommendations based on a constantly updated corpus, IATE appears to be an adequate terminological resource in that it recognizes the authority of terminology standardization bodies but refrains from putting pressure on language users. Recognizing the dynamism of information technology terminology deriving from the use of French and English is an essential step in explaining how users negotiate the choice of terms. The « termoscopy » proposed in this paper aims at a better understanding of the process of terminological democratization which is taking place in the EU.