La nomination et son «suivi» : entreprises et pragmaterminologie

Businesses, which are a particular form of organisations, have constant recourse to naming simply to name new products and services as they position themselves on the market. Businesses produce new terms because they express new needs, primarily to stand out in the market. They produce new terms which are so many distinctive signs of their specificity. As these new terms are vital in human resources, communication, business culture, knowledge management, the study of how terms are used in these situations justifies setting up a specific method, which can be called pragmaterminology.
It can be shown that the way firms conceptualize their activities with their own particular terms distinguishes them from their competitors and are vital in the firm’s internal and external communication. These terms can change meaning rapidly, for example within the life of a project, and need to be followed, preferably from a sociolinguistic viewpoint. The necessity to keep track of a firm’s particular use of language is exemplified in the many on-line glossaries put on websites, to help the outsider decode the firm’s vocabulary. This implies a parallel with the way the term’s meaning evolves and the action which are implied, and how they are integrated into the community of the business. Firms are veritable word factories, and a close watch on how words change in this context is more than ever necessary.