I processi del definire in prospettiva glottodidattica

Abstract

Definition is an elusive word, which may refer to both the process of defining and to each of the results of such a process. In foreign language teaching, a lot of attention has traditionally been devoted to word-formation, borrowing and calques, as well as to the formal aspects of terminology. In the light of recent methodological advances, this paper aims at showing how important it is to raise the learners' awareness of the relationships between terms and the concepts they stand for, primarily - but by no means exclusively - in the language(s) of science and technology. In the quest for meaningfulness and naturalness, the text (as opposed to the word, phrase or sentence) stands out as the primary unit and as the starting point; one common way of processing a foreign text in everyday life is translating it, and translation into the learner's mother tongue is regarded as a viable testing tool, as long as it is dealt with as a pragmatically valid type of paraphrase.