Les unités de signification spécialisées élargissant l’objet du travail en terminologie

This work reflects on what must be the basic object of terminological research in accordance with the needs of users. Firstly, we argue that this object cannot be limited to nominal referential units, that is to say, to terminological units. It has to include all units with specialised meaning in specialised texts. Secondly, we make a distinction between relevant and non-relevant units of specialised meaning for a specific professional purpose. This difference allows us to formulate user profiles for concrete terminological applications. We base our statements on the theoretical foundations of “The Communicative Theory of Terminology” (Cabré 1999, 2000), and test it with two experiments which were carried out in the field of term detection.