Moreena

ABSTRACT
The aim of this doctoral thesis is to desc ribe the terminology of the furniture industry
(TIMov), as well as of the behavior of its terminological units in a text-based corpus in
Brazilian Portuguese. Reasons for choosing this specific area were a) the economical and social importance of the furniture industry in Braz il; b) the fact that this is a vast, diffuse and yet unsystematized terminology; and c) the lack of academic-scientific research papers on technical terminologies. Corpus analysed comprised technical journalism texts and advertisements from the 2003 and 2004 editions of
ForMóbile: Guia de Referência da
Indústria Moveleira
(
“Reference Guide to the Furniture Industry
”), totalling 54,000 words
(6,176 types), from which 332 representative term inological units were selected. These units were analysed under the principles of the
Communicative Theory of Terminology developed by Cabré and associates, which considers a term as a polyedric unit, with a semantic, a formal and a pragmatic face. The analysis of these units in context allowed an investigation as to how the domain is constituted, on the formal constituti on of units that are proper to this domain; and on the effect of communication sets and us ers on this specialized language. Main results of the semantic face analysis pointed to the cognitive-functional structure of TIMov, since the furniture industry needs to encompass all ot her technological activities related to it as a transformation industry. It is characterized as a dynamic structure, in which term creation is motivated by the need to name three main con cept knots: materials, processes and equipment
(machines and tools) used, in order to keep up with technological advances in the field. From a pragmatic point of view, it has been observed th at social application of the products of the furniture industry is responsible for terminol ogical variation, and that this terminology is