Term circulation and connotation

Abstract This paper investigates the connotations that terms from the field of particle physics acquire when they determinologise. Based on a study performed on a comparable corpus composed of texts that represent various specialised, semi-specialised, and non-specialised communicative settings in French, different types of connotations are identified. The analysis sheds light on the diversity of positive and negative connotations terms can carry in semi-specialised and non-specialised texts, and the multiple factors that can influence the emergence of these connotations are discussed.