FRAME BLENDING AND DOMAIN MAPPING AS DRIVERS OF POLYSEMY IN INTERDISCIPLINARY TERMINOLOGY

Abstract

Interdisciplinary research often recycles established technical words for novel purposes, generating systematic polysemy that can hinder cross-field comprehension. The present study explains this process through two complementary cognitive operations: frame blending – the on-line fusion of schematic event structures – and domain mapping – cross-domain correspondences inherited from conceptual metaphor theory. By analysing 90 high-frequency terms drawn from publications in biomedicine, data science and environmental economics (2019-2024), we show that blends and mappings account for 81 % of newly attested senses and that their distribution predicts terminological ambiguity across fields. A mixed corpus-driven/experimental method reveals measurable prototype shifts and identifies “semantic chokepoints” where communicative failures arise. The findings refine current models of knowledge transfer and offer actionable guidelines for lexicographers, translators and science communicators.