Terminology 17:1 (2011), 49–73. doi 10.1075/term.17.1.04fer issn 0929–9971 / e-issn 1569–9994 © John Benjamins Publishing Company A proposed method for analysing the dynamics of cognition through term variation Sabela Fernández-Silva, Judit Freixa and M. Teresa Cabré Today, term variation is commonly accepted to be a widespread phenomenon in specialised communication. Although some degree of arbitrariness is inevitable, the expert’s choice of a term variant is generally motivated to some extent. Tis article presents a methodology for describing the conceptually motivated patterns of term variation in a real corpus of special language. Tis method — which analyses the conceptual information displayed on the term’s form — rep- resents an attempt to provide a framework accounting for the fexibility of con- cepts and conceptual structures in a systematic way. Using data from a bilingual (French and Galician) corpus of texts related to coastal fshing and aquaculture, the applicability of proposed method for analysis is illustrated with a description of the variation patterns pertaining to terms designating human entity concepts within the corpus. Keywords: term variation, term motivation, lexical choice, conceptual patterns of terms, conceptual analysis, conceptual dynamics. 1. Introduction Terms are the linguistic representation of concepts, the result of the development of cognitive processes and communication among experts of a special language community (Sager 1997: 25). In addition to being an instrument to communicate about concepts, terms are also the refection of how knowledge is structured in the expert’s mind. Recent advances in the conceptual theory of Terminology have found sup- port by analyzing special language. Te classical theory (Wüster 1979) argued for objective, clear-cut concepts within static conceptual structures and was built on the observations of frozen terms in dictionaries. However, the study of special language in real communicative contexts (i.e., texts produced by experts in a variety of situations) has yielded a deeper and more accurate explanation of how special