Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field which develops methods and software tools to understand biological data. Computer programming is part of the methodology of biological studies belonging to the field. The identification of the two sub key semantic domains in BI sub corpus is consistent with the disciplinary description:
Y2 Information technology and computing (Y Science & technology); and
B3 Medicines and medical treatment (B The body & the individual).
The two sub key semantic domains, however, are not ranked next to each other in terms of keyness value. Y2 hits the top of the list with the keyness value of 1566.77 (LL), while B3 is ranked the 20th with the keyness value of 80.87 (LL). If one takes the view that
Bioinformatics is about making sense of the biological data from a computational perspective, one may be able to tentatively explain the keyness difference by assuming that the application of computer programming as the methodology for biological data analysis is much more emphasized than the nature of the data. The statistically defined topicality (see Strawson 1964, Gundel 1985, van Kuppevelt 1995 for a general discussion; see Slimani 1989, Stokoe 2000, Dooley 2007 for different views), or what is called “aboutness” from the Corpus Linguistics perspective, is revealed by the discursive status of Y2 as “more key” than that of B3. In this section, one shall see how lexical concepts providing access to knowledge of science and technology were locally associated with biology and medicine for situated interpretation of the interdisciplinary discourse.
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A closer look at B3 reveals “what is of current interest or concern” (Strawson 1964: 104) in the participants’ talk concerning the discursive relevance of B3 to what is acknowledged as biological attributes. A simple searching in BI sub corpus for biology identifies two potential patterns in which its associative lexical concepts provide access sites to specific knowledge structures:
Pattern 1: Y1 Science and technology in general + L1 Life and living things;
Pattern 2: Y1 Science and technology in general + B1 Anatomy and physiology
Y1 belongs to the semantic domain Y Science & technology. L1 belongs to L Life & living things and B1 belongs to B The body & the individual. Biology, in both patterns, is
acknowledged as a field of science. Pattern 1 is about the denotation of biology, emphasizing the lexical concept of OBJECT AND TARGET18, while Pattern 2 is about its connotation, emphasizing the lexical concept of METHODS OF INQUIRY. Then how is the conceptual connection built between the [MEDINES AND MEDICAL TREATMENT] frame and lexical concepts associated with biology? The conceptual structures for construing biology provide clues of the relevance. Medicines and medical treatment can be perceived as biologically relevant since results of anatomical and physiological research provide theoretical and practical supports and living things are direct objects of experimentation and application.
While the relevance at this level is to a large extent taken as common sense, what is worth noticing is that the [MEDINCES AND MEDICAL TREATMENT] frame is attributively
constructed via linguistically encoded mental representations. This is discursively revealed in
18In this study, capital letters are used to represent lexical concepts.
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its close relationship with HEALTH and DISEASE (B2 Health and disease); in other words, the HEALTH and DISEASE as lexical concepts show a great potential to activate knowledge of medicines and medical treatment. Medicines and medical treatment are conceptualized based on human cognition, involving a series of activities such as comparing, identifying, differentiating, evaluating, classifying and affecting. The word disease is associated with a strongly negative evaluation as culturally constructed, with the concept of NORMALITY as the main criterion of judgment while the efficacy of medicines and medical treatment as the counter power is accordingly perceived as semantically positive. The word medicine thus belongs to the relational category rather than the entity one, aimed at CURING
ABNORMALITY.
In B3, the lemma drug has the highest frequency value (90 hits in the singular form and 45 hits in the plural form). Table 17 shows the top 10 collocates of drug(s) in BI sub corpus (ranked by collocational strength calculated by LL; span +/-5). Two patterns are identified to be with strong collocational strength and frequency value: drug targets (LL=97.002 at the R1 position, 20 hits in total) and drug repurposing (LL=95.565 at the R1 position, 32 hits in total).
Table 17 Top 10 collocates of drug(s) in (BI)
N Word With Relation Set Texts Total Total Left Total Right L5 L4 L3 L2 L1 Centre R1 R2 R3 R4 R5
1 DRUGS drugs 129.44 11 47 1 1 1 45 1
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The word target in this context is tagged into the semantic domain X7+ Wanting, planning, choosing in the USAS Semantic Tagset. The semantic domain X concerns psychological actions, states, and processes, while the concept of CHOOSING denoted by drug targeting is framed more procedurally in the participants’ talk on the basis of the shared knowledge of the inquiry methodology specific to the discipline. In addition, the theoretically supported and practically trialed action processes, in turn, shape the talk into a unique discursive structure within which concepts and methods are explicated more directly, accurately and concisely.
The word repurpose, by contrast, is not accurately identified in the USAS tagging system. I then considered approaching its associative lexical concepts by examining the linguistic representation of purpose due to the morphological and semantic associations between the two words. The USAS tagging system provides three potential semantic tags for the word purpose:
X7 Wanting, planning, choosing (X Psychological actions, states & processes);
A2.2 Affect: Cause/connected (A2 Affect in A General & abstract terms); and
A1.5.1 Using (A1.5 Use in A1 General in A General & abstract terms).
Generally speaking, the word purpose is expected to evoke the [INTENTION FOR
ACCOMPLISHEMENT] frame, while suggests a more settled determination than intention and emphasizes psychological formulation over the effect of action as suggested by aim and end.
The deliberateness of the psychological formulation highlights two dimensions to
linguistically represent the word purpose: understanding of the connectedness between factors involved (logic at the abstract level) and application of proper methods to address the
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connectedness so as to reach the goal. Therefore, when approaching what repurpose possibly means one shall be aware 1) that the prefix re- indicates repetition or restoration denoting the concept of doing something AGAIN, and 2) that the repetition or restoration is to make a CHANGE that would take into form something DIFFERENT or NEW. 1) aims at 2) and 2) rationalizes 1). Concerning how to make such a change, the lexical concepts encoded by purpose are perceptually transferable to understand repurpose: when we consider repurposing something, we think about figuring out a different pattern of associations between relevant factors; or, renewing the existing methods for innovation.
Here is another example. Vaccine is a word which is frequently mentioned in B3. While medicine and vaccine share the associative lexical concept of PROTECTION AGAINST DISEASE, differences between the two words cannot be simply explained by examining how related they are to each other but have to be understood within the semantic domain they are embedded in. It might be easy for one to introduce the dimension of time as a parameter for comparison: a medicine is administered after a person has got a disease and vaccination happens before a person could possibly get a disease. While this may make sense in
individual cases, the Time dimension loses its relevance when medication and vaccination are practiced in the public domain: a medicine can be discovered or developed to address
expected health risk while a vaccine is produced based on a relatively large data sample of a certain disease which has already been diagnosed. That vaccines are believed to be most effective in preventing infectious diseases reveals a notable feature of collectiveness in the developmental principle and working mechanism of vaccination. An alternative way to perceive the difference involves associating the TARGET and MEANS of the effects of medication and vaccination: a medicine is administrated to an unhealthy body so as to protect
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it against disease through [TREATMENT]; a vaccine is administrated to a healthy body so as to protect it against disease through [PRECAUTION].