Understanding the Evolution of Circular Economy through Language Change

Sampriti Mahanty, Frank Boons, Julia Handl, Riza Theresa Batista-Navarro


Abstract
In this study, we propose to focus on understanding the evolution of a specific scientific concept—that of Circular Economy (CE)—by analysing how the language used in academic discussions has changed semantically. It is worth noting that the meaning and central theme of this concept has remained the same; however, we hypothesise that it has undergone semantic change by way of additional layers being added to the concept. We have shown that semantic change in language is a reflection of shifts in scientific ideas, which in turn help explain the evolution of a concept. Focusing on the CE concept, our analysis demonstrated that the change over time in the language used in academic discussions of CE is indicative of the way in which the concept evolved and expanded.
Anthology ID:
W19-4731
Volume:
Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change
Month:
August
Year:
2019
Address:
Florence, Italy
Editors:
Nina Tahmasebi, Lars Borin, Adam Jatowt, Yang Xu
Venue:
LChange
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
250–253
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/W19-4731
DOI:
10.18653/v1/W19-4731
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Sampriti Mahanty, Frank Boons, Julia Handl, and Riza Theresa Batista-Navarro. 2019. Understanding the Evolution of Circular Economy through Language Change. In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change, pages 250–253, Florence, Italy. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Understanding the Evolution of Circular Economy through Language Change (Mahanty et al., LChange 2019)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/nschneid-patch-2/W19-4731.pdf