Le terme scientifique et le discours de vulgarisation

The author of the article examines the ways to define specialist terms in popular science discourse. The article is based on the analysis of texts dealing with nuclear energy. In the first part of the article the author presents those discursive features that influence the definition process and then discusses the mechanism of explaining scientific terms by means of commonly known vocabulary. The last part contains a comparison between the descriptions of meaning in popular science discourse, and terminographic and lexicographic definitions.