Representing and redefining specialised knowledge: variety in LSP [article]

Maci Stefania
2019
Specialised knowledge is the epistemological outcome of a process of selection, organisation (perspectivisation, framing, structuring, etc.) or even construal of information meant to make sense of segments or reality for very specific pragmatic purposes, either professional and task-oriented or speculative and cognition-based. It is a way of organising experience so as to favour its understanding and comprehension, of finding solid explanations and justifications to given phenomena so as to
more » ... rol them (for instance, minimising what is critical and problematic, maximising what is beneficial and allowing its replicability), of testing hypotheses in order to corroborate, refine or even discard given views with respect to others. In other words, analysing, discussing and understanding specialised contents is a way of making reality readily manageable in cognitive terms, potentially useful in operative terms, and factively usable in practical terms, so as to facilitate activities, solve problems and bypass obstacles, not just in specialised domains but also in everyday life. For this reason, the codification and transfer of this type of knowledge is an instance of strategic communication: As 'strategic' it is deliberately goal-oriented, that goal being the mediation of understanding across knowledge asymmetries. As 'communication' it is participative (interactive) and the communicative 'positions' converge on the co-construction of (specialized) knowledge. (Kastberg 2007: 8) As a consequence, both knowledge and the knowledge-making practices reflect and corroborate specific epistemologies and 10 Michele Sala understandings of the world, in that "knowledge is made and given shape in representation [and] the process of representation is identical to the shaping of knowledge. Makers of representations are shapers of knowledge" (Kress 2010: 27). For these reasons, the mechanisms of knowledge construction and dissemination have been under scrutiny for several decades and from a variety of perspectives, ranging from Discourse and Genre
doi:10.6092/978-88-97253-03-7 fatcat:ucc47p7v75bvvmv63kgei4wupm