Communication spécialisée et terminologie pour la citoyenneté : questions énergétiques et débat public

This article focuses on two cases of specialised communication: the communication on photovoltaic energy disseminated between 2010 and 2015, and the actions aimed at the general public promoted by a French public institution, the Commission Nationale du Débat Public (CNDP), the independent authority responsible for guaranteeing the right of everyone living in France to be informed and to participate in projects or policies that have an impact on the environment. The CNDP's neutrality is guaranteed by the fact that it does not decide on the appropriateness of the projects or policies in question. Thanks to this "right to debate" on the part of the public, it is possible to improve the decisions of those responsible for projects or policies by ensuring that the expectations and questions of the public are listened to. The rapid development of science and technology in the field of the environment has an impact on the way they are expressed in French: a way of discovering linguistic, terminological and communicative resources is presented in order to build up an understanding of the situations and contexts studied. The rapid development of science and technology, and therefore their verbalisation in French, can only be achieved if linguistic, terminological and communicative resources prevent misunderstandings or lack of expression. Specialists and non-specialists, institutions and the general public can always be confronted with the need for clarity of terms: the precise definition and description of the conceptual network of the field are the necessary linguistic and cognitive tools; they provide the reference coordinates for situating terms in the organisation of knowledge, which is also and above all a linguistic organisation. In professional discourse, clear, well-defined and precise terms are the gateway to the world of technical and scientific knowledge and its communication.