Reading Theory Through Collocations: How Words Acquire Conceptual Force
Introduction — When a Familiar Word Becomes a Theoretical Term A reader encountering a theoretical text may know the words on the page without yet understanding what they are doing there. This is especially common when a familiar word acquires a more specific function within an author's vocabulary. Grid , trace , order , presence , subject , and language are ordinary enough words. Yet in a theoretical work, their ordinary meanings may no longer be sufficient to explain their use. An author does not necessarily invent a new word when introducing a concept. More often, an existing word is redeployed. It retains something of its familiar sense while acquiring a particular role within a network of terms, distinctions, and arguments. The difficulty for the reader is therefore not always to discover a new definition. It may be to discover what the familiar word is doing in this particular text. How, then, can we begin to determine what a word is doing when its theoretical function...
