L'espace du concept, la parole de l'image: pour une typologie des représentations non-verbales dans la terminologie des tissus

The use of visual association has always been favoured in the field of fashion in order to clarify the description of the concept and to create a link between a concept, an image and the corresponding term. This provides an efficient means of nonverbal communication between producers, designers and the general public. The analysis of a case of using nonverbal representations in diachronic terminology illustrates the representation of fashion and textiles during the Second Empire, when the first artificial colours were introduced and imprinted textiles began to spread. Subsequently two different terminological products of contemporary domain of fashion are introduced: the first was created for the marketing of their production in Asian countries, and the second used nonverbal representations for the aims of professional commu-nication. These models provide an example of a typology of verbal and nonverbal representations in specialized professional terminology.