On the definitory crossroads: legal, medical and popularized definitions of (human) gene editing

The study investigates the way in which the specialized unit of understanding of gene (genome) editing is conceptualized through definitions in bioethically relevant legal discourse, medical-scientific discourse of institutional publications and popularized media discourse. The research pursues the goal of analyzing existing definitions in these three areas in English, relying on the theory of definitions in terminology and terminography, and on function theory of lexicography. The analysis is carried out in a quantiqualitative vein, using methods of corpus linguistics for text search and data processing, and the combined paradigm of cognitive semantics and discourse analysis for the analysis of definitions. The findings identify a) a partial definitional coverage in the popular press, suggesting a reliance on some presumed knowledge; b) a lack of legal definitions unambiguously directed at gene editing, highlighting the need for the creation of new legal definitions of the technology; c) divergent definitional styles proposed by and for different users, which are translated into the prevalence of different information-based content and patterns across the corpora.