ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the language for construing scientific knowledge by looking at the resources construing taxonomies. It examines specifically how things, people, places and activities in biology are named through a discourse semantic resource known as entities. Entities are nominal elements entering into lexical cohesion in the discourse. By entering into lexical cohesion, an entity can be related to other entities between ‘stretches of discourse of indefinite extent’. The semiotic entities of facts, locutions or ideas realised through nominalisations can, therefore, ‘look like’ other discourse semantic meanings, which are either realised congruently through conjunctions, mental and verbal processes or realised metaphorically through similar nominalisations. Semiotic entities can be used to organise higher-level Themes. A significant feature of semiotic entities is that they are typically realised in the form of a nominalisation. Many factors are at stake in determining the nature of an entity.
