La dénomination du concept ‘filiation’ en droit français et en droit polonais

Terminology as a linguistic discipline covers several functions, from the enumeration of the lexemes specific to a field of knowledge through the models and practices of describing terms to the study of concepts and linguistics signs which designate them in specialized languages. Regardless of the point of view adopted, it seems that in any terminological work one should take into consideration the linguistic and extralinguistic dimension of specialized lexical units. This latter aspect stems, among other things, from the specificity of the appropriate area of knowledge and may vary depending on the cultural perception of the world thus expressed by linguistic signs. Recently we have witnessed a considerable scholarly interest in comparative terminological research based on the French and Polish legal systems. For the purpose of this article, we have selected the terminological expression of the concept of ‘filiation’, indicating the relationships between parents and their children in the two legal systems mentioned above. However, analyses show that already the French legal term filiation (child-parent relationship) does not have its exact equivalent in Polish, because the Polish legal terminology focuses mainly on the reverse relationship (parents-child) expressed in the terms matka, macierzyństwo (mother, maternity) and ojciec, ojcostwo (father, paternity). This demonstrates a need to reconcile onomasiological and semasiological approaches in legal terminology