UMINNA

BACKGROUND

The World Health Organization (WHO), whose mission is to improve health globally, established the International Nonproprietary Names (INN) Programme for pharmaceutical substances in 1950 via resolution WHA3.11. Based on the expertise of a committee of specialists, this programme aims to assign a unique and standardized name to each pharmacologically active substance. More than 10,000 INNs have been created to date, with approximately 400 new entries each year. These designations are based on a structured nomenclature system, governed by precise general principles, and are subsequently transliterated into several languages, including French, to ensure global dissemination.

Initially derived from chemical names, INNs are now built around a key segment (or "stem") that reflects the pharmacological mode of action of the substance. For example, the suffix -triptan is reserved for serotonin receptor agonists used in the treatment of migraine. This segment is preceded by an arbitrary prefix chosen to avoid any connotations and to remain phonetically accessible in the majority of languages. Certain sounds or letter combinations are thus excluded from the nomenclature to limit the risk of ambiguity.

This naming system contributes to the WHO's public health objective by providing an accessible, common, and neutral language for pharmaceutical substances. Due to their codified morphological structure, INNs carry valuable classificatory information that could foster an understanding of underlying pharmacological mechanisms. Our hypothesis is that broader dissemination of these terms in everyday discourse would contribute to cognitive mechanisms that facilitate learning about drug properties. To test this idea, it is relevant to analyze the use of INNs in different types of discourse, particularly by comparing them with brand names for medications, which are widely prevalent in everyday language.

The proposed project involves studying the appearance and processing of INNs across various corpora: general press, specialized scientific publications, and potentially student pharmacy assignments. Specifically, this will involve identifying the contexts in which INNs are used, any accompanying metalinguistic comments, and comparing their usage with that of brand names for identical molecules. For example, the pairs fluoxetine / Prozac, diazepam / Valium, or ibuprofen / Advil will be the subject of an initial series of contrastive analyses.

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STUDENT CONTRIBUTION

The work assigned to the student will center on an applied linguistic analysis of INNs, with the objective of better understanding the discursive and contextual conditions that favor their use. Initially, the student will identify relevant available corpora for this study in English (and potentially in French) and compare their characteristics: general press, specialized press, scientific corpora, corpora related to a specific context such as the Covid-19 pandemic, or educational corpora from pharmacy training.

In the second phase, the student will develop Corpus Query Language (CQL) queries to extract and quantify the occurrences of INNs across the various corpora, relying on their distinctive morphological properties. They will also perform a contrastive analysis of the usages of INN / brand name pairs and identify the reformulations, glosses, or metalinguistic comments that may accompany these names. This work will help highlight the criteria for the activation of these terms in different contexts.

Finally, based on the initial results, the student will propose a methodological synthesis aimed at generating recommendations for further research on the use of INNs. This synthesis will include a reflection on the terminological specificities of INNs, potential obstacles to their dissemination, and their possible role in the acquisition of pharmacological knowledge. All of this work is part of an interdisciplinary approach blending linguistics, terminology, and health sciences.