From words to senses: A sense-based approach to quantitative polysemy detection across disciplines

Abstract

Interdisciplinary polysemy refers to the phenomenon in which a word is understood and used differently across disciplines or fields. Nuanced variations in word meanings pose a significant challenge to effective communication and knowledge integration, especially in academic and professional settings. To address these issues, we propose the Interdisciplinary Polysemy Detection (IPD) method, which streamlines the identification of polysemous words by making the process more automatic, objective and efficient. IPD not only identifies polysemous words but also quantifies the extent of semantic variation within and across disciplines, providing deeper insights into the scale and nature of meaning shifts in different contexts. The evaluation results demonstrate that IPD can identify interdisciplinary polysemy effectively, showing heightened sensitivity to subtle differences in word senses. This sensitivity makes IPD a useful tool for both researchers and educators, helping to improve communication across fields and contributing to the development of more tailored pedagogical resources. The broader implications of this method may extend to enhancing the understanding of semantic variation in interdisciplinary research and advancing knowledge transfer between specialised domains.