Imposing order on a creative chaos

Abstract It is uncontested that terminologists leading multi-professional terminology projects need a thorough knowledge of the principles and standards of terminology work. However, the softer skills involved in the work have gained less attention. In this paper, we apply interaction analysis to a multi-professional expert meeting led by a terminologist and highlight the communicative and interpersonal work he carries out. Our results show how the terminologist allows for a certain “creative chaos” and makes the team “feel good”, while still keeping epistemic quality under permanent scrutiny and never losing focus on the task at hand. He does this through flexible agenda management — sticking to his meeting agenda, but not rigidly, and allowing for and taking note of useful contributions, even if they come in the wrong phase. He also upholds a sufficient degree of conceptual rigour, by holding back premature decisions but not unnecessarily correcting the other’s erroneous use of meta-terminology.