Abstract
University terminology in German exhibits a high degree of variation that cannot be fully explained by system-bound legal and administrative differences alone. This paper investigates variation in university terminology across four standard varieties of German (Germany, Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol) within the framework of the European Higher Education Area. Building on a multi-level analysis of university terminology (supranational, national, regional, institutional and functional-discursive), the study shows how shared European concepts coexist with nationally and regionally specific ones, institution-bound terms and communicative purposes. These system-related factors are complemented by an analysis of general causes of denominative variation as proposed by Freixa (2006), including dialectal, functional, discursive, interlinguistic and cognitive causes. The paper argues that variation in university terminology often results from the interaction of several levels and causes. On this basis, implications for terminology work are discussed. Concept-oriented terminology databases containing information about the relevant system and level of use (ideally complemented by visualised concept systems) are essential for capturing variation in university terminology and for documentation and cross-system comparison as well as translation in pluricentric (as well as multilingual) settings.