Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
tion of communication, in which computational operations of cutting are
applied to the line of writing.
The conception of meaning developed here is consistent with the under-
lying presumptions of the labor theoretic approach but also translates
them into more specific terms. Meaning as an event in consciousness is
consistent with elucidation—rather than definition by decomposition—as
the only way of giving verbal understandings of atomic facts or primi-
tive terms. Meaning itself might be a primitive term. In accord with the
underlying stress on the significance of the material basis of being, the
mechanism that produces meaning—the intersection of syntagma with
paradigm—has a specific material form.
In relation to classic information-retrieval research, relevance has not
been identified with similarity in meaning or even seen as a simple func-
tion of meaning. The assumption of the value of delivering all (and pos-
sibly,
only
all) the relevant records is not resurrected. Rather, meaning is
regarded as one highly significant focus or criterion for selection, pos-
sibly more fundamental than relevance. Considered apart from and after
meaning, relevance might connect more directly with the ordering of doc-
uments or records in retrieval, analytically excluded from the discussion
here.
