Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
6.6.Contextualizationbyhistoricalera
The second scenario cited above is that of approximate temporal location. This is
not necessarily based on partial knowledge, but often on knowledge which, in the
audiovisual text being analyzed, is not expressed in the form of an exact date. Thus,
the text can be contextualized in reference to an era, a reign, a reference historical
event, concomitant historical events, etc. These “strategies” of
historico-temporal
contextualization
can be pursued in the absence of a chronological reference
stricto
sensu
(a year, a century, etc.) or in a mixed form: partly in the form of a reference to
a specific date, partly in the form of a qualitative reference, non-numerical but
comprehensible for anyone who possesses the necessary historical skills.
This is the case, for instance, with the important dates in a researcher's life: a
first expedition, a discovery, a crucial meeting for his/her intellectual development,
academic failures or triumphs. All these types of events (which, understandably, are
organized according to Greimas' famous narrative schema [GRE 79]), may be
accompanied by chronological references, but by no means have to be.
We have attempted to take account of this qualitative (and narrative) type of
temporal contextualization in describing the knowledge objects stemming from the
domains of expertise of the ASW-HSS project. Figure 6.7 shows an extract from a
model of description of audiovisual corpora which deal with one or more languages
(families of languages, dialects, protolanguages, etc.). The extract shows sequence 4,
dedicated to the historico-temporal contextualization of the knowledge object being
thematized (in our case, the evolution of the languages of the West-Semitic domain
between the 12
th
Century B.C. and the 1
st
Century A.D.).
7
This sequence is founded on a fairly complex structure which has three sub-
sequences (shown in Figures 6.7 and 6.8), the second of which presupposes the first
to have been carried out. This means that the analyst must first provide information
relating to the first sub-sequence before providing information relating to the
second. The second sub-sequence is, in turn, followed by a third sub-sequence
which, for its part, again presupposes the first sub-sequence. In other words, the first
sub-sequence must be filled in.
7 This subject was touched upon by the French philologer André Lemaire (Ecole Pratique des
Hautes Etudes) in an interview conducted in 2005 as part of the ARA program:
http://www.archivesaudiovisuelles.fr/390/introduction.asp.
