Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Finally, let us cite the third function which the use of the thesaurus can hold -
one which we believe to be essential in analyzing an audiovisual text or corpus - the
evaluative
or
appreciative function
, which offers the analyst the opportunity to rank
the object analyzed or a particular part of it. The appreciation may not only be
cognitive in nature, allowing the object to be ranked for example in terms of its
informativeness or its epistemic newness for a given audience. It may also be of a
rather moral (or moralizing) nature, or esthetic, emotional, practical and utilitarian.
Using the appropriate micro-thesauruses enables the analyst quite easily to
document his preferences and/or reservations about the quality (intellectual, moral,
aesthetic, utilitarian, etc.) of the object he is describing.
10.5.Anapproachcombiningcontrolledandfreedescription
As part of the ASW-HSS research project, we can also use an analytical
procedure which uses both
free*
and
controlled description*
. Figure 10.5 shows
how these two types of procedures can be combined.
The concrete example is taken from the LHE archives
4
, devoted to literary
heritage. The analytical model in question is dedicated to identifying and presenting
one or more authors of 20
th
Century French literature, in a given audiovisual corpus
but which is open-ended (i.e. which is enriched as and when appropriate). This
model has an ASW thesaurus of French literary authors but, of course, it is utterly
impossible to have a complete version.
When we consider this combination,
Controlled description
+
Free description
,
more closely, we can distinguish two particular functions:
‒
the first is to supplement a controlled description with a free description - this
is illustrated in Figure 10.5;
‒
the second is to specify and further develop a controlled description with a free
description.
This second function is illustrated in Figure 10.6, which shows an example of the
description of the subject in relation to a discipline in human and social sciences -
controlled description - which may be supplemented by the identification and
minimal description (contextualized or otherwise) of a specific branch of a
discipline.
4 “Literature from Here and Elsewhere”, an archive run by Muriel Chemouny as part of the
ANR's “ASW-HSS” project: (http://semioweb.msh-paris.fr/corpus/alia/FR/).
