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situations (natural, social, etc.). We currently use around 40 conceptual terms from
this group;
‒
some 400 conceptual terms from the branch [Object “Endurant”] - this branch
is by far the most important in our meta-lexicon. The conceptual terms in this branch
enable us to describe living or non-living entities, artifacts and products, individual
and collective actors, all sorts of expressions, schools of thought, belief systems, etc.
Again, currently, no more than half the available conceptual terms are actually used.
12.7. The process of developing the ASW vocabulary of conceptual terms
defininganalyticalobjects
Let us return to our project to analyze the three main audiovisual corpora
documenting specific cultural and scientific heritage (cultural diversity, literature
and archaeology). The goal of this project was primarily to identify
series
of
subjects
- of “themes” - treated recurrently in the aforementioned corpora. Let us
take a simple and fairly obvious example. In the filmed discourse of archaeologists
15
talking about their research projects, among the most commonly recurring subjects
we find the presentation and description of the archaeological sites they are working
on, where they organize and conduct digs with a view to uncovering and
safeguarding objects of archaeological interest, or indeed aimed at vindicating or
invalidating this-or-that hypothesis, this-or-that theory. In the corpus of filmed
discourses about French literature
16
, the recurrent subjects are, e.g. the presentation,
description and contextualization (historical, intertextual, etc.) of the work of such-
and-such an author; discussion and presentation of a literary school of thought in a
given historical period; discussion of a literary theme or
motif
; exploration of the
relationships between the different arts and the historical evolution of the arts;
discussion of different approaches for treating the literary object, and so on.
Of course, the identification of such series of subjects (or
topoi
) is not done
“blindly”. It is always orientated by a methodological framework which guides the
analyses, and by a certain demand (social,
lato sensu
). In our particular case, the
identification and description of series of subjects or themes developed in the chosen
audiovisual corpora was carried out using analytical scripts, whose internal structure
and use has been extensively discussed in another publication of by the author
devoted to the analysis of audiovisual documents [STO 03].
15 This is an audiovisual corpus which belongs to the ArkWork (Arkeonauts' Workshop)
archives: http://semiolive.ext.msh-paris.fr/ada/.
16 This is an audiovisual corpus which belongs to the LHE (Literature from Here and
Elsewhere) archives: http://semiolive.ext.msh-paris.fr/alia/.
