Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
taxonomic domains can, if necessary and useful, be broken down into even more
specialized taxonomic domains. Thus, it is entirely possible to endow the ASW
meta-lexicon with fine conceptual distinctions in the form of more specialized
conceptual terms, operated e.g. by highly specialized thesauruses such as that of the
designations of architectural and building works from the
Direction de
l'Architecture et du Patrimoine from the French Ministry for Culture and
Communication
6
; and finally,
- the taxonomic domain of
physical expressions
- verbal or written expressions,
musical expressions, audiovisual expressions, mimic and gestural expressions, etc.
(see Figure 13.6). This domain, which begins with the conceptual term
[Physical expression], plays a significant role in the description and classification of
audiovisual corpora documenting, for example, verbal exchanges, musical creations,
sound environment or indeed actions and programs of action.
13.6.Theconceptualdomainrepresentedbytheterm[Socialobject]
Now let us consider the branch of the ASW meta-lexicon which begins with the
conceptual term [Social object]. This covers all the vocabulary of conceptual terms
which we use to describe social endurants, i.e. -
grosso modo
- entities, objects and
sets of objects from the social world.
The vocabulary of conceptual terms of this branch, as it currently stands, enables
us to describe and analyze themes or topics dealing with moral persons, all sorts of
institutions, peoples, social groups, social movements, ways of life, social regimes,
etc.
Figure 13.8 shows the organization of the complex taxonomic domain made up
of a whole variety of more specialized domains. At the basic taxonomic level of the
domain in question, we find our usual canonic triplet [Taxon of the domain
“Social object”] (which breaks the domain down into a series of more specialized
domains), [Feature of the domain “Social object”] and [System of the domain
“Social object”]. This latter conceptual term is particularly useful in that it facilitates
the description of topics in which it is a question, for example, of general (and
usually rather vacuous) social facts such as the
industrial society
, the
information
society
, the
pre-capitalist society
, etc. - subjects which, nowadays, are fairly popular
and recurrent in human and social sciences.
In the current version of the ASW meta-lexicon, the conceptual term [Taxon of
the domain “Social object”] (Figure 13.8) is broken down into four main taxonomic
domains. The first conceptual domain is organized around the term [Social life].
6 See http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/inventai/patrimoine/.
