Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
1) The activity of
indicating the chosen conceptual term
, i.e. the term
[Civilization]. In our case, it is a question of producing the expression <Chavín
civilization> by way of an indexing form associated with this activity.
2) The activity of
possibly producing additional information
which further
contextualizes the simple citation <Chavín civilization>. Such contextualization may
be temporal (historical), spatial (geographic) or indeed thematic (institutional,
social).
3) The activity of
(possibly) producing a textual summary presentation
in the
form of a short explanatory text.
4) Finally, if applicable, the activity of
producing a version in the original
language
of expression, indicating the conceptual term.
Let us specify that
only the first activity
, that of indicating the conceptual term
[Civilization] is obligatory - all the others are optional. Of course, the more an
analysis relies on the different activities of description, the more it is enriched but
also the more time it takes to carry out.
Also, as shown in Figure 3.2, once the so-called free description of the
conceptual term [Civilization] has been completed, the analyst is invited to provide
information about the cultural phenomenon/a the audiovisual text being analyzed
deals with. Here, the description of the cultural phenomenon is performed using the
procedure of controlled description*
. This means that the analyst employs a
thesaurus*
, from which he chooses the predefined terms (descriptors) he deems to
be the most apt to characterize the cultural phenomenon in question. In our specific
case, the predefined term, the
descriptor
, that the analyst has chosen to give an
account of the cultural phenomenon dealt with in his audiovisual text, is the term
<Technical culture>.
In brief, the task of referential description, performed using the form shown in
Figure 4.2, can be summed up in terms of the information produced by the analyst,
specifying that the audiovisual text being analyzed “talks about”
the technical
cultureoftheChavíncivilization.
Note, again, that the simplest act of thematic description can be reduced to three,
very specific “gestures”:
- either
selecting the concept
(the conceptual term) to be informed (in our case,
the choice is limited to consecutively selecting the two conceptual terms
[Civilization] and [Cultural construct]);
- or
freely entering the nominal expression
which, in the analyst's view,
represents the referent of the concept or conceptual term (in our example, the
