Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
As shown in Figure 5.1, a model of thematic description (or content description)
identifies and selects, from these five categories of objects, those it needs to give an
account of its textual object.
[Civilization]
situates
refers to
[Geographic region:
Continent of America
]
[Cultural construct]
Figure5.2.
Configurationofconceptualtermrepresentingpartoftheknowledgeobject
“CivilizationsandtheirculturesonAmericansoil”
Now let us take a closer look at referential objects - the first of the five
categories of objects of analysis that we have just identified. Referential objects in
fact define a
sub-part
of the thematic structure which is the topic, or rather, the
topical structure
. The topic, quite simply, is what a text “talks” about, and a topical
structure is the model which we can use to describe all (audiovisual) texts whose
subject (or one of whose subjects) corresponds (reasonably closely) to the
underlying topical structure.
Thus, going back to our example introduced in Chapter 3, the subject, the topic
of the audiovisual text being analyzed is the technical culture of the Chavín
civilization during its peak period as it manifests itself in the Andean village of
Huantar in Peru (see Figure 3.2).
The
topical structure
, the working interface of which is constituted by the
working form in Figure 3.2, does, however, form a
generic configuration
which
enables us to actually analyze not only the audiovisual text in question (thankfully!)
but indeed all audiovisual texts which deal with
civilizations and their cultures on
Americansoil
.
Figure 5.2 provides a (cognitive) representation of part of the topical structure
which enabled us to analyze (among other things) the audiovisual text which speaks
about the
Chavín
civilization and which serves as an example here.
