Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Every type of object of analysis is represented by a
concept
or, as we prefer to
call it, by a
conceptual term
(or CT) which is displayed between squares brackets
and begins with an uppercase letter. Thus, [Civilization] is a conceptual term
whereas <Civilization> is a nominal expression generated by the analyst or pre-
defined in a thesaurus;
Let us now take a closer look at Figure 5.2. It shows a small vertically oriented
graph [SOW 84] between two conceptual terms which are interconnected through a
chosen conceptual relation. Thus, the graph is the product of:
- a selection of 1)
two conceptual terms
(from the conceptual terms making up
the vocabulary, i.e. the ASW meta-lexicon of terms, which represents the objects of
analysis of the ASW
universeofdiscourse*
) and 2) a
conceptualrelation
;
- a process of reciprocal positioning of the two terms using the relation {CT
i
refers to CT
j
} with the result of a thematic (here, topical) configuration in which the
conceptual term [Civilization] is the term
ab quo
(that is, the original term) and the
conceptual term [Cultural construct] the term
adquem
(the resultant term).
Let us take from this that any
referential
or
topical description*
of a corpus of
audiovisual (or other types of) texts relies (is based) on the selection of a CT or set
of CTs representing the first category of objects of analysis, i.e. so-called referential
objects. The selected conceptual terms also specify, from all the
sequences*
which
make up a model of description of audiovisual content, a particular functional class
which serves for the
description of the domain
(or rather, the
objects
of the domain)
thematized in an (audiovisual) text
or corpus. In other words, that class of sequences
serves for describing
what
a text
talks about
(see section 1.6). Remember that this
functionally specialized class of sequences always occupies
first position
in the
canonicsyntacticstructure
(see Chapter 4) of a model of thematic description. In the
context of an analysis of audiovisual content, it is also the
only
sequence in the
interactive form which necessarily has to be filled in by the analyst.
5.4.Alibraryofsequencesforreferentialdescription
Figure 5.2 is a representation of the referential part of the model of description
.
of the audiovisual content underlying the interactive working form shown in
Figure 3.2. Figure 5.3, on the other hand, shows how an account can be given of the
same model from the point of view of the organization of the interactive form which
serves as a working interface between the model of description and the analyst.
