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This paper aims to further formalise this approach by suggesting a structure for
analysing such narrative data that (I argue) is particularly suitable for this task, but
which also appropriate for specifying and writing the code that determines the
behaviour of agents within a social simulation. This involves a three-stage analysis,
into: context, scope, and narrative elements. This increased structure should make the
process more transparent and systematic, but also (I hope) cause less distortion to the
original sense and make the process easier!
In this paper I first discuss each of: context, scope and narrative steps into which
narrative data can be analysed, before discussing how these might be brought together
into a complete analysis, giving some examples. It then ends by discussing some
aspects of the transformation into code, including a discussion about the kinds of
computer architecture that might make this easier, and some ways forward.
2
Context
Context is a difficult word to use, for at least two reasons. Firstly it seems to be used
to refer to a number of related, but different kinds of thing, and secondly it is not
always clear that there is any
thing
that is “the context”, but rather that the word is
being used only as an abstraction to facilitate discussion. I am not going to go into a
full discussion of the concept and definition of context here, as I have gone into this in
previous publications, e.g. [5]. However, since context is central to this paper, a few
words are necessary to make my intended meaning clear.
First there is the context in terms of the situation in which an event occurred. Thus
the context for a certain conversation might be position: latitude N53:20:45, longitude
W1:59:13 at 9.45 in the morning on December 22
nd
2012. However this is not such a
useful description since, although precise, it imparts very little useful information
about what is relevant about that context. Even if one could retrieve what was around
at that point in time and space, there is an indefinite number of potential factors that
might be pertinent there. Thus it is almost universal to abstract from such precision
and try to indicate the
kind
of situation one is referring to. For example, one might
say “I was on the train on my way to work just before Christmas”. This kind of
context can be seen as the answer someone might give to the question “What was the
context?” after having been told something they did not fully understand. In this
sense it is what is needed to be known about the situation to sufficiently understand
the specific utterance for a hearer's purpose. This kind of response is specific to the
hearer's particular purpose; however, it is surprising how informative such a thin
characterisation can be in that we can recognise a host of details that would normally
accompany such a situation, filling out the details. In other words we are able to
recognise the kind of situation being signalled by another person.
Many aspects of human cognition have been shown to be context-dependent,
including: language, visual perception, choice making, memory, reasoning and
emotion [18] [10]. Context-dependency seems to be built into our cognition at a
fundamental level. There seems to be a good reason why this is so, as a mechanism
for social coordination. That humans are able to co-recognise the same kinds of
