Audiovisual Archives: Digital Text and Discourse Analysis

Chapter 7

The Analytical Task of “Analyzing the Discourse Production around a Subject”

 

7.1. Introduction

Now let us take a look at a descriptive task which, technically speaking, relies on a class of configurations which can become very complex. This is a descriptive task which is very important, or even crucial in the context of a thematic description* (or description of the content) of an audiovisual text*. It constitutes one of the decisive moments during the analysis in the sense of an expert assessment of the content, i.e. a structured and explicit evaluation of the discursive value of a piece of information (also see [STO 99; STO 01]) – of the way in which a topic is approached in an audiovisual document.

There is a clear difference between the statements that two audiovisual texts making up an analysis corpus speak about a specific archaeological dig – in suchand- such a physical location, devoted to such-and-such an era and with such-andsuch a type of artifact – and how that “same” subject is approached in the two texts. The first statement stems from referential description*; the second from discursive description as such.

This chapter is given over to a brief presentation on the description of the discourse production around a subject. As explained in Chapter 5, this is a question of understanding and explaining how a theme is dealt with by the author or, rather, by its enunciator, i.e. by the person responsible for what is said about a given knowledge object. Just ...