Audiovisual Archives: Digital Text and Discourse Analysis

Chapter 9

The Procedure of Free Description of an Audiovisual Corpus

 

9.1. Introduction

The analysis, the description of an audiovisual text, is, technically speaking, the process of making a conceptual term and/or a configuration of conceptual terms conform (in the analyst’s view) to the specificities of the audiovisual text being analyzed.

In concrete terms, this conformation consists of specific actions such as identification of a filmic object lato sensu in an audiovisual text (including filmed situations, filmed activities, people and groups, objects per se, etc.), conceptual categorization of it, designation or denomination of it, presentation, interpretation, relation with other filmic objects, and so on.

In this chapter, we shall present one of the two main procedures which make this conformation possible – the procedure that we call free description. As we shall see, free description includes all the activities which should enable the analyst to identify, explicitize, explain or concretely index a knowledge object thematized and expressed as discourse in a concrete audiovisual text.

Free description is, in fact, one of the two procedures which are to be found in the task of referential description* (i.e. in the task of description of the topical level of an audiovisual text; see Chapters 5 and 6) and also in the description of discourse production* around the topic (see Chapter 7) or of its audiovisual mise en scène.

The other main descriptive procedure which we have ...