Audiovisual Archives: Digital Text and Discourse Analysis

Chapter 12

The Meta-lexicon Representing the ASW Universe of Discourse

 

12.1. Introduction

Remember that the meta-lexicon of conceptual terms, in a manner of speaking, constitutes the “heart” of the ASW metalinguistic resources*. This is what provides the vocabulary needed to define and elaborate the descriptive models used by the analyst – via the working interface of the ASW Studio (and, more particularly, the Description Workshop) – to analyze the audiovisual texts in an archive.

As said in the previous chapter, this meta-lexicon is made up to two perfectly complementary parts:

– the first part is given over to the conceptual vocabulary which covers the ASW discourse-object, i.e. the different types of objects of analysis* that make up the ASW universe of discourse* and are likely to be described and indexed by the analyst;

– the second part is reserved for the conceptual vocabulary which covers the analytical activities* made available to the analyst to describe said objects.

In this chapter, we shall present that part of the meta-lexicon of conceptual terms reserved for identifying and denoting the types of analytical objects of the ASW universe of discourse.

Section 12.2 is given over to a few explanations as regards the relations between “conceptual term” and “theme”.

In Section 12.3, we shall again discuss the question of defining the topical structure – an issue which, as explained in Chapters 5, constitutes a central part of the thematic structure the analyst uses to ...