Discourse mapper: a metadiscourse question. I am hoping
there are some metalanguage experts on this list!

The problem is to describe professional/academic discourse
units in object oriented terms (classes, attributes, services). The
language I would like to ultimately express this in is UML (unified
modeling language). This is an opportunity for me to learn more
about object oriented analysis and discourse analysis. What is
the proper term for discourse analysis at this most general level
of societal conversation? It is not called discipline analysis, because
disciplines contain overlapping discourse.

One important object in the problem domain would be professional/academic
associations - who hold conferences - who discuss the cutting edge of their
field -
who work on collaborative projects - who have an important archive of
information
regarding their field - who have important journals, listservs...

The question: what are the important classes (objects) at this general
level of discourse, what are those classes attributes, what actions
can they perform, what are their responsibilities, what knowledge do they
contain.

The Interdis community would be an exceptional case study as our
discourse is about discourse. One class would be <<organization>>,
another class would be daily conversation on the <<Listserv>>; the org
has a <<name>>: AIS; the org knows <<members>>, the Listserv talks
about many <<topics>>...

The model and interface will be done in Squeak.

I have set up a temp listserv at topica.com because I am inviting a number
of discourses into the parlor. send an email to:
ooDiscourse-subscribe at topica.com

Don't be put off by the topica.com registration... it has proven to be no
problem
in the past for me - quite a good way to set up a limited term
conversation - just
how limited that term may be, we will see.

Thanks,


Kenneth Fields
Ph.D. Media Arts and Technology
Institute of Human Computer Interaction and Media Integration
Department of Computer Science
Tsinghua University
Beijing, China 100084
ken at tsinghua.edu.cn
ken at create.ucsb.edu
http://www.create.ucsb.edu/ken
(86 10) 8316 1363