[Sigcr-l] [isko-l] Re: Reading about how culture/language affects knowledge representation

Tue Sep 22 03:46:48 EDT 2009

Dear Dagobert, 

Yet another classic that I would like to recommend is 

Bowker, G.C. & S.L. Star: Sorting things out. Classification and its
consequences. Cambridge (MA) MIT Press, 1999. 

And dear Elin: thank you for the reference to Zerubavel's book - I am going
to read that soon! 

Best wishes,

Hanne

Hanne Albrechtsen, PhD

Senior Scientist, Consultant

Institute of Knowledge Sharing

Jensloevs Tvaervej 11, 3

DK-2920 Charlottenlund

Denmark

Phone: (+45) 39643265

e-mail: hanne.albrechtsen at knowshare.dk

  _____  

Fra: Elin K. Jacob [mailto:ejacob at indiana.edu] 
Sendt: 20. september 2009 18:23
Til: Dagobert Soergel
Cc: sigcr-l at asis.org; isko-l at lists.gseis.ucla.edu
Emne: [isko-l] Re: [Sigcr-l] Reading about how culture/language affects
knowledge representation

Dear Dagobert.

Zerubavel's book on "lumping and splitting" is an excellent introduction to
the idea that different cultures represent the world differently:

                      Zerubavel, E.   (1991).  Islands of meaning (p. 5-20).
The great divide (p. 21-32).  In The fine line: making distinctions in
everyday life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  

The classic article by Brown discusses various aspects of "naming" :        

                                            Brown, R. (1958). How shall a
thing be called? Psychological Review 65, 14-21.

The physicist Peat has a very intriguing chapter that talks about the
"stories" that different cultures use to explain the same phenomenon:

                      Peat, F. D.  (1993).  Science as story.  In C.
Simpkinson & A. Simpkinson (Eds.), Sacred stories (p. 53-62). San Francisco:
Harper.

The following also address this issue:

                      Clark, A.  (1998).  Magic words: how language augments
human computation. In P. Carruthers & J. Boucher (Eds.), Language and
thought: interdisciplinary themes (pp. 162-183).  Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.  Retrieved August 31, 2008, from
http://www.philosophy.ed.ac.uk/staff/clark/pubs/magic.pdf

                      Goode, E.  (2000).  How culture molds habits of
thought.  NYTimes.com, 8 August 2000.

                      Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M.  (1999).  Philosophy in the
flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought (p. 3-36).
New York: Basic Books.

There are also several foundational papers on how representation "works"
that I have found useful in  discussions of representation are:

                      Palmer, S. E. (1978) Fundamental aspects of cognitive
representation. In E. Rosch & B. L. Lloyd (Eds.), Cognition and
categorization (pp. 259-302). Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.

                      Barsalou, L. W. (1992). Representation. In Cognitive
Psychology: an overview for cognitive scientists (p. 52-56 only). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. (Barsalou's briefer discussion is actually based
on Palmer's paper, which is excellent).

And there is a paper by Hjorland -- I don't remember the title offhand but I
do remember the examples of different representations of forests(?) in
different languages that cannot be translated.  Berger?

In my lectures on representation, I contrast the English words for flowing
bodies of water (creek, brook, stream, river, etc.-- distinguished by
"size") with the two French words for river (fleuve and rivier,
distinguished by destination) to illustrate that the conceptual planes in
these two languages are different and thus cannot be translated.

Unfortunately, none of these resources deal explicitly with any
bibliographic classification scheme.

elin

Elin K. Jacob, PhD

Associate Professor & Director, SLIS Doctoral Program

School of Library & Information Science

Indiana University

011 Wells Library

1320 E. 10th St.

Bloomington  IN  47405

Phone:  812.855.4671

Email:  ejacob at indiana.edu

On Sep 19, 2009, at 12:33 PM, Dagobert Soergel wrote:

A beginning student asked me

Could you recommend a reading about how culture/language affects 

knowledge representation?

Does anyone know of the one or two articles that introduce this 

problem, or a bibliography?  A good treatment of cultural focus (or 

bias) in classifications, such as DDC or the Colon Classification, 

would certainly fit in here.

Dagobert

Dagobert Soergel

College of Information Studies

University of Maryland

4105 Hornbake Library

College Park, MD 20742-4345

Office: 301-405-2037     Home:  703-823-2840        Mobile: 703-585-2840

OFax:   301-314-9145        HFax: 703-823-6427

dsoergel at umd.edu     www.dsoergel.com 

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