Symbolic Knowledge Representation in Transcript Based Taxonomies

This paper introduces a design for the taxonomical representation of participants’ instantial meaningmaking, as the basis for providing a measure of ambiguity and contestation. We use hyponymy and meronymy as the basis for our taxonomies and adopt the System Network formalism as the basis for their representation. We achieve an integration of transcript and taxonomy using an XML based ‘satellite’ system of data storage. Content data forms a ‘Root’ document which can then ‘mapped’ to by an arbitrary number of ‘Descriptor’ documents. This system represents instantial meanings by mapping Descriptor document elements to elements in the Root. Part of this mapping also includes the sequence of Root elements, accommodating the diachronic representation of meaning-making. This diachronic representation provides the basis for measuring ambiguity and contestation.