ACCS Weekly Meeting:

Date: This Week: Thursday 11th August, 10:30am

Location: Room 246, Collaborative Learning Centre, Sir James Footes
Building,

Morning tea in outside courtyard.

Speakr: Andrew Smith, Key Centre for Human Factors

A Complex Systems Approach to Text Data Analysis
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Larger bodies of natural language contain very rich and dynamic patterns of
meaning. The vocabulary used to express ideas can drift, relationships
between concepts can change, and entities can change roles or identities.
Text can contain contradictions and falsehoods. Further, adherence to
grammatical rules can be suprisingly weak, particularly in spoken material.
Most importantly, interpretation of meaning depends at least in part on
context.
Given these properties, it may be useful to consider natural language as a
complex system for purposes of analysis. This proposition will be outlined,
alongside converging ideas from Content Analysis and Object Role Modelling,
as a more disciplined way to bridge the chasm between postmodern qualitative
analysis and formal reductionist approaches.
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