# Beyond the Semantic Web: Towards an Implicit Pragmatic Web and a Web of Social Representations
## 4 Our Proposal for an Implicit Pragmatic Web and Web of Social Representations
### A Web of Social Representations
#### 4.2.2 Structure of Social Representations and Methodologies for Extracting Them  
According to [PERSON] ([125] p. 59), social representations have a three-fold structure:  
1. A central core, which is linked to collective memory, defines the homogeneity of the group, is diachronically stable, coherent, rigid /indeeasible, generates the signification of the social representation, and determines its organization. The core consists of elements and relations between elements. [PERSON] ([126] p. 59) emphasizes the importance of relations: he gives the example of a study about the theme of work in two different groups of young people, the first group consisted of qualified individuals with high degrees, and the second group of unqualified individuals. In the first case, he gathered the three elements \"make a living\", \"personal fulfillment\", and \"socialrecognition\"; in the second case, he gathered the elements \"make a living\", \"constraints\", and \"financing leisure time\". The same cognitive element \"make a living\" is related to the other elements in very different ways: in the first case, it is a personal or social value; in the second case, a means to satisfy individual needs.
2. A periphery, which permits the integration of individual experiences and past histories, supports the group's heterogeneity, is flexible and bears contradictions, allows adaptation to concrete reality, and protects the central core.
3. A mute zone (which can again be subdivided into a central core and periphery). In certain contexts, there is a mute zone of social representation for particular objects. This mute zone comprises elements of the representation not verbalized by the subjects with the traditional collection methods. The example given by [126] is [PERSON]'s second position at the presidential elections of 2002, contradicting all pollsters: he hypothesizes that [PERSON] voters were ashamed to declare their voting intentions to pollsters, even anonymously.  
After describing the structure of social representations, let us see how they can be obtained. [PERSON] used questionnaires and qualitative analyses of interviews and press articles to pinpoint social representations concerning psychoanalysis. His students used various methods, among which was free word associations. [PERSON] [88] stated that using a single method may produce biased results and that to obtain social representations, several methods should be used in conjunction and triangulated.  
An important method for studying social representations is the method of _basic cognitive schemes_, introduced by [PERSON] and [PERSON] [127; 128]. This method investigates relations between _cogennes_ (elementary units of cognition). Starting with a given cogneme A, the subject is asked to supply five additional cognemes B1,...,B5 by association. Then, 28 paradigmatic relations between A and each B\({}_{i}\) are proposed to the subject, who has to mark them as _true_, _false_, or _unrelated_. These relations, called _basic cognitive schemes_ (a reference to [PERSON]'s schemata in psychology [129]), correspond to synonymy, antonymy, definition, inclusion, inverse of inclusion, co-inclusion (both included in a superset), meronymy (\"is part of\"), inverse of meronymy, co-meronymy (both parts of a whole), doing, inverse of doing, acting on, inverse of acting on, using, inverse of using, having an incidence on, inverse of having an incidence on, using as tool for an action, inverse of using as tool for an action, tool used upon, inverse of tool used upon, frequent characteristic, occasional characteristic, normative characteristic, evaluative characteristic, cause/origin/factor, and consequence/effect/goal. For example, the following basic cognitive schemes came out from a study about the social representation of the ideal group: an ideal group has the fact of having the same opinions as a frequent characteristic, jealousy as an occasional characteristic, egalitarianism as a normative characteristic, pleasantness as an evaluative characteristic, etc.