Aboutness

Aboutness er en term i angelsaksiske teoridannelser vedrørende emne og emneanalyse og i filosofi, hvor det ofte beskrives som synonymt med intentionalitet. I mangel af en egnet dansk term ses "aboutness" også nogle gange anvendt på dansk. 

Begrebet vandt især frem i Biblioteks- og informationsvidenskab fra midten af 1970'erne, hvor den blev foreslået af lingvisten W. J. Hutchins (jf. Hutchins, 1975, 1977, 1978). Hutchins mente at "aboutness" var et bedre begreb end "emne" fordi det fjerner nogle erkendelsesteoretiske uklarheder. Hjørland (1992, 1997) har imidlertid argumenteret for at "nissen flytter med", at de samme teoretiske problemer gør sig gældende i begge begreber, og at "aboutness" og "emne" derfor bør opfattes som synonyme.

Litteratur 

Beghtol, C. (1986). Bibliographic Classification Theory and Text Linguistics: Aboutness Analysis, Intertextuality and the Cognitive Act of Classifying Documents. Journal of Documentation, 42, 84-113.
 
Bruza, P.D., Song, D.W., & Wong, K.F. (2000). Aboutness from a commensense perspective. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(12), 1090-1105. Available at: 
http://www.dstc.edu.au/Research/Projects/Infoeco/publications/aboutness-jasis.pdf 

Campbell, G. (2000a). Aboutness and Meaning: How a Paradigm of Subject Analysis Can Illuminate Queer Theory in Literary Studies. I: CAIS 2000. Canadian Association for Information Science: Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference. http://www.slis.ualberta.ca/cais2000/campbell.htm 

Campbell, G. (2000b). Queer theory and the creation of contextual subject access tools for gay and lesbian communities. Knowledge Organization, 27(3), 122-131.

Fairthorne, R. A. (1969). Content analysis, specification and Control. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 4, 73-109. 

Frohmann, B. (1990). Rules of Indexing: A Critique of Mentalism in Information Retrieval Theory. Journal of Documentation, 81-101.

Furner, J. (2006). The ontology of subjects of works. ASIS&T conference. http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/jfurner/furner-06asist-b-ppt.pdf

Goodman, N. (1961). About. Mind 70(277), 1-24.
 
Hjørland, B. (1992). The Concept of "Subject" in Information Science. Journal of Documentation, 48(2), 172-200. Click for full-text PDF

Hjørland, B. (1997): Information Seeking and Subject Representation. An Activity-theoretical approach to Information Science. Westport & London: Greenwood Press. 

Hjørland, B. (2001). Towards a theory of aboutness, subject, topicality, theme, domain, field, content. . . and relevance. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52(9), 774–778.

Hutchins, W. J. (1975). Languages of indexing and classification. A linguistic study of structures and functions. London: Peter Peregrinus. 
 
Hutchins, W. J. (1977). On the Problem of "Aboutness" in Document Analysis. Journal of Informatics, 1, 17-35.
 
Hutchings, W. J. (1978). The concept of "aboutness" in subject indexing. Aslib Proceedings, 30, 172-181.
 
Mark Peitersen, A. (1979). The meaning of "about" in fiction indexing and retrieval. Aslib Proceedings, 31, 251- 257.
 
Maron, M. E. (1977). On Indexing, Retrieval and the Meaning of About. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 28, 38-43. 

Putnam, H. (1958). Formalization of the concept “about.” Philosophy of Science 25(2), 125-130.

Ryle, G. (1933). “About.” Analysis 1(1): 10-11.

Salem, Shawky: Towards "coring" and "aboutness": an approach to some aspects of in-depth index­ing. Journal of Information Science principles & practice, 1982, 4, 167-170. 

Swift, D. F., Winn, V. & Bramer, D. (1978). "Aboutness" as a strategy for retrieval in the social sciences. Aslib Proceedings, 30, 182-187.

Thalheimer, R. (1936). More about “about.” Analysis 3(3): 46-48.

Biblioteks- og informationsvidenskab
Filosofi