Decoding Emblem Semantics

This is the companion page to the article Decoding Emblem Semantics, that appeared in Literary and Linguistic Computing. [abstract, pdf]

The paper was written long before the advent of SVG-support in Firefox. The demo therefore depends on IE 6.0, using Adobe's SVG Viewer. I hope to find the time to do something about it. (After retirement, perhaps?)

For those that can't watch the demo: here's a screenshot (click to enlarge). The emblem is being shown with sign vehicles in text and image highlighted. The sign vehicles can be selected for display either individually or by sign type. Diagrams show the relations at class and instance level. See the paper for more detail.

You can go directly to the emblem page, or navigate the class model. I am interested in your feedback.

The only known cofiguration where this works is IE 6.0+ on Windows XP/Vista using Adobe's SVG Viewer.

What is this all about?

The article's abstract: This article develops a digital format, suitable for storing the results of analysis of literary works. It takes a semiotic approach and considers texts as vehicles for signs. The signs are described in an RDF vocabulary, based on a sign class model (ontology) which is formulated as an RDF Schema. The sign descriptions are linked to a TEI/XML encoded text.
The article is part of a larger investigation into generation of meaning in the 16th and 17th century genre of the emblem. As emblems contain texts and images, the format is applied to the analysis of both.
The article argues that a digital representation of results of literary analysis facilitates verification of an interpretation's claims about the text it discusses. All interpretation constituents are directly linked to the text and image fragments they discuss, and all employed concepts have been defined in the ontology. Interpretation and source texts can therefore be presented in tandem. From any source text fragment, the interpretation is immediately accessible, and the interpretation can point at the source text fragments on which it is based.

The following files are available:

Credits

These pages were made using the following tools:

• the DOT program, part of ATT's Graphviz suite, took care of the generation of the diagrams;
• Jason Diamond's XSLT stylesheet (available here) generated triple representations from the RDF files;
• VRP (the Validating RDF Parser) built by ICS-Forth validated the RDF files and helped me spot countless mistakes and oversights;
• and the indispensable Saxon by Michael Kay did its fast and trustworthy XSLT processing, as always.

Peter Boot, 2003-05-28 (modified: 2006-09-22, 2009-04-23)