The role of special language in relation to knowledge organization

Abstract

AbstractThe organization of knowledge has always been a core activity within IS. Knowledge organization is the very foundation that makes information seeking possible. However, the tradition and research within IS is still influenced by the construction perspective, which means that the main concern regarding knowledge organization is focused on the construction of systems, i.e. cataloguing systems, classifying systems and thesaurus construction. This paper argues that knowledge organization must encompass theories that focus on the more fundamental and less technical view and raises the questions of epistemology and general linguistic theoryi, i.e. with attendance to language and meaning. So, the crucial task in contemporary knowledge organization theory must be how to create a framework for knowledge organization based upon the nature of a given discourse community and upon methods to reveal its knowledge structures. This paper focuses on the meaning aspect of language and the terminological aspect of knowledge organization. The paper argues that knowledge organization deals with terminological representations and linguistic statements, which include documents, document surrogates (the bibliographic record) and subject representations. Therefore, theories of terminology, language and meaning, and special languageii are considered in order to create a framework for special language studies within IS.