Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 11:22:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: "David L. Gants" <dgants@english.uga.edu>
Subject: Oxford HCU Lecture Series: Text, Electronic Texts, and
the Theory of Mark-Up
From: Stuart Lee <stuart.lee@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>
******ALL WELCOME**********
Lecture Series, Humanities Computing Unit, Oxford University Computing
Services, 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN
At the Humanities Computing Unit we are greatly honoured to have Dr.
Allen Renear from Brown University visiting for the summer. Dr. Renear
is offering a series of three lectures on his work with electronic texts
and the theory of mark-up. All welcome! For more information on Dr.
Renear see http://www.stg.brown.edu/stg/staff_pages/allen.html
Lecture Series:
Lecture 1: Text Ontology from Below:
The Contribution of Computing Practice to New Theories of Textuality
1.00-2.00pm, OUCS, Wednesday 29th July
Lecture 2: Towards a New Theory of Markup
1.00-2.00pm, OUCS, Thursday 30th July
Lecture 3: The Revised Standard Theory of "What Text Really Is"
1.00-2.00pm, OUCS, Wednesday 5th August
Stuart Lee
Head of the Centre for Humanities Computing
---------------
Lecture 1: Text Ontology from Below:
The Contribution of Computing Practice to New Theories of Textuality
1.00-2.00pm, OUCS, Wednesday 29th July
The practice of computer text encoding has turned out to be astonishingly
effective at generating insights into the nature of textuality. In
particular, over the last decade reflective practitioners of electronic
publishing and computer text encoding have developed in succession three
very powerful general theories which, perhaps not surprisingly,
recapitulate three fundamental metaphysical attitudes towards the world in
general: realism, pluralism, and antirealism. Although these theories have
deep connections with contemporary debates about the nature of text, their
origin in the practical contexts of writing, publishing, typesetting,
editing, and researching create a uniquely fresh, straightforward, and
practice-grounded perspective on problems which are otherwise notorious
for their obscurity and difficulty. This talk reviews the emergence of
these theories, looking closely at their social and technological contexts
as well as examining in detail the analysis and reasoning deployed to
support them.
Lecture 2: Towards a New Theory of Markup
1.00-2.00pm, OUCS, Thursday 30th July
The computer markup taxonomies of the 1980s were very effective in
explaining and systematizing various phenomena of text processing and they
played a crucial role in providing the ideology for the campaign to
promote the "content object" approach to designing and using text
processing systems. But although these taxonomies have been carried over
with little or no criticism into the new arenas of modern text encoding, a
close examination reveals that the most stable and familiar portion of the
received taxonomy is actually deeply flawed. Drawing on the "speech-act
theory" of Austin and Searle this talk will analyze some problems with
core portions of the standard markup taxonomy and explore some possible
revisions which accomodate the problem cases and provide a new
categorization with improved explanatory and predictive power. In the
process it will attempt to improve our understanding of the fundamental
nature of markup in general. It will also suggest that perhaps any attempt
to understand how exactly how markup works will quickly encounter
unresolved problems in text ontology -- we still do not have a common
understanding of what text really is, and until we do peripheral efforts
to improve our knowledge of textual features such as markup will be
incomplete.
Lecture 3: The Revised Standard Theory of "What Text Really Is"
1.00-2.00pm, OUCS, Wednesday 5th August
This talk outlines a natural and commonsense view of the nature of
text.This theory of what text is, which we will call the "Revised Standard
Theory" is defined by these theses:
1) Realism: Texts exist and have properties independent of our theories
about them.
2) Structuralism: Texts are structures of objects.
3) Platonism: The objects which constitute texts are abstract.
4) Intentionalism: Texts are created by collective social acts
5) Hierarchicalism: The structure of texts is hierarchical
6) Verbalism: The objects which constitute texts are linguistic objects;
renditional features are not parts of texts, and therefore not a proper
locus of textual meaning.
These theses are explained and then arguments and evidence are adduced to
suggest that while the case for the Revised Standard Theory of text may
not yet be complete and decisive, it is nevertheless a coherent view, and
a plausible one, well supported by the evidence of theory and practice. In
the absence of any other well-developed competing account the Revised
Standard Theory should be considered the best account of text that we
have.
Allen Renear, the Director of the Brown University Scholarly Technology
Group, is currently Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the the Humanities
Computing Unit.
---------------------------------------------
Dr. Allen Renear Allen_Renear@Brown.Edu http://www.stg..brown.edu
Director, Scholarly Technology Group (on leave, 3/98-9/98)
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912
President, Association for Computing in the Humanities http://www.ach.org
3/98-9/98: Visiting Fellow, Humanities Computing Unit, Oxford University
13 Banbury Road / Oxford England. OX2 1QZ
Tel: +44 (0)1865 2-73221 (9am-5pm)
-83294 (5pm-9pm and weekends)
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