UNIVERSITA' DI FIRENZE - FACOLTA' DI SCIENZE DELLA FORMAZIONE -

DIPARTIMENTO DI STUDI SOCIALI

MULTIMEDIA SOCIOLOGY LEXICON: THE PROJECT

The project aims at summarizing a Sociology Lexicon in a short number of words, but long enough to be complete. In order to achieve such result we took into consideration the ipothesis of structuring the work into the shape of an "archipelago", with conceptual "islands". Each relevant word should be looked at like a source of irradiation towards other words, that lay at different distances: the connection of the points would originate an "island". The coasts of the island would be smooth or indented, depending on the particular pattern of connection. The selection criterion for the "islands" should be given by heir relevance, while the words connected should be chosen on a relevance-matter relation base. Consequently some words should be nearer than other to the "center". For instance, if the source of irradiation is the word "love", then words like "sexuality", "marriage", "divorce", "children", "homosexuality", "prostitution", certainly attain the matter.

Concerning the matter, it should be pointed out that:

1. The number of both islands and connected words is determined only by the criterions expressed before; therefore the research, although based on a strict review of sociological works (the scientific status of theories, methods, concepts, etc., is determined by the scientific community), should not be limited by such strictness. If we believe (sensibly) that a word, although not yet wide-spread because of its controversal scientific status, is relevant to the sociological discourse ( from the point of view of description, interpretation, etc.), we should dare to propose it.

2. Each island is connected to other islands, at least by means of one point. Going back to the example: "children" is certainly connected to "childhood", "education", "socialization", although not all of them are necessarily points of irradiation. On the base of such structure we started to originate a Lexicon index, i.e. a list of the relevant words and of some connections. The index is, by now, in its way to be completed, and some words have also been used as models to be followed in processing the information that will be in the Lexicon. The following is part of the "island" Charismatic Power that should be in the Lexicon.

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