CALL FOR PAPERS

1st INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON
COMPUTATIONAL SEMIOTICS

26th - 27th May, 1997
Pôle Universitaire Léonard de Vinci
PARIS - LA DEFENSE - FRANCE

TOPICS

SEMIOTICS OF TEXT  : Suzanne Bertrand-Gastaldy, University of Montreal

Computers are increasingly used to assist text analysis for cognitive, literary, anthropological, sociological, documentary, etc. research. The
workshop will focus on actual realisations, on the possibilities and limits of methodologies and existing tools to take into account the complex and
multidimensional nature of texts, allowing multiple points of views for a variety of user needs. Issues such as desirable features of text analysis
software, robustness and conviviality of implantations, interaction between corpora and users, constraints that actual tools put upon kinds of
analyses and coding choices, the ability to elaborate models of electronic analytical tools suited to different semiotic theories, semiotical
foundations of markup languages are examples of possible debates.

SEMIOMETHODOLOGY : Claude Vogel, Léonard de Vinci University

Several genres are currently under investigation for semiotic studies : electronic mail, news, corporate information, Web publishing. The flood of
full text is overflowing semantic analysis, and this major paradigm break leads us to reconsider our approach of text processing. The size of these
new corpora, the lack of consistency of information, the physical scattering of the basic units of texts, make the classical documentary solutions
very uncomfortable. Instead, the semiotic based analysis seems to be a highly compelling perspective. It is focused on chronology; it provides a way
to build transitive narratives throughout large amounts of data, and it does not require the understanding of the details of each local grammatical
sentence in order for a global plot to be elaborated. This promising trend may give a second wind to ethnomethodology. For this reason, it is more
appropriate to use the term "semiomethodology" when evoking this attempt to rationalize the computational approach of the symbolic dynamics which
underlie collaborative production.

ORGANIZATIONAL SEMIOTICS : Kathleen Carley, Carnegie Mellon University

Organizational semiotics is the semiotics of organizations and organizational dimensions of textual semiotics. The objective of this workshop is to
define the boundaries of this new specialty. Specifically, we will address the issue of : "How can semiotic analysis of interpersonal and corporate
exchanges be used to reveal, evaluate, and contrast the underlying organizational logics and changes in these logics over time ?" Recent advances in
textual analysis are facilitating this endeavor and creating new opportunities for understanding organizational behavior. Critical issues in the area
of organizational semiotics include : 1) how to quickly and reliably analyze large quantities of texts, 2) how to reduce textual data to an empirical
form that can be combined with other types of data and analyzed statistically, 3) how to identify corporate texts (those representing the "view" of
the organization as an entity) and address issues of authorship, and 4) how to identify institutional constraints on the production and maintenance
of corporate texts. New and innovative computational methods for empirically analyzing texts are being developed to address these and related
concerns. These techniques have the potential to move textual analysis beyond counting words or locating a few themes or concepts. This section will
focus on the issues involved in performing organizational semiotics with particular attention to the new computationally based techniques for
facilitating organizational analysis that increase the ease, speed or reliability of coding texts and generate information that can be analyzed
statistically.

BIOSEMIOTICS : Jean-Claude Heudin, Léonard de Vinci University

Recently, algorithms and architectures based on models derived from biological systems have been receiving an increasing amount of interest. This
section will explore how such new approaches and techniques could be used for managing large amount of information exchanges on Internet or Intranet.
Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, applications of agent-based systems, autonomous and evolving agents, genetic
algorithms and programming, neural networks, cellular automata etc. to text stream analysis and in the more general framework of semiotics analysis.

SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

Send four copies of an abstract (approximately 500 words) in english or email it to :

Irène Ludman - IWCS'97
Pôle Universitaire Léonard de Vinci
92916 PARIS-LA DEFENSE-CEDEX, FRANCE 
Phone: (33) 01 41 16 73 05 
Fax : (33) 01 41 16 73 35
Email : irene.ludmann@devinci.fr

DEADLINES

Submission of abstracts 
by 1st April 1997

Acceptance notification to authors
by 15th April 1997

Submission of full papers
by 12th May 1997

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Claude Vogel (chairman)
Suzanne Bertrand-Gastaldy
Kathleen Carley
Jean-Claude Heudin

PROGRAM COMMITTE

Pierre Boudon (canada)
Guillaume Deffuant (France)
Evelyne Lutton (France)
Joe Porac (USA)
Carl Roberts (USA)
J. Sebeok (Canada)
Peter Stockinger (France)
Bill Turner (France)

For more information please visit the following Web page : http://www.devinci.fr/home/actua.htm