Graduate students, staff, and faculty are cordially invited to attend the SLIS Colloquium Series.
Title: A Sign By Any Other Name
Speaker: Uta Priss, Napier University
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003
Time: 2:30-4:00pm
Location: LI 001 Main Library
Lecture preceded by an informal gathering with cookies, tea, and coffee, available at 2:15pm.
Abstract:
This talk describes a semiotic-conceptual framework which is based on Peirce's original sign definition. This framework provides insights into the nature of formal languages. It appears that the signs employed by many programming languages are more similar to signs employed in natural languages than to signs in formal logic. Both natural languages and programming languages emphasize user interaction with information, which depends on semiotic modes, contexts and user judgments. Semiotic modes are contrasted with conceptual structures which facilitate the exploration of the consequences of design decisions. Possible applications of this research are the development of improved ontology design tools and of improved teaching environments for programming languages.
Bio:
Uta Priss is a lecturer at the School of Computing, Napier University, Scotland. She was previously an Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University. Her research interests are conceptual structures, ontologies and semiotics. Uta Priss holds a Ph.D. in mathematical linguistics from Darmstadt University, Germany (1996).
Posted November 14, 2003