ARCHIVÉE 2.3.3. Content Analysis of Written Information
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The scope of any content analysis is dictated by the kind of terminological research that you may be involved in. For instance, as a terminologist working in the communication service of a corporation, you might have to answer your clients’ questions on isolated terminological problems (what is the proper definition of a term, is a particular term used correctly in a given context, what is its equivalent in a target language, etc.). In the case of term research (research on an individual term), your content analysis is going to be short and to the point. On the other hand, you might be asked to do extensive research in a given sphere of activity or in one of its subfields, and prepare a whole glossary. In this case you will do what is called vocabulary research.
The first step in the kind of content analysis that precedes extensive terminological research is to prepare a directory or inventory of written sources to be scanned for content and terms. Preferably, this list will be computerized, and the titles will be coded so that they can be used during data entry, on terminology records or in case files. This way, titles will be recognizable or easily decodable by users during information retrieval. In large terminology data banks, this directory may in fact become a documentary database.
The written sources may include:
- documents and publications related to the subject field under study, existing databases and files, dictionaries, terminological works, and bibliographies
- Internet sites and portals accessed through search engines for isolated term queries (e.g. WebCorp) or for thematic queries (e.g. Vivísimo)
- Books in Print directories and computerized bibliographies provided by documentalists, who can also perform online reference searches and download selected documents on demand (If you aren’t fortunate enough to have a documentalist on staff, you will have to carry out such tasks yourself.)
- documentation recommended by subject-field specialists, who can also give informed opinions concerning the contents of other sources on your list
- information provided in newspapers and specialized periodicals about recent developments in a given subject field
- conference proceedings
- legal documents and regulations
- departmental publications and glossaries
- corporate handbooks and brochures
- advertising material
You will have to examine, read and annotate the inventoried documentation, and consider the opinions received from subject specialists, with a view to selecting those documents that are most representative of the subject field. On the basis of this content analysis, you may later adopt a subject-field classification system, establish a concept diagram for your research, and extract terms to be recorded in the terminology database as designations of individual concepts.
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