Aboutness
Aboutness is one among other terms used to express certain attributes of a discourse, text or document (other than form or the so-called 'descriptive data'). Aboutness is what is said in a document, what it is about, its content, subject or topic (etc.). Aboutness (or synonymous terms) is of course extremely important for knowledge organization and information retrieval.

In ordinary life are "aboutness" and related concepts used without difficulties. It may be difficult to say what a document is about if you do not possess the adequate subject expertise in the research area of that particular document (or if the document is notoriously unclear). That does not imply, however, that it is difficult to understand the meaning with the question: "What is this document about"? In general is the understanding of this question considered a very easy task. (And consequently: to ask about the meaning of 'aboutness' is considered a little silly).

The difficulty arise when different methods of determine the "aboutness" of documents are studied, whether "intellectual" or "mechanical" methods. Unfortunately different methods tend to provide more or less different answers. When they provide different answers to the question "what is this document about?", then by implication the problem can be reformulated: which of the claimed answers are correct or fruitful? What is the document about? Different methods of determining the aboutness of documents are often linked to different theories and epistemologies. When we face such different answers to the question "what is this document about?" (and if we cannot just neglect them as incompetent answers) then the next question is: "What is the meaning of this question? We cannot assume in advance that different approaches to determining aboutness are using this concept in the same way: The meaning of the concept itself becomes a theoretical problem. This will become more clear if we consider the following quote by Iivonen (1987):

"The literature on indexing and classification presents two different ways to understand "aboutness", i.e. how to answer the question "what is the book about". One underlines the importance of studying the text structure of the work and assumptions by the author about the knowledge and interests of readers. The other underlines the importance to study users' requests and to regard indexing as an answer to requests. Hutchins' and Moron's concepts of aboutness are described and compared to Soergel's ideas of request-oriented and entity-oriented indexing. Maron's and Soergel's ideas are quite close to each other whereas between Hutchins and Soergel there seems to be some kind of a conflict even of some similarities exist, as well. Both authors suggest that there are differences in the ways of indexing according to the type of the library. In Finland it is possible to use request-oriented indexing in special libraries and information agencies offering services to special user-groups. This approach would be fruitful also in other kind of libraries while it pays more attention to the requests of users." (Iivonen, 1987).

This quotation establish a link between aboutness and epistemology because it establishes a link between the meaning of aboutness and two different epistemological views: One, the document oriented view, which emphasized the objective pole: the documents to be indexed, and one, the request oriented view, which emphasizes the subjective pole: the questions, which the indexing is supposed to help answering. (Epistemology is very much about objectivity and subjectivity).

The term "aboutness" was introduced in Library and Information Science (LIS) in around 1970. Fairthorne (1969) was among the first to try to define the concept. He made a differentiation between "intentional aboutness" and "extensional aboutness". Intentional aboutness is the author’s views and intentions of what a document is about, and extentional aboutness, which is the document aboutness as reflected semantically by actual units and parts of the text. 

The use of this concept culminates in 1975. Since then there have been a smaller, but not negitiable interest for the term.

Hutchins (1975, p. 115) argued for using this term rather than the term "subject":

" 7.7 From this account of indexing one thing should now be clear, namely, that the notion of the "subject" of a document is peculiarly vague. We may mean the "extensional aboutness" or the "intensional aboutness", as given by the author in his title or as given by the abstractor or by the indexer; we may mean the NL [natural language; BH] phrase expressing the Topic or we may mean the DL [documentary language; BH] expression denoting the document content. There are clearly so many variables involved that whenever we talk of he "subject" of a document we ought always to say what kind of subject we are intending.

These questions of definition are, of course, a quite separate issue from the point stressed at the beginning of this chapter, namely that we should never talk of the subject of a document. As we have seen, judgments of subject content (by authors, readers and indexers) are influenced by so many factors that any particular statement of a document's content should never be regarded as anything other than just one of many possible such statements. In other contexts and from other perspectives the same document may have other, quite different "subjects"".

"Through the concept "the thematic organization of a text", Hutchins distinguishes between the new knowledge in a text and - as a prerequisite for introducing this - the text's connection between the existing (old) knowledge and the new knowledge. Hereby is the connection to the potential reader's basis for understanding the text. In other words, Hutchins introduces the concept "the user's level of "presupposition".

    Traditional indexers do not - according to Hutchins - distinguish between what is new and what is presupposed in a text. This kind of indexing may be satisfactory for users who are experts in the field, because experts are interested in following the development in the field, and can use all texts, which contain new knowledge. On the contrary such indexing lets the novice down. A novice needs a text aimed at at his own level. Therefore - according to Hutchins and adherents to the  cognitive approach - a new theory and praxis of indexing should be developed, which takes into account the users' "level of presupposition".

    But in my opinion, this has not brought us any closer to a clarification of the concept of "subject" or the fundamental problems of representing documents for retrieval. We need a concept, that can be useful for all kinds of indexing, for both experts and novices. In my opinion, the theory of aboutness as summarized here, is caught in the mentalistic (and idealistic) trap, also described by Frohmann (1990)." (Hjørland, 1997, p. 63). 

Hjørland (1992) found that Hutchin's introducion of the concept of "aboutness" to replace the concept of "subject" was only an apparent solution. The difficulties in the concept of subject was not solved by introducing the concept of aboutness. They were just given another name. Consequently, Hjørland regards "aboutness" and "and "subject" to be synonymous terms.

Maron (1977) suggests there are three forms of aboutness: objective about, subjective about, and retrieval about. The objective about (O-about) is a behavioral concept of about, and it is “obtained by considering an external or observer’s point of view” (p. 41). The subjective about, on the other hand, is related to an individual’s inner experience of what a document is about as the person reads a document. Maron (1977) explains that an S-about (subjective about) is “a relationship between a document and the resulting inner experience of its readers. It is a psychological concept and like similar psychological concepts it is very complex and cannot be analyzed further in objective terms” (p. 41). The third concept of about, the retrieval about, refers to “the information searching behavior of a class of individuals” as reflected by the retrieval results. Maron further indicates that the R-about (retrieval about) is also objective and behavioral oriented.

Beghol (1986) suggests that Fairthorn's differentiation between "intentional aboutness" and "extensional aboutness" is conceptually equivalent to the distinction between “aboutness” and “meaning.” She proposes that the notion “aboutness” denotes that “a document has an intrinsic subject, an ‘aboutness’, that is at least to some extent independent of the temporary usage to which an individual might put one or more of its meanings” (p. 85). In Beghol’s terms, “topicality” is the same as “aboutness.”

Beghtol (1986) further contends that the topicality or aboutness of a document is objective, independent, and constant. Her proposition on nature of aboutness is illuminated in this quote: "…texts of all kinds have a relatively permanent aboutness, but a variable number of meaning(s). . . . a document may have only one aboutness, but an unlimited number of meanings, differing according to the exact use a particular person may find for the document’s aboutness at a certain time. Indeed, the same document can have different meanings for the same reader at different times, but the document, itself unchanging, is assumed to possess a fundamental aboutness." (Beghol, 1986, p. 85).

Beghtol's view of the objectivity of aboutness is, however, problematic. Campbell (2000a) asks: "Is it possible, then, to use the distinction between aboutness and meaning as defined by Beghtol, to make sense of these differences?" And he concludes: "Literary theory, then, has failed to produce a distinction between data and interpretation which could be meaningfully aligned with the distinction between aboutness and meaning. Early criticism tends to treat even the most idiosyncratic interpretation as an expression of the text’s stable content; later criticism has undermined the possibility of any stable content.".

A specific criticism of theoretical assumptions behind the concept of aboutness has been raised by Weinberg (1988) and by Swift, Winn & Bramer (1978). Weinberg finds that "aboutness" corresponds to the linguist concept "topic" and argues that not just the "topic" of a document, but also its "comment" (or "aspect" or "point of view") is relevant by indexing. Swift et al. argues along a similar way.

Boyes (1982) argues that "topicality" is synonymous with "aboutness" but different from "informativeness", which he sees as synonymous with "meaning".


 

Literature:

Beghtol, C. (1986). Bibliographic Classification Theory and Text Linguistics: Aboutness Analysis, Intertextuality and the Cognitive Act of Classifying Documents. Journal of Documentation, 42, 84-113.
 

Blair; D. C. (1990). Language and Representation in Information Retrieval. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
 

Boyce, B.: Beyond topicality: A two-stage view of relevance and the retrieval process. Information Processing and Management, 1982, 18, side 105-105.

Bruza, P.D., Song, D.W., & Wong, K.F. (2000). Aboutness from a commensense perspective. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(12), 1090-1105. Available at:
http://www.dstc.edu.au/Research/Projects/Infoeco/publications/aboutness-jasis.pdf

Campbell, G. (2000a). Aboutness and Meaning: How a Paradigm of Subject Analysis Can Illuminate Queer Theory in Literary Studies. IN: CAIS 2000.
Canadian Association for Information Science: Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference.  http://www.slis.ualberta.ca/cais2000/campbell.htm

Campbell, G. (2000b). Queer theory and the creation of contextual subject access tools for gay and lesbian communities. Knowledge Organization, 27(3), 122-131.

Fairthorne, R. A. (1969). Content analysis, specification and Control. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 4, 73-109.
 

Frohmann, B. (1990). Rules of Indexing: A Critique of Mentalism in Information Retrieval Theory. Journal of Documentation, 81-101.

Furner, J. (2006). The ontology of subjects of works. ASIS&T conference. http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/jfurner/furner-06asist-b-ppt.pdf

Goodman, N. (1961). About. Mind 70(277): 1-24.
 

Hjørland, B. (1992). The Concept of "Subject" in Information Science. Journal of Documentation, 48(2), 172-200. Click for full-text PDF

Hjørland, B. (1997): Information Seeking and Subject Representation. An Activity-theoretical approach to Information Science. Westport & London: Greenwood Press. 
 

Hjørland, B. (2001). Towards a theory of aboutness, subject, topicality, theme, domain, field, content. . . and relevance. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52(9), 774–778.

Hutchins, W. J. (1975). Languages of indexing and classification. A linguistic study of structures and functions. London: Peter Peregrinus.
 

Hutchins, W. J. (1977). On the Problem of "Aboutness" in Document Analysis. Journal of Informatics, 1, 17-35.
 

Hutchings, W. J. (1978). The concept of "aboutness" in subject indexing. Aslib Proceedings, 30, 172-181.
 

Iivonen, M. (1987). Indeksoinnin suuntautumisesta ("On the orientation of indexing"). Kirjastotiede ja informatiikka, 6(1), 25-30.
 

Mark Peitersen, A. (1979). The meaning of "about" in fiction indexing and retrieval. Aslib Proceedings, 31, 251- 257.
 

Maron, M. E. (1977). On Indexing, Retrieval and the Meaning of About. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 28, 38-43.

Putnam, H. (1958). Formalization of the concept “about.” Philosophy of Science 25(2):

Salem, Shawky: Towards "coring" and "aboutness": an approach to some aspects of in-depth index­ing. Journal of Information Science principles & practice, 1982, 4, 167-170.
 

Swift, D. F., Winn, V. & Bramer, D. (1978). "Aboutness" as a strategy for retrieval in the social sciences. Aslib Proceedings, 30, 182-187.

Tang, R. (1999). Use of Relevance Criteria Across Stages of Document Evaluation: A Micro Level and Macro Level Analysis. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (Dissertation).  .http://ils.unc.edu/tangr/diss_final.pdf ; http://www.ils.unc.edu/phd/tangr.html

Thalheimer, R. (1936). More about “about.” Analysis 3(3): 46-48.

Weinberg, B. H. (1988). Why indexing fails the researcher. The Indexer, 16(1), 3-6.
 

See also: Content; Ofness; Subject; Theme; Topic

Birger Hjørland

Last edited: 09-02-2007

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