Theme
"In literature (as well as many works of nonfiction), a theme is the main idea of the story, or the message the author is conveying" (Wikipedia, 2006).
The word "theme" is often used synonymously with "subject". Hjørland (1997) argues, however, that subject indexing is not necessarily about the main idea of a document, why subject and theme should not be considered synonyms. An issue of a journal may be thematic: the articles share the same theme, but they are usually indexed differently because, why their subjects are different (as this word is understood in indexing).
Weinberg (1988) discusses the distinction between "theme" and "rheme" (in addition to aboutness versus "aspect" and "topic" versus "comment"). Lancaster's (1991, p. 11) comment is however: "She fails to convince that these distinctions are really useful in the context of indexing or that it might be possible for indexers to maintain such distinctions".
Salton et al. (1994) worked with automated "theme generation" based on statistical models.
Literature:
Hjørland, B.
(1997): Information Seeking and Subject Representation. An Activity-theoretical
approach to Information Science. Westport, CT & London, UK: Greenwood Press.
Lancaster, W. F.
(1991). Indexing and Abstracting in Theory and
Practice. London: The Library Association.
Salton, G.; Allan,
J.; Buckley, C. & Singhal, A. (1994). Automatic-analysis, theme
generation, and summary of machine-readable texts. Science, 264(5146), 1421-1426.
Weinberg, B. H.
(1988). Why indexing fails the researcher. The Indexer, 16(1), 3-6.
Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia. (2006). Theme (literature). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_%28literature%29
See also: Aboutness; Content;
Potential;
Subject analysis (Lifeboat
for KO); Subject
matter (Epistemological lifeboat); Topic.
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 04-07-2006