Building the cognition, culture & language (CCL) ontology based on the analytical framework of cultural linguistics

Abstract

In this dissertation, we introduce the Cognition, Culture & Language (CCL) web ontology, based on the analytical framework of Cultural Linguistics. Cultural linguistics, which explores the relationship between cognition, culture and language, is a growing field of research. Within its paradigm, language is viewed as complex adaptive system, an emergent phenomenon arising and developing out of the varied nature of the interactions of its speakers over time. Thus, language is not simply a means of expression but a rich source of data to determine the cognitive experience of the world not only within a single human mind, but a whole community tied together by common beliefs, traditions, practices or even simply, the physical environment. If integrated with current technological advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Human-Computer Interaction, research from Cultural Linguistics could have potentially impactful applications within the domains of Education, Political discourse, AI Ethics and Social policy, just to name a few. Thus, this is a first attempt at converting this research into some suitable form of technological implementation. Ontologies for the semantic web, which are domain-specific subsets of hierarchical concepts and their relations, have widespread use in numerous AI applications due to the powerful reasoning and inference capabilities which they provide and therefore, are a natural fit for such an endeavour. CCL is a content ontology which models the core components of cultural conceptualizations. It has been assumed that the end-users of the ontology will primarily be NLP interfaces which process natural language content for use in applications within other domains. This work is inter-disciplinary, combining theories in cultural linguistics, cognition and ontology engineering for the semantic web.