<p>Based on current research in historical and cognitive linguistics this thesis examines the German semantic field <fromm> (<pious>), partly contrasting it with its Swedish correspondent <from>. Starting at the time of Old High German the analysis follows the historical development of word and concept, exploring how attitudes to the Christian religion are verbalised in different ages. One important assumption is that ideas and attitudes are accessible to us through the lexicalised items of a language.</p><p>The thesis is part of the interlingual research project “Ethical concepts and mental cultures”, which, by applying a pluralistic method, examines various ethical fields, and assumes as central the oppositions a/o (action directed to others vs. to oneself), right/wrong (virtues vs. vices) and too much/too little vs. the ideal mean.</p><p>This study shows that true piety, in order to be classified as a virtue, has to include both trust and critical thinking in equal proportions and that if either of the two outweighs the other the virtue will become a vice. Furthermore, it is shown that a shift in meaning has taken place from ‘profitable’ or ‘advantageous’ in Old High German, through ‘excellent’, ‘righteous’, ‘virtuous’ into ‘religious’, with Luther’s usage as the critical factor in giving the word its religious meaning. As a result of Secularisation and Individualisation negative connotations have developed in modern German usage which do not seem to exist to the same extent in modern Swedish. This is confirmed by two corpus studies, evaluating the usage of <i>fromm/from</i> in German and Swedish newspaper texts, according to which <i>fromm</i> tends to be transferred to profane contexts, meaning for example ‘hypocritical’, ‘uncritically credulous’ and ‘uncritically obedient’ more frequently than its Swedish equivalent.</p><p>Based on results from socio-psychological research the study also identifies some strategies that speakers employ in order to mark distance or adherence to a group of believers or non-believers, for example metaphors (i.a. GOOD IS UP ÷ BAD IS DOWN) or stereotypes, which are often used to ridicule, criticise or insult a member of another group in order to strengthen the speaker’s own social identity.</p>

Based on current research in historical and cognitive linguistics this thesis examines the German semantic field &lt;fromm&gt; (&lt;pious&gt;), partly contrasting it with its Swedish correspondent &lt;from&gt;. Starting at the time of Old High German the analysis follows the historical development of word and concept, exploring how attitudes to the Christian religion are verbalised in different ages. One important assumption is that ideas and attitudes are accessible to us through the lexicalised items of a language. The thesis is part of the interlingual research project “Ethical concepts and mental cultures”, which, by applying a pluralistic method, examines various ethical fields, and assumes as central the oppositions a/o (action directed to others vs. to oneself), right/wrong (virtues vs. vices) and too much/too little vs. the ideal mean. This study shows that true piety, in order to be classified as a virtue, has to include both trust and critical thinking in equal proportions and that if either of the two outweighs the other the virtue will become a vice. Furthermore, it is shown that a shift in meaning has taken place from ‘profitable’ or ‘advantageous’ in Old High German, through ‘excellent’, ‘righteous’, ‘virtuous’ into ‘religious’, with Luther’s usage as the critical factor in giving the word its religious meaning. As a result of Secularisation and Individualisation negative connotations have developed in modern German usage which do not seem to exist to the same extent in modern Swedish. This is confirmed by two corpus studies, evaluating the usage of fromm/from in German and Swedish newspaper texts, according to which fromm tends to be transferred to profane contexts, meaning for example ‘hypocritical’, ‘uncritically credulous’ and ‘uncritically obedient’ more frequently than its Swedish equivalent. Based on results from socio-psychological research the study also identifies some strategies that speakers employ in order to mark distance or adherence to a group of believers or non-believers, for example metaphors (i.a. GOOD IS UP ÷ BAD IS DOWN) or stereotypes, which are often used to ridicule, criticise or insult a member of another group in order to strengthen the speaker’s own social identity.

L'increment de bases de dades que cada vegada contenen imatges més difícils i amb un nombre més elevat de categories, està forçant el desenvolupament de tècniques de representació d'imatges que siguin discriminatives quan es vol treballar amb múltiples classes i d'algorismes que siguin eficients en l'aprenentatge i classificació. Aquesta tesi explora el problema de classificar les imatges segons l'objecte que contenen quan es disposa d'un gran nombre de categories. Primerament s'investiga com un sistema híbrid format per un model generatiu i un model discriminatiu pot beneficiar la tasca de classificació d'imatges on el nivell d'anotació humà sigui mínim. Per aquesta tasca introduïm un nou vocabulari utilitzant una representació densa de descriptors color-SIFT, i desprès s'investiga com els diferents paràmetres afecten la classificació final. Tot seguit es proposa un mètode par tal d'incorporar informació espacial amb el sistema híbrid, mostrant que la informació de context es de gran ajuda per la classificació d'imatges. Desprès introduïm un nou descriptor de forma que representa la imatge segons la seva forma local i la seva forma espacial, tot junt amb un kernel que incorpora aquesta informació espacial en forma piramidal. La forma es representada per un vector compacte obtenint un descriptor molt adequat per ésser utilitzat amb algorismes d'aprenentatge amb kernels. Els experiments realitzats postren que aquesta informació de forma te uns resultats semblants (i a vegades millors) als descriptors basats en aparença. També s'investiga com diferents característiques es poden combinar per ésser utilitzades en la classificació d'imatges i es mostra com el descriptor de forma proposat juntament amb un descriptor d'aparença millora substancialment la classificació. Finalment es descriu un algoritme que detecta les regions d'interès automàticament durant l'entrenament i la classificació. Això proporciona un mètode per inhibir el fons de la imatge i afegeix invariança a la posició dels objectes dins les imatges. S'ensenya que la forma i l'aparença sobre aquesta regió d'interès i utilitzant els classificadors random forests millora la classificació i el temps computacional. Es comparen els postres resultats amb resultats de la literatura utilitzant les mateixes bases de dades que els autors Aixa com els mateixos protocols d'aprenentatge i classificació. Es veu com totes les innovacions introduïdes incrementen la classificació final de les imatges. / The release of challenging data sets with ever increasing numbers of object categories isforcing the development of image representations that can cope with multiple classes andof algorithms that are efficient in training and testing. This thesis explores the problem ofclassifying images by the object they contain in the case of a large number of categories. We first investigate weather the hybrid combination of a latent generative model with a discriminative classifier is beneficial for the task of weakly supervised image classification.We introduce a novel vocabulary using dense color SIFT descriptors, and then investigate classification performances by optimizing different parameters. A new way to incorporate spatial information within the hybrid system is also proposed showing that contextual information provides a strong support for image classification. We then introduce a new shape descriptor that represents local image shape and its spatial layout, together with a spatial pyramid kernel. Shape is represented as a compactvector descriptor suitable for use in standard learning algorithms with kernels. Experimentalresults show that shape information has similar classification performances and sometimes outperforms those methods using only appearance information. We also investigate how different cues of image information can be used together. Wewill see that shape and appearance kernels may be combined and that additional informationcues increase classification performance. Finally we provide an algorithm to automatically select the regions of interest in training. This provides a method of inhibiting background clutter and adding invariance to the object instance's position. We show that shape and appearance representation over the regions of interest together with a random forest classifier which automatically selects the best cues increases on performance and speed. We compare our classification performance to that of previous methods using the authors'own datasets and testing protocols. We will see that the set of innovations introduced here lead for an impressive increase on performance.

Inspirée par les débats portant sur la typologie de la recherche proposée par Michael Burawoy (2005b) et fondée sur une analyse qualitative de vingt-cinq entrevues auprès de professeurs en histoire, en économie et en sociologie, notre investigation a comme but d’identifier et de décrire l’organisation sociale du sens de la recherche en fonction de ses auditoires et ses visées cognitives. À partir d’une analyse sémantique du langage et des repères construits par les acteurs dans leurs expériences de production et de diffusion de connaissances, nous étudions premièrement l’organisation des pratiques de recherche dans l’espace académique, puis l’extension de ces pratiques vers d’autres champs d’activités sociales. Cette analyse nous permet de revenir sur la typologie de Burawoy et d’apporter quelques corrections quant aux distinctions entre les connaissances professionnelle, critique, appliquée et publique. À cet égard, nous proposons que ces « types » de recherche doivent être décomposés en de multiples postures qui s’inscrivent d’une part dans une différenciation des espaces discursifs académiques et d’autre part à l’interface de différents modes d’intervention extra-académique. / Our study of the orientation of research in the social sciences and humanities is a response to Micheal Burawoy’s typology of knowledge production. The objective of this investigation is to identify and describe the social organisation of the meaning of research as scholars attempt to reach different audiences and as their investigations are routed towards particular cognitive aims. Having conducted twenty-five in-depth interviews with historians, sociologists and economists, we analysed their interpretations of research practices in relation to the social space of academia and in regards to the extension of academic activities towards other social spaces. This analysis is then mobilised to comment on Michael Burawoy’s typology of research as we attempt to correct some of the distinctions he makes between professional, critical, policy and public knowledge. Notably, we suggest that these “types” should be broken down into multiple postures understood in relation to a segmentation of academic discursive fields and a differentiation of extra-academic modes of intervention. / Réalisé en association avec le Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRST).

The development of modern information technology has enabled collecting data of unprecedented size and complexity. Examples include web text data, microarray & proteomics, and data from scientific domains (e.g., meteorology). To learn from these high dimensional and complex data, traditional machine learning techniques often suffer from the curse of dimensionality and unaffordable computational cost. However, learning from large-scale high-dimensional data promises big payoffs in text mining, gene analysis, and numerous other consequential tasks. Recently developed sparse learning techniques provide us a suite of tools for understanding and exploring high dimensional data from many areas in science and engineering. By exploring sparsity, we can always learn a parsimonious and compact model which is more interpretable and computationally tractable at application time. When it is known that the underlying model is indeed sparse, sparse learning methods can provide us a more consistent model and much improved prediction performance. However, the existing methods are still insufficient for modeling complex or dynamic structures of the data, such as those evidenced in pathways of genomic data, gene regulatory network, and synonyms in text data. This thesis develops structured sparse learning methods along with scalable optimization algorithms to explore and predict high dimensional data with complex structures. In particular, we address three aspects of structured sparse learning: 1. Efficient and scalable optimization methods with fast convergence guarantees for a wide spectrum of high-dimensional learning tasks, including single or multi-task structured regression, canonical correlation analysis as well as online sparse learning. 2. Learning dynamic structures of different types of undirected graphical models, e.g., conditional Gaussian or conditional forest graphical models. 3. Demonstrating the usefulness of the proposed methods in various applications, e.g., computational genomics and spatial-temporal climatological data. In addition, we also design specialized sparse learning methods for text mining applications, including ranking and latent semantic analysis. In the last part of the thesis, we also present the future direction of the high-dimensional structured sparse learning from both computational and statistical aspects.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-02T21:42:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Jose Claudio dos Santos Pinheiro.pdf: 5349646 bytes, checksum: 057189cedae5b7fc79c3e7cec83d51aa (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-09-17 / This work aim to map the use of information system s theories, based on analytic resources that came from information retrieval techniques and data mining and text mining methodologies. The theories addressed by this research were Transactions Costs Economics (TCE), Resource-based view (RBV) and Institutional Theory (IT), which were chosen given their usefulness, while alternatives of approach in processes of allocation of investments and implementation of information systems. The empirical data are based on the content of textual data in abstract and review sections, of articles from ISR, MISQ and JIMS along the period from 2000 to 2008. The results stemming from the text mining technique combined with data mining were compared with the advanced search tool EBSCO and demonstrated greater efficiency in the identification of content. Articles based on three theories accounted for 10% of all articles of the three journals and the most useful publication was the 2001 and 2007.(AU) / Esta dissertação visa apresentar o mapeamento do uso das teorias de sistemas de informações, usando técnicas de recuperação de informação e metodologias de mineração de dados e textos. As teorias abordadas foram Economia de Custos de Transações (Transactions Costs Economics TCE), Visão Baseada em Recursos da Firma (Resource-Based View-RBV) e Teoria Institucional (Institutional Theory-IT), sendo escolhidas por serem teorias de grande relevância para estudos de alocação de investimentos e implementação em sistemas de informação, tendo como base de dados o conteúdo textual (em inglês) do resumo e da revisão teórica dos artigos dos periódicos Information System Research (ISR), Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ) e Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS) no período de 2000 a 2008. Os resultados advindos da técnica de mineração textual aliada à mineração de dados foram comparadas com a ferramenta de busca avançada EBSCO e demonstraram uma eficiência maior na identificação de conteúdo. Os artigos fundamentados nas três teorias representaram 10% do total de artigos dos três períodicos e o período mais profícuo de publicação foi o de 2001 e 2007.(AU)

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:36:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2909809 bytes, checksum: 27b0cc11fa58c3080c9bf2558be74b71 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-08-22 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Due to particular interactivy mode performed by TV services, engines are requeried that allow to retrieve informations beyond those provided directly. In this sense, context-aware applications use relevant informations to provide support in tasks execution. To develop these kind of applications presents challenges in context capture from heterogeneous sources, as sensors; by representation more adjusted to perform context-aware behavior; and to enable infer knowledges. This dissertation proposes an approach for content personalization of Interactive TV Applications by context handling. To this end, a context modelling was achieved to describe the user information and sports content information semantic in an integrated way and services were developed whose features provides support to context usage. / Graças ao modo peculiar de interatividade realizada por aplicativos na TV, são necessários mecanismos que possibilitem recuperar informações além daquelas fornecidas diretamente. Neste sentido, aplicações sensíveis ao contexto utilizam informações consideradas relevantes para fornecer suporte à realização de tarefas. Desenvolver aplicações desta natureza apresenta desafios quanto a captura de dados a partir de diferentes fontes, tais como sensores; quanto a representação mais adequada para realizar comportamento sensível ao contexto; e capacitar a inferência de conhecimentos. Este trabalho propõe uma abordagem para personalização do conteúdo de aplicações de TV Digital Interativa através da manipulação de informações de contexto. Para tanto, foi realizada a especificação de um modelo contextual que descreve semântica de informações do usuário e de conteúdo esportivo de maneira integrada, e foram desenvolvidos serviços cujas funcionalidades oferecem suporte ao uso de contexto.

Esta dissertação tem por objetivo reconstruir os modelos cognitivo-culturais que estruturam a categoria conceitual RELIGIÃO, com base nos discursos dos/sobre os imigrantes das antigas colônias italianas na região Nordeste do estado do Rio Grande do Sul, relativamente ao modo como esses experienciavam a religiosidade. Isso se dá a partir de uma análise semântica dos enunciados presentes, por exemplo, em textos de natureza antropológica, historiográfica; relatos de memórias, cartas e diários. As fontes desses discursos são documental-bibliográficas e cobrem o período de 1875 à década de 1950. O corpus é constituído de 138 segmentos discursivos, organizados de acordo com cinco categorias diferentes de fontes. A investigação situa-se no campo da Semântica Cognitiva, orientada pela Teoria dos Modelos Cognitivos Idealizados (TMCI), proposta por Lakoff e seus colaboradores. Esse trabalho se justifica uma vez ainda não existirem estudos empíricos sobre a religião em uma cultura ou subcultura sob o viés da Semântica Cognitiva, garantindo seu caráter inédito. Essa teoria permite avaliar como uma categoria conceitual se estrutura e evolui em uma cultura. A análise empreendida dá-se dentro da esfera da Religião Católica, uma vez ser esta a religião predominante na cultura em questão. O método utilizado é o hipotético-dedutivo, a partir do qual se constrói a estrutura radial preliminar da categoria, com base numa análise inspecional do corpus inicial. Tem-se por hipóteses que: (1) a categoria tem uma estrutura proposicional radial, cujo submodelo prototípico é RITUAIS; (2) a categoria RELIGIÃO estrutura-se basicamente por radialidade, tendo como eixo-de-raio DEUS, com centro prototípico em PAI; (3) estruturas metafóricas e metonímicas organizam extensões ou projeções a partir desses raios; (4) tipos de estruturas proposicionais, como o modelo proposicional script, organizam elementos constitutivos da estrutura radial. O Sistema da Metáfora Moral é aplicado como um modelo organizador dessa estrutura. A análise do corpus selecionado confirma as hipóteses inicialmente levantadas. O submodelo RITUAIS é confirmado como o que prototipicamente representa a categoria. Outra hipótese confirmada é a da influência do modelo proposicional script, como parte integrante do modelo RITUAIS. A estrutura radial hipotética preliminar, ao final das análises, é ajustada aos achados da pesquisa. Esta investigação não visa levantar concepções de religião, mas investigar a estrutura semântico-conceitual de RELIGIÃO por meio da codificação explícita revelada em expressões lingüísticas ou em inferências a partir delas, por meio de modelos metafóricos, metonímicos e proposicionais. / Submitted by Marcelo Teixeira (mvteixeira@ucs.br) on 2014-05-19T17:24:04Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Carina Granzotto.pdf: 2486643 bytes, checksum: dddee18ae2237d598ee4373580a51283 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-05-19T17:24:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Carina Granzotto.pdf: 2486643 bytes, checksum: dddee18ae2237d598ee4373580a51283 (MD5) / This dissertation has the goal of reconstructing the cognitive cultural models that made up the conceptual category RELIGION, with a basis on the discourse of/about immigrants from the Old Italian colonies from the northern region of Rio Grande do Sul, in relation to how they experienced religiosity. This is done through a semantic analysis of the expressions used, for instance, in the texts of anthropologic and historiographic nature; reports of memories, letters, and diaries. The sources of this discourse are documented bibliographies that cover the period from 1875 to the decade of 1950. The corpus of this work is made up of 138 segments, organized accordingly into five categories with different sources. The investigation centers on the field of Cognitive Semantic, oriented by the Theory of Idealized Cognitive Models (TICM), proposed by Lakoff and his colleagues. This study justifies itself and guarantees its unprecedented nature since there has not yet been empirical studies done about religion in a culture or sub culture. The theory presented allows the evaluation of how a conceptual category structures itself and evolves in a culture. The analysis takes place inside the sphere of Catholic Religion, since this is the religion that predominates the culture in question. The method utilized is the hypothetic-deductive, from which the preliminary radial structure of the category is built, with a basis on the inspectional analysis of the initial corpus. The hypotheses is that: (1) the category has a structure that is propositional radial, in which the prototypical sub-models are RITUALS; (2) the category RELIGION has a radial structure having GOD as a radial axis and FATHER as the prototypical center; (3) metaphoric and metonymic structures organize extensions or projections from these rays; (4) the types of propositional structures, like the propositional model script, organize elements that make up the radial structure. The Moral Metaphor System is applied as a model that organizes this structure. The analyses of the selected corpus confirm the initial hypotheses suggested. The sub model RITUALS is confirmed as the one which prototypically represents the category. The other hypotheses confirmed concerns the influence of the propositional model script as the integral part of the RITUALS model. The preliminary hypothetic radial structure, at the end of the analyses, is adjusted to the findings of the research. This investigation does not aim to bring up conceptions of religion but rather to investigate the semantic-conceptual structure of RELIGION through the explicit codification reveled in linguistic expressions or in inferences from them, as well as through metaphoric, metonymic, and propositional models.

L'assistance informatique est devenue une partie indispensable pour la réalisation de procédures chirurgicales modernes. Le désir de créer une nouvelle génération de blocs opératoires intelligents a incité les chercheurs à explorer les problèmes de perception et de compréhension automatique de la situation chirurgicale. Dans ce contexte de prise de conscience de la situation, un domaine de recherche en plein essor adresse la reconnaissance automatique du flux chirurgical. De grands progrès ont été réalisés pour la reconnaissance des phases et des gestes chirurgicaux. Pourtant, il existe encore un vide entre ces deux niveaux de granularité dans la hiérarchie du processus chirurgical. Très peu de recherche se concentre sur les activités chirurgicales portant des informations sémantiques vitales pour la compréhension de la situation. Deux facteurs importants entravent la progression. Tout d'abord, la reconnaissance et la prédiction automatique des activités chirurgicales sont des tâches très difficiles en raison de la courte durée d'une activité, de leur grand nombre et d'un flux de travail très complexe et une large variabilité. Deuxièmement, une quantité très limitée de données cliniques ne fournit pas suffisamment d'informations pour un apprentissage réussi et une reconnaissance précise. À notre avis, avant de reconnaître les activités chirurgicales, une analyse soigneuse des éléments qui composent l'activité est nécessaire pour choisir les bons signaux et les capteurs qui faciliteront la reconnaissance. Nous avons utilisé une approche d'apprentissage profond pour évaluer l'impact de différents éléments sémantiques de l'activité sur sa reconnaissance. Grâce à une étude approfondie, nous avons déterminé un ensemble minimum d'éléments suffisants pour une reconnaissance précise. Les informations sur la structure anatomique et l'instrument chirurgical sont de première importance. Nous avons également abordé le problème de la carence en matière de données en proposant des méthodes de transfert de connaissances à partir d'autres domaines ou chirurgies. Les méthodes de ''word embedding'' et d'apprentissage par transfert ont été proposées. Ils ont démontré leur efficacité sur la tâche de prédiction d'activité suivante offrant une augmentation de précision de 22%. De plus, des observations pertinentes / Computer assistance became indispensable part of modern surgical procedures. Desire of creating new generation of intelligent operating rooms incited researchers to explore problems of automatic perception and understanding of surgical situations. Situation awareness includes automatic recognition of surgical workflow. A great progress was achieved in recognition of surgical phases and gestures. Yet, there is still a blank between these two granularity levels in the hierarchy of surgical process. Very few research is focused on surgical activities carrying important semantic information vital for situation understanding. Two important factors impede the progress. First, automatic recognition and prediction of surgical activities is a highly challenging task due to short duration of activities, their great number and a very complex workflow with multitude of possible execution and sequencing ways. Secondly, very limited amount of clinical data provides not enough information for successful learning and accurate recognition. In our opinion, before recognizing surgical activities a careful analysis of elements that compose activity is necessary in order to chose right signals and sensors that will facilitate recognition. We used a deep learning approach to assess the impact of different semantic elements of activity on its recognition. Through an in-depth study we determined a minimal set of elements sufficient for an accurate recognition. Information about operated anatomical structure and surgical instrument was shown to be the most important. We also addressed the problem of data deficiency proposing methods for transfer of knowledge from other domains or surgeries. The methods of word embedding and transfer learning were proposed. They demonstrated their effectiveness on the task of next activity prediction offering 22% increase in accuracy. In addition, pertinent observations about the surgical practice were made during the study. In this work, we also addressed the problem of insufficient and improper validation of recognition methods. We proposed new validation metrics and approaches for assessing the performance that connect methods to targeted applications and better characterize capacities of the method. The work described in this these aims at clearing obstacles blocking the progress of the domain and proposes a new perspective on the problem of surgical workflow recognition.

Esta dissertação tem por objetivo reconstruir os modelos cognitivo-culturais que estruturam a categoria conceitual RELIGIÃO, com base nos discursos dos/sobre os imigrantes das antigas colônias italianas na região Nordeste do estado do Rio Grande do Sul, relativamente ao modo como esses experienciavam a religiosidade. Isso se dá a partir de uma análise semântica dos enunciados presentes, por exemplo, em textos de natureza antropológica, historiográfica; relatos de memórias, cartas e diários. As fontes desses discursos são documental-bibliográficas e cobrem o período de 1875 à década de 1950. O corpus é constituído de 138 segmentos discursivos, organizados de acordo com cinco categorias diferentes de fontes. A investigação situa-se no campo da Semântica Cognitiva, orientada pela Teoria dos Modelos Cognitivos Idealizados (TMCI), proposta por Lakoff e seus colaboradores. Esse trabalho se justifica uma vez ainda não existirem estudos empíricos sobre a religião em uma cultura ou subcultura sob o viés da Semântica Cognitiva, garantindo seu caráter inédito. Essa teoria permite avaliar como uma categoria conceitual se estrutura e evolui em uma cultura. A análise empreendida dá-se dentro da esfera da Religião Católica, uma vez ser esta a religião predominante na cultura em questão. O método utilizado é o hipotético-dedutivo, a partir do qual se constrói a estrutura radial preliminar da categoria, com base numa análise inspecional do corpus inicial. Tem-se por hipóteses que: (1) a categoria tem uma estrutura proposicional radial, cujo submodelo prototípico é RITUAIS; (2) a categoria RELIGIÃO estrutura-se basicamente por radialidade, tendo como eixo-de-raio DEUS, com centro prototípico em PAI; (3) estruturas metafóricas e metonímicas organizam extensões ou projeções a partir desses raios; (4) tipos de estruturas proposicionais, como o modelo proposicional script, organizam elementos constitutivos da estrutura radial. O Sistema da Metáfora Moral é aplicado como um modelo organizador dessa estrutura. A análise do corpus selecionado confirma as hipóteses inicialmente levantadas. O submodelo RITUAIS é confirmado como o que prototipicamente representa a categoria. Outra hipótese confirmada é a da influência do modelo proposicional script, como parte integrante do modelo RITUAIS. A estrutura radial hipotética preliminar, ao final das análises, é ajustada aos achados da pesquisa. Esta investigação não visa levantar concepções de religião, mas investigar a estrutura semântico-conceitual de RELIGIÃO por meio da codificação explícita revelada em expressões lingüísticas ou em inferências a partir delas, por meio de modelos metafóricos, metonímicos e proposicionais. / This dissertation has the goal of reconstructing the cognitive cultural models that made up the conceptual category RELIGION, with a basis on the discourse of/about immigrants from the Old Italian colonies from the northern region of Rio Grande do Sul, in relation to how they experienced religiosity. This is done through a semantic analysis of the expressions used, for instance, in the texts of anthropologic and historiographic nature; reports of memories, letters, and diaries. The sources of this discourse are documented bibliographies that cover the period from 1875 to the decade of 1950. The corpus of this work is made up of 138 segments, organized accordingly into five categories with different sources. The investigation centers on the field of Cognitive Semantic, oriented by the Theory of Idealized Cognitive Models (TICM), proposed by Lakoff and his colleagues. This study justifies itself and guarantees its unprecedented nature since there has not yet been empirical studies done about religion in a culture or sub culture. The theory presented allows the evaluation of how a conceptual category structures itself and evolves in a culture. The analysis takes place inside the sphere of Catholic Religion, since this is the religion that predominates the culture in question. The method utilized is the hypothetic-deductive, from which the preliminary radial structure of the category is built, with a basis on the inspectional analysis of the initial corpus. The hypotheses is that: (1) the category has a structure that is propositional radial, in which the prototypical sub-models are RITUALS; (2) the category RELIGION has a radial structure having GOD as a radial axis and FATHER as the prototypical center; (3) metaphoric and metonymic structures organize extensions or projections from these rays; (4) the types of propositional structures, like the propositional model script, organize elements that make up the radial structure. The Moral Metaphor System is applied as a model that organizes this structure. The analyses of the selected corpus confirm the initial hypotheses suggested. The sub model RITUALS is confirmed as the one which prototypically represents the category. The other hypotheses confirmed concerns the influence of the propositional model script as the integral part of the RITUALS model. The preliminary hypothetic radial structure, at the end of the analyses, is adjusted to the findings of the research. This investigation does not aim to bring up conceptions of religion but rather to investigate the semantic-conceptual structure of RELIGION through the explicit codification reveled in linguistic expressions or in inferences from them, as well as through metaphoric, metonymic, and propositional models.