The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the organization that provides the technical support for the Internet. ICANN is a nonprofit organization based in California and is under contract to the United States Department of Commerce. It has come under attack from many sides because it is contracted through the U.S. government and it is a private entity. One of the main components of the controversy surrounding ICANN is whether it can represent a global society as a private entity and whether that private entity can represent Internet users. I focus my study on ICANN's Board of Directors. I evaluated the Board on the dimensions of descriptive, substantive, and formal representation (Pitkin 1967). Evaluation of ICANN's descriptive representation focused on the Board members' sex, educational backgrounds, and nationalities and compared the geographic representation on the Board to the global distribution of Internet users. The assessment of substantive representation looked at the Board members' votes to determine if patterns could be viewed based on members' descriptive characteristics. Finally, the evaluation of ICANN's formal representation examined its Bylaws, its 2006 contract with the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporations Code. The analysis found that the descriptive representativeness was low. The ICANN Board does not mirror Internet users: few women have served on the Board, those with technical educational backgrounds dominated, and the regions were not represented proportionate to their use of the Internet. Analysis of substantive representativeness was inconclusive and further investigation is needed. The formal representation analysis suggests that the ICANN Board has been formally representative. / Master of Arts

Orientador: Bento Carlos Dias da Silva / Banca: Antônio Suárez Abreu / Banca: Roberta Pires de Oliveira / Resumo: Este trabalho tem como proposta (i) o estudo da metáfora per se (em oposição, por exemplo, a um estudo aplicado da metáfora) da perspectiva lingüística, isto é, o estudo da metáfora enquanto uma expressão da linguagem natural e (ii) a investigação de uma representação formal da metáfora para fins de implementação em sistemas de processamento automático de línguas naturais. A metodologia que norteia o desenvolvimento da proposta, que se insere em um contexto interdisciplinar, focaliza dois domínios: o Domínio Lingüístico-Cognitivo, em que se investiga a expressão lingüística e o suporte cognitivo da metáfora, ou seja, a metáfora enquanto um produto resultante de recursos lingüísticos e não- lingüísticos; e o Domínio Lingüístico-Computacional, em que se investiga a representação formal da produção e da interpretação da metáfora para fins computacionais. Como delimitadores dessas investigações, adotam-se os seguintes enfoques: Retórico-Filosófico, Interacionista, Semântico, Pragmático, Cognitivista e Computacional. / Abstract: This MS thesis concerns the study of metaphor per se, (as opposed to applied metaphor) from the linguistic point of view, and the investigation of a formal metaphor representation for Natural Language Processing systems. The overall methodology focuses on two domains: a Cognitive- Linguistic Domain, in which we investigate the metaphor linguistic expression and its cognitive import, i.e., metaphor as a linguistic product and as a nonlinguistic mechanism; and a Computational- Linguistic Domain, in which we investigate a formal representation for the metaphor production and interpretation. The theoretical approaches that constrain the scope of this work are: philosophical- rhetoric, interactionist, semantic, pragmatic, cognitive and computational assessment to metaphor. / Mestre

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2006-03-14Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:14:10Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 oliveira_aeb_me_arafcl.pdf: 1292834 bytes, checksum: e5fd8004cbadf61fb895ca243381d7a0 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Este trabalho tem como proposta (i) o estudo da metáfora per se (em oposição, por exemplo, a um estudo aplicado da metáfora) da perspectiva lingüística, isto é, o estudo da metáfora enquanto uma expressão da linguagem natural e (ii) a investigação de uma representação formal da metáfora para fins de implementação em sistemas de processamento automático de línguas naturais. A metodologia que norteia o desenvolvimento da proposta, que se insere em um contexto interdisciplinar, focaliza dois domínios: o Domínio Lingüístico-Cognitivo, em que se investiga a expressão lingüística e o suporte cognitivo da metáfora, ou seja, a metáfora enquanto um produto resultante de recursos lingüísticos e não- lingüísticos; e o Domínio Lingüístico-Computacional, em que se investiga a representação formal da produção e da interpretação da metáfora para fins computacionais. Como delimitadores dessas investigações, adotam-se os seguintes enfoques: Retórico-Filosófico, Interacionista, Semântico, Pragmático, Cognitivista e Computacional. / This MS thesis concerns the study of metaphor per se, (as opposed to applied metaphor) from the linguistic point of view, and the investigation of a formal metaphor representation for Natural Language Processing systems. The overall methodology focuses on two domains: a Cognitive- Linguistic Domain, in which we investigate the metaphor linguistic expression and its cognitive import, i.e., metaphor as a linguistic product and as a nonlinguistic mechanism; and a Computational- Linguistic Domain, in which we investigate a formal representation for the metaphor production and interpretation. The theoretical approaches that constrain the scope of this work are: philosophical- rhetoric, interactionist, semantic, pragmatic, cognitive and computational assessment to metaphor.

Les verbes de position sont décrits du point de vue d'une invariance mise au point pour chacun d'entre eux en fonction de la diversité des contextes dans laquelle on les trouve. Cela conduit d'une part à considérer que dans certains contextes leur sens n'est pas inutile au contenu informatif de l'énoncé et qu'il n'est pas équivalent à celui d'un verbe d'existence. Au contraire, l'emploi d'un verbe de position par un locuteur correspond à un choix motivé par la désignation de quelque chose de plus que l'être ou la présence du sujet. D'autre part, cette invariance mène à distinguer clairement le fonctionnement sémantique de chacun de ces verbes alors qu'ils semblent entrer en concurrence lorsqu'ils apparaissent dans des contextes visiblement similaires. / Posture verbs are described from the perspective of an invariance developed for each of them according to the diversity of the contexts where they can be found. It conduces, on the one hand, to consider that in some contexts their meaning is not ancillary to the informative content of the statement, and that it is not equivalent to the meaning of a being verb. In fact, the use of a posture verb by a speaker refers to a choice motivated by something more than the being or the presence of the subject. On the other hand, this invariance facilitates clear distinction of the semantical function of each of these verbs, while they may seem to have the same meaning, when they occur in contexts which seem similar at first glance.