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Information Retrieval Glossary Definition (English)
Text Defined
The following is in context to Information Retrieval, because it's common for a single word to have multiple meanings you will find additional research links near the bottom of the page.
"Messages are encoded in texts. Texts are meaningful collections of symbols assembled to convey a message. The word "text" is related to the word "textile," and just as textiles consist of organized fibers or threads, a text consists of an organized set of symbols. Spoken language (speech) texts consist of meaningful sequences of sounds (phonemes). Writing is the representation of speech, and it uses visual symbols to represent the sounds of speech (phonemes). Examples of writing symbols include Chinese characters (which represent not only sounds but also meanings), Japanese kana syllabaries (in which each symbol represents a syllable — a combination of a vowel and a consonant), and Roman, Cyrillic, Greek and other alphabets (in which each symbol represents one or more phonemes, with separate symbols for vowels and consonants). In addition to language texts, there are many other kinds of texts that convey messages — musical texts, image texts (such as those embodied in still or moving pictures), three-dimensional texts (such as those created through architecture, sculpture, and industrial design), dance and other performance texts, and mathematical and chemical texts. Music has a well developed symbol system that is used to represent sound, including pitch and length, in visual media such as print on paper. We call these texts "scores." Dance choreography can also be represented symbolically, and scientific disciplines like mathematics and chemistry have well developed sets of symbols and codes for representing mathematical and chemical concepts. The symbol systems of art, as in painting and sculpture, are less formal, but most people would agree that paintings and sculpture do convey messages, even if it is not always easy to discern them or to agree on what they are. In painting, the field of iconography is devoted to the study and identification of artistic messages."
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