Abstract
The thesis concerns an aspect of the development and design of computerised information systems: the language aspect. Information systems make intensive use of natural language for human-to-human communication. We focus on the specification of ‘language items’ (mostly words and phrases) that are to be built into information systems, thus becoming ‘means for languaging’ made available to the user. ‘Natural’ language use typically involves continuous adaptation of language to its context of use. If the language requirements vary or change, the supporting means for languaging should be altered to match them. This adaptive process involves linguistic meta-communication. Means for languaging provided through computerised information systems are often not aligned very well to language needs of users, or with agreements about language that hold between them. As static language specifications and standards are often inadequate if built into information systems, adaptive approaches to language specification are required. We developed a theory that enables us to directly relate language use and development to language description activities as occur in the use and development of information systems. On the basis of the theory we developed a coherent analytical framework and a method. Our method has been shaped as a so-called architecture viewpoint: an analytical and communicative instrument that is dedicated to a particular aspect of systems architecture. We have also provided a proof of concept of the method by means of a case study in a real organisation.
