The Rosetta Stone meets Foucault: Understanding social media via discourse analysis

Ray Poynter

The fastest growing source of data is the unstructured voices of nearly two billion people speaking in social media.

The Rosetta Stone meets Foucault: Understanding social media via discourse analysis

Ray PoynterVision Critical

PREFACE

When the Rosetta Stone, which dates back to ancient Egypt and the rein of the Ptolemies, was re-discovered in 1799 it provided an invaluable clue in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Rosetta Stone contains a decree from Ptolemy V, with the decree repeated in three different scripts (Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, demotic script, and Ancient Greek). Understanding the message in one language helped understand its transcription in other languages/scripts. One can see the Rosetta Stone as a model of structuralism (in the sense of Swiss linguist...

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