Declarations of significance: Exploring the pragmatic nature of information models

摘要

This paper considers the juncture experienced between information modelling in theory and information modelling in practice. It identifies the basis of this juncture in an unsatisfactory ontological basis for information modelling. Using both the early and more recent work of Searle, it establishes the need for information models to be framed in terms of communicative patterns significant within some delimited institutional domain. Such communicative patterns are visualised in terms of an innovative artefact known as a pattern comic. The propositional content of communicative acts within such patterns is then expressed as a set of binary relations, which can be transformed into various visualisations of an information model. Patterns of communicative action evident in the domain of medical emergency response are used throughout to illustrate this pragmatic approach to constructing information models.