Social networks, situational environments, reticular environments: distributed representations or the fuzzy power of cliques

Abstract

The article addresses, as an experimental test, a reticular treatment applied to a narrative. It starts from the idea of semantic network, moving to the situational environment that approaches to the notion of 'frame', closer to a pragmatic orientation. Another important concept is the reticular environment based on the situational environment. The concept of reticular environment establishes the link, as raw material for analysis, with the specific algebra of Social Network Theory and Analysis (SNTA). Both concepts, situational and reticular environment are keys in this proposal. The basic indicator applied in this analysis is the clique. The direct object of analysis are stories of university students about important events in their daily life and the relationships they establish between these events. As a theoretical and analytical objective, the TARS is applied to the networks of relations between narrative contents to interpret the discourse through the links between events. The methodology and analysis implemented are the SNTA, not particularly frequent in the analysis and interpretation of narratives and or discours. It is also a contribution to the mixed methods, specifically to the qualitative interpretation of quantitative data.