Relevance, Discourse and the "Hot" Stable Core of Social

(November 19, 2003)

Published as:Wagner, W., Valencia, J. & Elejabarrieta, F. (1996). Relevance, discourse and the "hot" stable coreof social representations—A structural analysis of word associations. British Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 331-352.

R e l e v a n c e , D i s c o u r s e a n d t h e " H o t " S t a b l e C o r e

o f S o c i a l R e p r e s e n t a t i o n s — A S t r u c t u r a l A n a l y s i s o f W o r d

A s s o c i a t i o n s *

Wolfgang Wagner**

Universität Linz

José Valencia

Universidad del País Vasco, San Sebastián

Fran Elejabarrieta

Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona

Running Head: Relevance, Discourse and Social Representations

* Part of this paper was presented at the 2nd International Conference on Social Representations, Rio de Janeiro,

1994, and at the Social Psychology Section Meeting of the British Psychological Society, Cambridge, 1994.

** Authors' addresses: Wolfgang Wagner, Institut für Psychologie, Universität, 4040 Linz, Austria, phone +43-

732-2468577, fax +43-732-2468228, e-mail [email protected]; Fran Elejabarrieta, Area de Psicología

Social, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain; José Valencia, Depto de Psicología Social,

Universidad del País Vasco, Apartado 1249, San Sebastián-Donostia, Spain.

Relevance, Discourse and Social Representations - 2 -

Abstract:

The paper presents an investigation of the structure of word associations dependent on the context

in which they are assessed. Respondents from Spain and Nicaragua produced free associations about

war and peace. Word associations about each of the two stimulus words were either produced

spontaneously or within the context of a distracting priming condition in contrast to the association task.

The semantic space for each stimulus word (war, peace) is analysed to find sub-structures of words

which remain stable across contexts. These sub-structures or stable cores are taken to indicate a well-

structured social representation as opposed to a loosely organised knowledge domain. Such cores were

found for associations about war in both countries, but for peace in the Nicaraguan sample only. This

finding is interpreted as a consequence of public discourse and symbolic coping with relevant or

threatening objects or phenomena. Stable cores were found to consist primarily of "hot" words, i.e.

words which are proximal to an individual's experience. More intellectual and distant ("cold") words did

not enter the stable core. Results are discussed in terms of the central core–theory of social

representations and of numerical consensus being an insufficient criterion for social representations.

(November 19, 2003)

Relevance, Discourse and the "Hot" Stable Core of Social Representations—A

Structural Analysis of Word Associations

Social representation theory is a heuristically rich approach to social psychological phenomena.

Situated at the cross-roads of collective and personal processes, the approach links the macro-social

discourse level with individual social behaviour, cognition, affect and symbolic understanding (Doise,

1990; Harré, 1984; Jodelet, 1989; Moscovici, 1984, 1988; Wagner 1994a). A social representation is

understood in the present paper as a cognitive, symbolic, iconic and affectively laden mental construct

with a structure of its own; it is a way of concerted thinking which is shared by the members of reflexive

groups. Its collective side is not primarily witnessed by a representation being shared by a certain

number of people, but by the fact that the processes leading to a representation, as well as the functioning

of any existing representation, can only be understood by simultaneously considering the socially

determined individual experiences and preferences, and its concomitant level of institutional structures

which are irreducible to individuals (Wagner, 1994b). Once formed, a social representation comprises

certain patterns of thinking, action and interaction which, when collectively concerted, create and

construct a social object (Moscovici, 1963; Wagner, 1994d, in press).

The details of the intricate links between what a specific person thinks, does and says, and what

happens at the collective level, are not yet well understood in terms of the original theory. There is,

however, an emerging agreement on how to envisage the socio-genetic process leading to the formation

of collectively shared representations.

It is usually assumed that some form of collective discourse leads to the formation of social

representations. For a collective discourse to come into being it is necessary for something problematic

to exist, an unfamiliar phenomenon or a disquieting situation threatening the normal course of the

everyday practice of a social group (Guimelli, 1989, 1994). A phenomenon is unfamiliar and disquieting

because the group does not have at its disposal a ready-made representation with which to interpret the

phenomenon within its regular practice. That is, for a phenomenon or an object to become socially

represented, it must first possess a certain importance and salience. To find a solution the group will

cope with the problem either by integrating it into daily practice or by adapting the group's practice to the

new necessity. This process of collective problem-solving is usually accompanied by a process of

collective symbolic coping. The new, unfamiliar and therefore disquieting phenomenon calls for a valid


interpretation and explanation which can be collectively accepted. This symbolic coping process is

achieved by social discourse on an inter-personal level and at the level of the mass media of

communication (c.f. Moscovici, 1984). Symbolic coping at the collective level results in a social

representation, in a system of beliefs, images, metaphors, evaluations and explanations, supposed to make

the unfamiliar intelligible and familiar. At the end, in its naturalised and objectified form, the

phenomenon presents itself as a familiar part of the universe of everyday social life (cf. Moscovici &

Hewstone, 1983; Wagner, Elejabarrieta & Lahnsteiner, in press).

A social representation has a certain form and structure. Analyses of social representations

usually tap ideas, characteristics, attributes and evaluations associated with the represented object. These

elements have been shown to play different roles in a social representation and to take different positions

within its structure (Abric, 1993, 1994; Vergés et al., 1994). One set of these elements, the central core,

is the constitutive part of a social representation. Without the central core a specific representation would

cease to exist or would change its character.

Flament and Moliner (1989) have convincingly demonstrated the different roles core and

peripheral elements play in representations. They show that student respondents spontaneously perceive

an "ideal group of friends", the "object" of a representation, as being "non-hierarchical" and as being

characterised by the friends "sharing the same beliefs". Both of these attributes receive high consensus

ratings. When asked subsequently whether a group of friends could still be considered an ideal

friendship group if it exhibited an hierarchical structure, i.e. one friend dominating the others, most

respondents rejected this possibility. However, when asked if a group of friends could still be

considered an ideal friendship group if not all friends shared the same ideas, most confirmed that this

could be the case under certain conditions. Consequently, the attribute "non-hierarchical" is considered

to be an element of the central core of the representation, whereas "consensus" is a peripheral element

(for a review of similar experiments see Flament, 1994b).

The structural approach states that central elements are decisive for the structuring of a

representation (Abric, 1993), whereas peripheral elements serve to adapt a representation to different

contexts (Flament, 1994a). The "central core is not a simple organising principle, but a structure (in the

strong sense of the term) giving meaning to the whole representation, that is, to the numerous peripheral

elements, which for their part are negotiable. It is the peripheral elements which can withstand the

variations between individuals, between subgroups, and over time—at least in the case where these


variations are not in violent contradiction with the principles of the central core" (Flament, 1994b, p.

102). Central elements, hence, need to form a structurally stable unit, the core, whose internal structure

remains relatively unaffected by situational variation. It is the peripheral elements, whose meaning and

relation to each other, and to the core elements, that undergo situational change.

Personal experience and collective relevance: war and peace

War and peace are two very peculiar concepts. First, they are opposites, i.e. each one makes sense

only as the opposite of the other. On a conceptual level, they do not exist independently of each other.

Second, the phenomena denoted by these concepts are crucial to our personal well-being. Hence, they

are central to our daily lives and despite their generality, they in fact represent rather proximal

phenomena. The fact of peace and war being determinants of collective and personal well-being provides

the starting point for this investigation on everyday beliefs and words associated with war and peace in

Spain and Nicaragua.1

Conceptually the present investigation combines the socio-genetic and the structural aspects of

social representations. It is argued that if an object is relevant and salient in a specific group, and as such

a topic of extensive discourse, we should find a well structured domain of knowledge, i.e. a social

representation. To confirm that this domain of knowledge can indeed be considered a social

representation, it is necessary to identify its structure, i.e. its core and peripheral elements.

If we think of our two research "objects", peace, and inter-group conflict and war respectively, it is

clear that, on the one hand, in a country at peace, like Spain, peace is the norm and as long as it is not

threatened, peace will not be a salient "object" for public discourse. War and conflict, however, even if

they occur in distant places like former Yugoslavia or the Gulf Region, are always at the focus of

attention of the media and therefore part of the everyday discourse of many people.

On the other hand, for people living in a country where violent inter-group conflict prevails, peace

as well as conflict and war will be salient objects—peace simply because it is desirable, and conflict and

war simply because they are threatening. That is, in countries like Nicaragua—where there was violent

civil war and foreign intervention until quite recently—peace and conflict simultaneously received a high

amount of public attention, initiating a lot of discussion and argument in the everyday conversations of

people, as well as in the media. In the light of this theoretical discussion, we expect that there is a well-


structured social representation of war but not of peace for Spanish respondents and a well-structured

social representation of peace as well as of conflict for Nicaraguans.

To discriminate well-structured representations from less well-structured cognitive domains we

draw upon a general conception of core and periphery in social representations, though not specifically

Abric's or any other theory of the "noyau central" (e.g. Guimelli, 1993). Such a link may be viable, but it

needs to be established empirically.

Overview

Word association procedures are frequently used in social representations research. Giving a

stimulus word and asking the respondent to freely associate what ideas come to his or her mind gives

relatively unrestricted access to mental representations. Words and ideas elicited in this manner are

usually spontaneous productions subject to fewer constraints which the researcher typically imposes in

closed questionnaires. It can be assumed that responses depend on the stimulus word, and the images

and knowledge that the respondent has of the denoted object. With these advantages the method of word

associations is used in the present investigation.2

We look for differences in the structure of free word associations associated with the objects of

peace and war. We assume on the one hand, that words pertaining to the core, preserve their structural

relationship within different contexts because of their necessary and non-negotiable role in defining the

object. Peripheral elements on the other hand, do not preserve their structural relationships within

different contexts because their role is to adapt a representation to different situations. Consequently, if

we elicit a well-structured social representation in two different contexts, a comparison of the structures

of the two should reveal at least two sets of elements: on the one hand elements which preserve their

structure in contrasting contexts, i.e. the "situationally stable" core , and on the other hand, elements

which do not preserve their structure in different contexts, i.e. the "situationally unstable" periphery (see

Table 1).


Method

Subjects

One-hundred-forty-four respondents from the Catalan and 120 from the Bask country in Spain,

and 143 from Nicaragua participated in this investigation. These were convenience samples ranging

from 18 to about 30 years of age, with an approximately equal number of men and women.

Material

The respondents completed a questionnaire in Spanish which was introduced as an international

research on opinions about war, version 1, or peace, version 2.

After a set of socio-demographic questions which were common to both versions, version 1

continued with an instruction to imagine a situation in which "your country or homeland was involved in

conflict or war with some other country or countries".3 Respondents were then asked to give an example

of an actual international conflict. Subsequently respondents had to list at least seven ideas, words or

concepts which came to their mind when thinking of conflict and war. Immediately afterwards

respondents were asked to think of peaceful relations between countries and to list at least seven ideas,

words or concepts which came to their mind thinking about peace.

Version 2 of the questionnaire reversed the order of presentation of the stimuli, war and peace.

Respondents were asked to imagine a situation in which "your country or homeland was involved in

peaceful relations with some other country or countries", and then to give an example of such peaceful

relations and to associate freely, first on peace and subsequently on war and conflict (Table 1).

INSERT TABLE 1

Each version was answered by approximately half of the respondents from each country. The split

ballot design provided the experimental manipulation of context, first by the initial cover story, second by

the instruction to think about and to write down actual examples of war and peace, respectively, and third,

by the sequence of the association tasks. In version 1 (first war then peace) the word associations on

war were produced without a contrasting context, whereas the subsequent words on peace were

associated within the contrasting context of war. In version 2 associations to peace were without

contrasting context, while those on war were with contrasting context. In other words, the first

association task should be relatively unaffected by any experimentally imposed context, whereas the


second association task is performed within a contrasting context. Thus the basis of our structural

analysis is the comparison of the association lists produced without and within a contrasting context.

Using the manipulation "thinking of peace" as a context for associating about war, and conversely,

"thinking of war" as a context for thinking of peace, may raise objections: "peace" is a context which is

obviously related to "war" and vice versa. They are complementary concepts. But what would be a more

suitable context for, e.g., "peace"? Would it be "thinking of chairs" or "thinking of eating" or any other

arbitrary context? We think that an appropriate context for an association task cannot be a completely

unrelated and arbitrary context. If we think of Flament's argument that the core should be stable and the

periphery context dependent, then an adequate context must be in some way related to the association

task at hand. Of course, we could have used a different manipulation—e.g. "thinking of politics" or

"thinking of history", etc.—but such contexts would have been much more restrictive than the chosen

manipulation of a highly contrasting context.

The third part of the questionnaire contained items on attributions and emotions which were not

used in the present analysis.

Procedure

The respondents were approached personally and asked to participate in an international

investigation on war or peace, respectively. Most of the respondents answered the questionnaire in the

presence of the experimenter. It took between 15 and 20 minutes to complete the tasks.

Results

Detecting structural invariance of word associations across different contexts

To recapitulate, the data are two sets of word associations about one stimulus object, e.g. war,

which are obtained from two independent samples of respondents. One sample of respondents

completed a word association task without contrasting context, the other sample was tested after having

been primed to the context of peace, which obviously is the opposite to war. To test the core/periphery

concept we need to determine whether the change in context induces a change in some or all semantic

relationships between the associated words. As the basic statistical model to test for contextual variation

of elements in social representations, we applied the model of multiple comparisons using stacked


contingency matrices which is equivalent to multiple correspondence analysis (Weller & Romney, 1990,

p. 86ff).

A method was developed to extract those words from the space, produced by correspondence

analysis, which form a stable sub-structure across both conditions, the condition without and the

condition with contrasting context. The words in this subset of all words retain the same distances

relative to each other in both conditions. The structure of stable distances between some words is

interpreted as a semantic sub-structure which remains stable across contexts. Technically this subset of

words is indicated by one or more clear clusters as depicted in a cluster-analytic dendrogram of a

difference matrix. Details of this rather simple descriptive "method of detecting Translation Invariant

Structures in different CONtexts" (TISCON) are given in the appendix.

The Stable Core in Representations

The method TISCON was applied to the free word association data from Spain and Nicaragua.

Because of high similarity of the data from the two sub-samples from Spain, their data were combined.

The experiment involved a 2*2 design crosscutting country (Spain vs. Nicaragua) and "object", i.e.

the stimulus word (war vs. peace). The analysis is not based on inferential statistics but on a descriptive

comparison of structures as outlined previously. Consequently, any finding supporting our hypothesis

is not considered a proof, but rather as an illustration of the heuristic merit of the hypothesis.

Figures 1, 3, 5, 7 depict the dendrograms of the clustering of the difference matrices ( *, see

Appendix) for each country and stimulus word. Figures 2, 4, 6, 8 depict the first two dimensions of the

respective correspondence analyses. Note that the dendrograms do not depict the positions of words

relative to each other in the correspondence space, such that elements close to each other in the factorial

space are clustered together. TISCON aggregates words with a context insensitive sub-structure which

is a completely different thing than their proximity in the semantic space.

Relatively well defined clusters of structurally context invariant words can be observed in Figures

1, 3 and 7, whereas Figure 5 shows a rather loosely clustered set of associations for the stimulus "peace"

with Spanish respondents. Visual inspection shows clearly that there are no clusters containing more

than two elements. This indicates that, contrary to Figures 1, 3 and 7, the word associations in the two

different contexts have no stable sub-structure in common. This conforms to our hypothesis which

states that groups will elaborate a well organised and context-invariant structure in a social representation


only if the object poses a problem. In other words, the social relevance of an object is a necessary

prerequisite for a well-structured representation to develop. Since peace in a country living in peace is

taken for granted it does not pose a threat or problem, hence there is no collective need to elaborate a

representation.

INSERT FIGURES 1 TO 8

Figures 2, 4, 6, and 8 show the stable core–words in the semantic field. The area of the stable core

is highlighted by its convex hull (Fig. 2, 4, 8). Even though TISCON determines the stable core by

taking all n–1 dimensions—with n being the number of words entered—in the correspondence analysis

into account, the two convex hulls (depicted only for the plane of the first two dimensions) outlining the

stable core-words without and with contrasting context in each graph show a remarkable stability of

form. It becomes clear from these graphs that the stable cores do not necessarily coincide with the

(visual) clustering of the words in the semantic space. Inspection of Figure 6, the semantic space of

associations for peace of Spanish respondents with no stable core, reveals that words associated without

contrasting context take very different positions from their position when being associated with a

contrasting context. Take for example the stable core–words of peace in Nicaragua, "help", "exchange",

"respect", "solidarity", "liberty", and "friendship" (Fig. 8). Although all of them are part of the Spanish

word associations too, as a whole they do not preserve stable topological relationships with each other

under different contexts (Fig. 6).

The difference between the cluster solutions is depicted by Figure 9. This diagram maps the

number of elements in the largest cluster already formed as a function of the re-scaled distance of

clusters combined. The relative instead of the absolute distance measure of cluster fusion was used for

comparison because each TISCON procedure was based on a different correspondence analysis which

makes absolute measures incomparable. It can be clearly seen that the cluster solution for associated

words by Spanish respondents for peace deviates significantly from any of the other three solutions.

The linear monotone increase in the function indicates a badly structured domain.

INSERT FIGURE 9

It is worthwhile to compare the frequencies of words found to compose the stable core of the

representations with the frequencies of all words in the analysis. Tables 2 and 3 present the relative

frequencies. It can be seen that there is no clear relationship between relative frequency of words and


their being part of the stable core. That is, frequency by itself is not a valid predictor of a stable core, at

least not with the present method.

INSERT TABLES 2 AND 3

It is notable that in every condition of the design at least one stable core–word was mentioned by at

least half of the respondents (Table 4). This is even more interesting bearing in mind that there are only

5 and 6 stable core–words, respectively, out of a total of 15 words included in the analysis. Obviously,

stable core–words represent something peculiar and are shared more than peripheral words, though they

do not necessarily comprise all words with the highest frequency.

INSERT TABLE 4 HERE

Hot core and cold periphery

In a post-hoc assessment we had the 15 most frequent words associated with peace and war rated

according to their "psychological" or "personal proximity". Two raters (native Spaniards and

Nicaraguans living abroad) were instructed to distinguish those words which, according to their

impression, expressed a somehow personal, i.e. a pleasant or negative bodily, emotional or affective

experience, or an experience which relates to a close interpersonal relationship from words which

expressed more distant and intellectual facts. The words expressing proximal, emotional and affective

facts were called "hot" words, the others "cold" words. The ratings are listed in Tables 2 and 3.

In the Spanish as well as in the Nicaraguan sample there is a significant phi-correlation between a

word being classified as hot versus cold and the word being an element of the stable core or not (Table

5). The stable core contains primarily hot words, while the cold words pertain to the periphery.

INSERT TABLE 5 HERE

The ideas expressed in the stable core–words are very proximal ideas, i.e. ideas closely related to

emotional and bodily experience. In the samples from both countries we encounter "death", "hunger",

"poverty", "destruction" as common elements of the stable core. Spain additionally has the word "fear"

and Nicaragua the words "misery" and "conflict" to complement their specific representations. This

result can be interpreted as indicating that the respective representations are guided by ideas revolving

around destruction and its consequences, death, poverty and hunger. Spanish respondents who were

living in peace at the time of the data collection have a fear that war could disrupt the present way of life.

This is an idea Nicaraguans do not share. They never associate having fear of war. In contrast, they


refer to misery and conflict, probably due to their personal experience of the consequences of a cruel

civil war.

This comes as no surprise if we consider social representations as cognitive, affective and

symbolic structures resulting from common collective experience. Obviously it is the experience and

imagination of harm and loss which war entails that gives the representation its meaning. Because harm

and loss affect all humans and are always experienced as a negative state, these imaginations and

proximal experiences are cross-culturally common. This is suggested by a significant phi-correlation

between Spanish and Nicaraguan words pertaining to the stable core (Phi = .77, p .03). If one

considers that the data were obtained from samples in two different countries, this finding indicates that

there seems to exist a strong cultural relationship between the two countries, although their links, with the

exception of language, are at most historical.

In contrast, peripheral ideas and words reflect more distanced or intellectual thoughts about war.

Such associations are often bound to specific conditions evoking a more pronounced intellectual

thinking. The words "politics", "economy", "power" and "armament", for example, are not part of the

stable core of the representation of war. These words pertain to a rather intellectualising and distant

discourse which depends upon specific conditions. The same is true for the word "blockade" in

Nicaragua. Although it is mentioned quite frequently, "blockade" results from the specific conditions of

the Nicaraguan war experience, where the United States had imposed an economic blockade against the

then Sandinist country. Despite its high frequency, "blockade" remains outside the stable core and,

together with some other words, forms the periphery of the social representation. In the semantic space

most of the peripheral words also take quite distant positions from the stable core (Fig. 2, 4, 8). This

difference between stable core and peripheral elements once more underlines Moscovici's (1988, p. 237)

stressing that representations can be viewed as "hot" rather than "cold" cognitions.

Correlates of the stable core

In final post-hoc analyses we looked to see if and how socio-demographic characteristics of

respondents or different contexts determine the incidence of stable core–words. As a dependent variable,

we calculated the percentage of stable core–words within each respondent's list of associations.4 The

exploratory 2*2*2*2*2 design involved context (words associated without contrasting context vs. with


contrasting context), sex of respondent, religiousness (high vs. low), country (Spain vs. Nicaragua) and

level of education (low+medium vs. high).

The results for associations about "war" show that Nicaraguans produce a higher percentage of

stable core–words (MNicaragua=.37%) than Spaniards (MSpain=.26%, F(1, 381)=9.96, p .005), and that

low and medium educated-respondents mention more stable core–words on average

(Mlow+medium=.35%) than do university educated respondents (Macademic=.28%, F(1, 381)=4.15,

p .05). Lower educated respondents probably adhere more to the hot, emotional affective and body-

related stable core–words of a representation than do higher educated respondents. This may be because

academically educated people are more prone to intellectualise and to use a distanced mode of thinking

and discourse than respondents with lower education levels. Neither context, nor religiousness, nor sex

have a significant effect.

Calculating the respective results for the stimulus word "peace" for both countries was impossible

because there was no stable core–structure in the Spanish sample. Therefore, only the Nicaraguan data

were subjected to an ANOVA with the aforementioned design, but without the factor country.

The results show that the only significant effect is context. Nicaraguans mention many more

stable core–words in the condition without contrasting context (MNicaragua/without=.36%) than with

contrasting context (MNicaragua/with=.18%; F(1,134)=17.22, p .001).

Whereas context had no significant effect upon the percentage of stable core–words for war,

associations about peace contained significantly more stable core–words when assessed without

contrasting context than when assessed within a contrasting context. It looks as if the two

representational domains, war and peace, are not identical in their cognitive "weight". A "war" context

deflects "thinking about peace" from the central elements of its social representation, whereas a "peace"

context has no comparable effect upon the central elements of the representation of war. The "war"-

representation seems to be more well formed and robust.

On the one hand, this finding seems to contradict our prime hypothesis of the existence of a well-

structured social representation of peace in Nicaragua. On the other hand however, we never stated that

both, the representation of war and of peace, should be equivalent in terms of their importance, weight

and robustness. We always had the impression that war is a much more salient and relevant

phenomenon—and therefore, its representation more robust—than its complement, peace. The anecdote

mentioned in footnote one about a failed investigation regarding peace illustrates the problem quite well.


Hence, war and peace, even if complementary on a conceptual level, are not equally relevant objects for a

social representation to be formed. In any case, these problems need to be addressed in future research.

Discussion

The present research was conducted to investigate the role which a phenomenon's relevance and

consequent collective discourse plays in the formation of social representations. If, in a group, no such

discourse can be expected—for example because an object is not salient, relevant or threatening—ideas

related to this object may still be numerous but they cannot be expected to form a well-structured

representation. The concept of structure, as well as the theory of the central core and periphery of social

representations were used to investigate this hypothesis. It was supposed that core elements form

situationally stable structures whereas peripheral elements are situationally unstable. These situationally

stable elements were called the stable core of the representation. It was found, as expected, that the ideas,

words and concepts people associate spontaneously with peace in the two countries form a stable core

only if a collective discussion and communication process, e.g. within the media, can be presupposed, as

can be presumed in Nicaragua with its recent history of unrest and civil war. In Spain, a country which

has been in peace for a long time, no such discourse can be presupposed. Peace is not a relevant or

salient object in a country not afflicted by violent conflict. Therefore, no stable core was found in

Spanish associations related to peace.

War, on the contrary, is a relevant and salient object even in countries with no contemporary

history of violent conflict and war because of the universality of the latent threat of violent conflict and

war. Most importantly, however, war and violence, as e.g. in the former Yugoslavia, are always

prominent in the mass media.

The stable cores found for the social representations related to war in Spain and Nicaragua

comprised ideas and words with a proximal, bodily and affective/emotional and, therefore, "hot"

meaning. "Cold" cognitions, ideas and words were not part of the stable core, but of the more

"intellectualised" periphery. It is the interplay between core and peripheral elements which allows social

representations to serve their pragmatic functions in everyday communication processes (Moscovici,

1994). Hence, Flament (1994a, 1994b) has suggested, such peripheral elements serve to adapt

representations to the various conditions in which communication may take place.


A somewhat different picture emerged for peace in the Nicaraguan sample. Again the words and

ideas forming the stable core were proximal. Likewise, the periphery was composed of more intellectual

ideas. Additionally, the stable elements had a certain prescriptive quality to them which was missing in

the stable core of the representation of war. This conforms to Moscovici's (1984) view that

representations often exhibit strong prescriptive elements.

Stable cores and variant peripheries

It was stressed in the initial rationale of our research that we do not relate our concept of a stable

core directly to Abric and Flament's conception of a "noyau central". The present method needs to be

assessed in relation to their methods. We do not know whether, or how the core elements identified by

TISCON are related to the core elements of a social representation as identified by other methods.

Perhaps, the relation is indirect. We reason that words, concepts or images making up the

organised core which organises the other elements of a representation cannot be conceived other than

context invariant. It would be utterly incomprehensible as to how elements which are themselves context

sensitive, i.e. which change their structural relationships with varying contexts, could form a central core

and have an organising effect upon peripheral elements. This implies that searching for core elements by

the various methods proposed by Abric, Flament, Guimelli and Moliner may not be sufficient. The

methods proposed by these authors do not consider the central hypothesis of their core theory which is

that core elements are unconditional and peripheral elements are conditional on situations and contexts.

The present results also give partial support to the arguments of Potter and Wetherell (1987).

They argued that verbal production depends highly upon context and, therefore, one may not speak of

one social representation activated in different contexts, but of different linguistic repertoires typical for

divergent situations. The present investigation is not situated at a strictly individual level of data

assessment, a level which those authors seem to favour, but it offers a similar view. Given that we can

presuppose—at least on a theoretical level—the existence of a representational system, contexts do

influence the content of verbal data. This influence, however, only affects the wider periphery of the

representation, and there may be many respondents who do not offer any one element of the stable core

at all. But this leads us to the old problem of what is meant by consensus in social representation theory.


Consensus as a weak criterion of social representations

It is most interesting to note that Spanish respondents associated neither less nor very different

words with the stimulus object "peace" than Nicaraguans. Despite these commonalties, however, no

stable core could be identified within the Spanish data. As surprising as such a finding may be, it points

to the important fact that social representations are not simply defined by numerical consensus (cf. the

discussion by Doise et al., 1994; Farr, 1994; Fraser, 1994; Gaskell, 1994; also Flament, 1994b; Wagner,

1994c). High frequencies of word associations are no warrant at all to call these words elements of a

representation if we demand a representation to exhibit some stable and context independent structure

across conditions. There seems to be no straightforward correlation between high numerical consensus

and structural stability.

Take, for example, the words "war" in Table 2 and "peace" in Table 3. These were frequently

mentioned by respondents thinking of war and peace, respectively. Respondents often tend to repeat the

stimulus word in their list of associations. Both words receive high consensus, they are very frequent,

but in no case are these words part of the stable core. This means that they co-occur with other words in

an irregular way in different conditions. Or take the fact that the degree of consensus for words

associated with peace was about 50% higher than with war; but this higher consensus did not result in

more stable sub-structures in the semantic space.

We all have many idiosyncratic as well as collectively shared ideas about a multitude of objects

like chairs, highways, hats, shaking hands, our left shoes, the nose of our neighbour, political parties, etc.

Only a few of them, however, are social representations in the full-fledged sense of the term (cf.

Moscovici, 1988; Wagner, 1994a). Without an object being salient and relevant for a social group and

hence entailing a public discourse and symbolic elaboration of the object, there is not much sense in

looking for a shared representation.

Besides taking into account the relevance of a phenomenon when talking about its social

representation, we need to reconsider what the term consensual representation can possibly mean. There

is no space here to elaborate on this topic, but we certainly must do away with the unnecessarily

restricted notion of numerical consensus. Numerical consensus, as a concept, is justified by statistical

considerations and not by theoretical arguments. There are other possibilities to look at consensus

which do more justice to social representation theory than simple numerical criteria (Moscovici, 1988;

Wagner, 1994c).


Final remarks

Social representation theory, as developed, on the one hand, by Moscovici, Jodelet and others is

strongly related to a collective level of analysis and assessment.5 The theory of the central nucleus, as

elaborated by Abric, Flament, Guimelli and others on the other hand, deals more with phenomena at the

individual level of assessment because of the methods used by these researchers. The present

investigation is an attempt to bridge the division between the two research traditions by posing a question

at the collective level of analysis and assessment, i.e. socio-genesis, and translating the idea of core and

periphery into an instrument designed to discriminate well-structured representations from loose

everyday knowledge.

The suggested approach is a method to look for structural properties of free word associations

which are located at the collective level of assessment by aggregating the information contained in the

word association lists into a global co-occurrence matrix. This method is economical because it allows

to analyse large data sets. The analysis is based primarily upon descriptive and only post-hoc on

inferential statistics, but some results of the present research corroborate our method.6 One is the

astonishing similarity of the stable cores of the representation of war in Spain and Nicaragua. The stable

cores of the representations of the two culturally different countries have four elements (out of five

elements constituting the core in Spain and six in Nicaragua) in common. This could not have been

observed without a certain validity in the method. Second, there is the rather clear distinction between

proximity and the "hot" character" of the stable core elements and the more intellectual, "cold" character

of the peripheral elements. The statistical solution for the stable core discriminates quite well between

these two sets of words. And third, there is the plausible effect of education level upon the use of core

words. We consider these indications as adding some weight to the claims of our method.


Acknowledgements

Data collection and interpretation were supported by grants to W. Wagner and F. Elejabarrieta by

"Acciones Integradas/Integrierte Aktionen" Austria–España 1993. The first author gratefully

acknowledges an invitation by Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and Ecole des Hautes Etudes en

Sciences Sociales, Paris, in 1994, where the data were analysed and most of the text was written. The

authors gratefully acknowledge comments by George Gaskell on an earlier version of this paper.


Notes

1 To understand better the present approach it is useful to tell the story of a first but failed attempt to investigate

the representation of peace (Valencia, Elejabarrieta & Wagner, 1991). Planned as a cross-cultural comparison, data

collection started simultaneously in different places by different researchers. When comparing the obtained word

associations by structural statistical methods, the researchers noted crucial differences between the structures of the factorial

spaces, though both were based on reasonable numbers of Ss. One solution revealed a nice clustering of words associated

with the stimulus word "peace" which could readily be interpreted as consensual and group specific. The other solution

showed no structure whatsoever. When cross-checking the procedures the researchers discovered that the one who had found

no structure in his data had straightforwardly asked his Ss to think about peace, while the other one had introduced the

topic by drawing the Ss' attention first to war and conflict, before they were to associate about peace. It looked as if this

little difference in the context of assessment had introduced huge adifference in structure. As a consequence, the present

study was developed.

2 For an elaboration on the relationship between verbal data, semantic structure and social representations see

Lahlou (1994).

3 Various Spanish informants confirmed our impression that, when referring to an international context, Catalans

as well as Basks would consider Spain and not the Catalan or Bask country as their reference unit. This explains why both

parts of the Spanish sample produced virtually identical results and could be merged.

4 Note that for the ANOVA the dependent variable, because of its skewness, was transformed according to the

formula V=ln[(percentage stable core–words)+1]. The reported means, however, are the original percentages.

5 For a discussion of the concept of "levels of assessment" in social representation theory see Wagner (1994b).

6 See Guttman (no year) for a defence of description over inference in statistics and investigation.


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Appendix

Description of TISCON: The fifteen most frequently associated words across all three samples

were used for the analysis. These yield a rectangular n x 15 indicator matrix, with n subjects as rows and

15 words as columns. The entries of this matrix consist of zeros and ones. A "0" in cell ( k,l) indicates

no mention of the word l and "1" indicates that the word l has been mentioned by subject k.

From this initial matrix a m*m (15*15 in our case) square matrix S is created. Matrix S consists

of absolute frequencies indicating the degree of correspondence between each pair of words. Hence,

entry fij indicates the frequency f by which word i and word j are mentioned simultaneously by the

respondents. Each of the two samples, (a) without and (b) with contrasting context, yields a matrix S, i.e.

Sa and Sb:

S =

f 1,1 . . f 1, m

. . f i, j .

. . . .

fm ,1 . . fm , m

,

where fij is the absolute frequency of co-occurrence of words i and j, and where fii, i.e. the main

diagonal, is the frequency of word i. In the following analysis of correspondence the similarity of row

profiles is the measure of proximity among words.

The next task is to compare the multidimensional structure existing within both matrices Sa and Sb.

If the context has any significant influence upon the proximity of two or more words, then this implies a

difference in structure. In order to compare the structure of both matrices Sa and Sb, the two matrices

were stacked to yield a 2m*m (30*15) matrix S* of the form

S* = Sa

Sb

.

The resulting matrix S* then is analysed by means of a two-dimensional correspondence analysis.

Correspondence analysis of the combined matrix S* provides a scaled factorial representation of the

similarities and dissimilarities among the two sets of similarity data. Distributing the Chi2 measure of

correspondence analysis among the row scores only, we obtain two positions for each word within the

resulting space. One set of words stems from the matrix Sa, and represents the similarities between the

items under condition "a". The second set of words stems from matrix Sb, and represents the similarities

between the items under condition "b". Because each set of words obtained under different conditions is


depicted within the same factorial space, their positions in the experimental condition "a" (without

context), can directly be compared to its position in condition "b" (with context).

We call the factorial solution of metric scaling of the words, the output of the correspondence

analysis, a semantic space. In contrast to classical factor analysis, we consider the position of axes as

arbitrary. Consequently, we do not interpret these axes as having any particular meaning or significance.

We call the positions of words relative to each other in the semantic space the "structure" of the

associations. Hence we have two structures of the same set of words, one for each context, embedded

within one semantic space. It is very likely that some or all words change their positions in the semantic

space depending on the context under which they are elicited. But if a social representation has some

stable sub-structure, the elements constituting the sub-structure should retain the form of their

relationships within both contexts, although the sub-structure as a whole might undergo translation in the

semantic space. Furthermore, we assume that words might have different frequencies of occurrence in

different contexts. Such differences in frequency may shift the positions of words within the semantic

space, but not necessarily the form of the sub-structure. Context insensitive sub-structures should be

relatively independent of the association frequency of their elements.

The task then is to compare the two structures of the same words assessed in contrasting contexts

and to identify one or more subsets of words whose respective substructure, i.e. their positions relative to

each other, remains the same in both contexts. We operationalised a structure of words in

correspondence space as the matrix of distances, D, calculated over all dimensions of the space and

between all elements pertaining to one condition. (Note that it is not necessary to interpret the entries in

matrix D as strictly Euclidean distances [cf. Gabler, 1993]. We consider it sufficient to interpret the

distance measure as having a monotonous relationship with the Chi2 measure expressing similarities of

words in the semantic space.) Since we had two conditions, "a" and "b", we also obtain two distance

matrices Da and Db. We compared these two matrices and checked for differences in structure by

subtracting one matrix from the other. Thereby we obtained a square matrix of differences,

= Da – Db.

However, this simple difference matrix, even if entries are squared, 2, is not optimal for further

analysis. We prefer to calculate a slightly different matrix defined as


∆* =

da11

2 − db11

2 . . da1m

2 − db1m

2

. . . .

. . da ij

2 − db ij

2 .

dam1

2 − dbm1

2 . . damm

2 − dbmm

2

.

This matrix yields basically similar results but it emphasises certain desirable properties of the

data. With the measure for example, the greater the distance between two elements in the original

semantic space, the less likely it is that they will be grouped together than with the 2 measure.

In the ideal case, matrix * has zero entries for elements which retain the same distance between

each other in both conditions, and non-zero entries otherwise—independent of whether the structures

shift between the conditions. The larger the entry in a cell, the more the distance between two elements in

condition "a" diverges from their distance in condition "b". Hence, the pattern of entries in * reflects

the translation invariant structure between all elements.

Matrix * can be seen as a distance matrix. Its structure can be revealed by a simple hierarchical

cluster analysis. Such a procedure clusters elements with zero or near zero entries together in the first

steps. Any reasonably homogeneous cluster of at least three elements can be considered as a set of

context invariant elements, i.e. elements which preserve their relative positions to each other in the two

conditions. Hence, any such cluster with a minimum of three elements is called a stable sub-structure of

the word associations or, in theoretical terms, the stable core of a social representation.


Table 1

Schematic presentation of hypotheses and related design of manipulations

Sequence of associationtasks: peace–war

Sequence ofassociation tasks:war–peace

Spain, a country living inpeace, only war being asalient object

(1a) Words about peaceassociated withoutcontrasting context.

(2a) Words about warassociated withoutcontrasting context.

(1b) Words about warassociated in contrast topeace.

(2b) Words aboutpeace associated incontrast to war.

Hypotheses A representation with a context-stable core for "war", but asituationally variable knowledge domain with no context-stable substructure for "peace".

Nicaragua, a country with arecent history of civil war,with war and peace beingsalient objects

(3a) Words about peaceassociated withoutcontrasting context.

(4a) Words about warassociated withoutcontrasting context.

(3b) Words about warassociated in contrast topeace.

4b) Words aboutpeace associated incontrast to war.

Hypotheses A representation with a context-stable core for "war" and arepresentation with a context-stable core for "peace"


Table 2

Relative frequencies of words associated with war without and with contrasting context in Spain and

Nicaragua

War Spain Nicaragua

withoutcontrast

withcontrast

significance withoutcontrast

withcontrast

significance

hatred + .20 .35 ** .01 .18 **

death + .34. .46 * .21 .33 ns

war .35 .19 ** .52 .25 **

fear + .15 .31 ** .00 .06 *

hunger + .15 .18 ns .32 .26 ns

poverty + .11 .18 ns .24 .22 ns

destruction + .11 .17 ns .10 .19 ns

armament .20 .14 ns .04 .07 ns

power .15 .14 ns .07 .03 ns

economy .15 .10 ns .15 .03 **

conflict .09 .12 ns .10 .21 ns

violence .08 .10 ns .06 .04 ns

misery + .04 .02 ns .14 .17 ns

politics .12 .06 ns .11 .06 ns

blockade .01 .01 ns .27 .15 ns

N total 137 130 71 72

Note: In the words column: A "+" sign indicates "hot" words. In the frequencies columns: bold

numbers are given for words composing the stable core in the respective country. Words with

frequencies in italics were not included in the structure analysis of the respective country due to their low

incidence.

* p<.05, ** p<.01


Table 3

Relative frequencies of words associated with peace without and with contrasting context in Spain and

Nicaragua

Peace Spain Nicaragua

withoutcontrast

withcontrast

significance withoutcontrast

withcontrast

significance

friendship + .32 .39 ns .21 .20 ns

peace .28 .52 ** .35 .51 ns

happiness + .02 .31 ** .03 .18 **

help + .45 .26 ** .36 .18 *

tranquillity + .18 .39 ** .01 .20 **

solidarity + .23 .12 * .47 18 **

respect + .18 .15 ns .22 .21 ns

cooperation .38 .15 ** .24 .11 ns

exchange + .27 .14 ** .28 .10 **

relation + .14 .16 ns .17 .17 ns

equality .15 .21 ns .01 .15 **

liberty + .12 .18 ns .10 .04 ns

economy .21 .11 * .13 .17 ns

culture .18 .15 ns .18 .06 *

commerce .09 .07 ns .25 .10 *

N total 130 137 72 71

Note: See note for Table 2.


Table 4

Relative frequencies of respondents mentioning at least one stable core-word by stimulus word, by

country and by context

War Peace

core no core N Chi2 (p) core no core N Chi2 (p)

Spain

without contrasting

context

.49 .51 134 <1

with contrasting

context

.68 .32 130 17.72

p<.001

not applicable

Total .59 .41 264 8.02

p<.005

Nicaragua

without contrasting

context

.54 .46 71 <1 .89 .11 72 43.56 p<.001

with contrasting

context

.64 .36 72 5.56

p<.02

.52 .48 71 <1

Total .59 .41 143 4.37

p<.03

.71 .29 143 24.34 p<.001


Table 5

Crosstabulation of a word being hot vs. cold by being element of stable core or periphery

Nicaragua (War) Spain (War) Nicaragua (Peace)

core periphery N core periphery N core periphery N

hot 5 - 5 5 1 6 6 1 7

cold 1 4 5 - 7 7 - 5 5

N 6 4 10 5 8 13 6 6 12

Phi .82 (p ≤ .01) .85 (p ≤ .01) .85 (p ≤ .01)


FIGURE CAPTIONS

Figure 1

Structural invariance clusters "War-Spain".

Note: Underlined words pertain to the stable core.

Figure 2

Semantic space "War–Spain".

Note: The first letter of each word gives its exact location. Words in italics are assessed within

contrasting context. Bold words pertain to the stable core. The convex hull envelopes the stable core.

Figure 3

Structural Invariance Clusters "War–Nicaragua".


Figure 4

Semantic space "War–Nicaragua".

Note: See Figure 2.

Figure 5

Structural invariance clusters "Peace–Spain".


Figure 6

Semantic Space "Peace–Spain".

Note: See Figure 2.

Figure 7

Structural invariance clusters "Peace–Nicaragua".


Figure 8

Semantic space "Peace–Nicaragua".

Note: See Figure 2.

Figure 9

Size of largest existing cluster as a function of clustering steps.


Poverty ƒø Destruction ƒ≈ƒƒƒƒƒø Fear ƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø Death ƒƒƒ¬ƒƒƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø Hunger ƒƒƒŸ ≥ ≥ Hatred ƒƒƒ¬ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø Economy ƒƒƒŸ ≥ ≥ War ƒ¬ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø ≥ √ƒø Armament ƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ ≥ ≥ Violence ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ ≥ ≥ Politics ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ ≥ Power ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒ¬ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ Conflict ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ

Figure 1

Structural invariance clusters "War-Spain".



*

hatred

hunger death

death fear

poverty

destructn

armament

power

economy

conflict

violence

politics

hatred

war

fear

poverty

destruction

armament

power

economy

conflict

violence

politics

λ=.37 (14%)

λ=.48 (28%)

.5

-.5

.0

-.5 .5

war

with context peace

without context peace

hunger

Figure 2

Semantic space "War–Spain".

Note: The first letter of each word gives its exact location. Words in italics are assessed within

contrasting context. Bold words pertain to the stable core. The convex hull envelopes the stable core.


Death ƒø Hunger ƒ≈ƒø Destruction ƒŸ √ƒø Misery ƒƒƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø Poverty ƒ¬ƒƒƒŸ ≥ Conflict ƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø W a r ƒ¬ƒƒƒø ≥ ≥ B l o c k a d e ƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ ≥ P o l i t i c s ƒƒƒƒƒŸ ≥ Economy ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ

Figure 3

Structural Invariance Clusters "War–Nicaragua".



*

misery

poverty death

destruction

war

hunger

destruction

economy

conflict

politics

death

war

hunger

povertyeconomy

conflict

politics

λ=.38 (18%)

λ=.62 (47%)

.5

-.5

.0

-.5 .5blockade

misery

blockade

with context peace

without context peace

Figure 4

Semantic space "War–Nicaragua".

Note: See Figure 2.


Pleasure ƒ¬ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø Cooperation ƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø Friendship ƒƒƒ¬ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø ≥ ≥ Peace ƒƒƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ ≥ Help ƒ¬ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø ≥ ≥ Solidarity ƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒŸ ≥ Respect ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ ≥ Tranquillity ƒ¬ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø ≥ Commerce ƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø ≥ Relationship ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒ¬ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒ¥ Economy ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ ≥ ≥ Culture ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ ≥ Exchange ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒ¬ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø ≥ Equality ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ Liberty ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ

Figure 5

Structural invariance clusters "Peace–Spain".



λ=.34 (15%)

λ=.50 (32%)

.5

-.5

.0

-.5 .0

*

friendship

peace

pleasure

help

tranquility

solidarityrespect

cooperation

exchange

relationship

equality

liberty

economy

culture

commerce

friendshippeace

pleasure

help

tranquility

solidarity

respect

cooperation

exchange

relationship

equality

liberty

economy

culture

commerce

Figure 6

Semantic Space "Peace–Spain".

Note: See Figure 2.


Friendship ƒ¬ƒø Exchange ƒŸ √ƒø Solidarity ƒ¬ƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø Respect ƒŸ ≥ ≥ Help ƒ¬ƒƒƒŸ √ƒƒƒø Liberty ƒŸ ≥ ≥ Cooperation ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒ¬ƒƒƒƒƒŸ √ƒø Culture ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ ≥ ≥ Peace ƒƒƒƒƒ¬ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ √ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒø Relationship ƒƒƒƒƒŸ ≥ ≥ Commerce ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ ≥ Economy ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒŸ

Figure 7

Structural invariance clusters "Peace–Nicaragua".



λ=.35 (16%)

λ=.45 (26%)

.5

-.5

.0

-.5 .0

friendship

exchange

relationship

peace

help

solidarity

respect

cooperation

liberty

economyculture

commerce

friendship

peace

help

solidarity

respectcooperation

exchangerelationship

liberty

economyculture

commerce

*

.5

with context war

without context war

Figure 8

Semantic space "Peace–Nicaragua".

Note: See Figure 2.


Relative distances of cluster fusion

Num

ber

of

elem

ents

in t

he la

rges

t ex

isti

ng c

lust

er

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

<5

5<

10

10

<1

5

15

<2

0

20

<2

5War Spain

WarNicaragua

Peace Spain

PeaceNicaragua

Figure 9

Size of largest existing cluster as a function of clustering steps.

Documents

Relevance, Discourse and the "Hot" Stable Core of Social