Aboutness is a term used in library and information science, linguistics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. In LIS, it is often considered synonymous with subject. In the philosophy of mind it has been often considered synonymous with intentionality, perhaps since John Searle. In the philosophy of logic and language it is understood as the way a piece of text relates to a subject matter or topic. R. A. Fairthorne is credited with coining the exact term "aboutness", which became popular in LIS since the late 1970s, perhaps due to arguments put forward by William John Hutchins. Hutchins argued that "aboutness" was to be preferred to "subject" because it removed some epistemological problems. Birger Hjørland argued, however, that the same epistemological problems also were present in Hutchins' proposal, why "aboutness" and "subject" should be considered synonymous. While information scientists may well be concerned with the literary aboutness, philosophers of mind and psychologists with the psychological or intentional aboutness and language of thought, and semantic externalists with the external state of affairs. These seminal perspectives are respectively analogous to Ogden and Richards' literary, psychological, and external contexts, as well as Karl Popper's World 1, 2, and 3.
Literature
Furner, J.. "The ontology of subjects of works." ASIS&T conference. https://web.archive.org/web/20100715200306/http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/jfurner/papers/furner-06asist-b-ppt.pdf
Bruza, P. D., Song, D. W., & Wong, K. F.. "Aboutness from a commonsense perspective." Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51, 1090-1105. Available at: http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/dawei/papers/aboutness-aista00.pdf
Campbell, G.. "Aboutness and meaning: How a paradigm of subject analysis can illuminate queer theory in literary studies." IN: CAIS 2000. Canadian Association for Information Science: Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference. https://web.archive.org/web/20070327101605/http://www.slis.ualberta.ca/cais2000/campbell.htm
Campbell, G.. "Queer theory and the creation of contextual subject access tools for gay and lesbian communities." Knowledge Organization, 27, 122-131.
Hjørland, B. : Information seeking and subject representation: An activity-theoretical approach to information science. Westport & London: Greenwood Press.
Hjørland, B.. "The concept of "subject" in information science." Journal of Documentation, 48, 172-200. https://web.archive.org/web/20090411061445/http://www.db.dk/bh/Core%20Concepts%20in%20LIS/1992JDOC_Subject.PDF
Frohmann, B.. "Rules of indexing: A critique of mentalism in information retrieval theory." Journal of Documentation, 81-101.
Beghtol, C.. "Bibliographic classification theory and text linguistics: aboutness analysis, intertextuality and the cognitive act of classifying documents." Journal of Documentation, 42, 84-113.
Salem, Shawky. "Towards "coring" and "aboutness": An approach to some aspects of in-depth indexing." Journal of Information Science Principles & Practice, 1982, 4, 167-170.
Mark Petersen, A.. "The meaning of "about" in fiction indexing and retrieval." ASLIB Proceedings, 31, 251- 257.
Swift, D. F., Winn, V. & Bramer, D.. ""Aboutness" as a strategy for retrieval in the social sciences." ASLIB Proceedings, 30, 182-187.
Hutchings, W. J.. "The concept of "aboutness" in subject indexing." ASLIB Proceedings, 30, 172-181.
Hutchins, W. J.. "On the problem of "aboutness" in document analysis." Journal of Informatics, 1, 17-35.
