Prima del glossario/Before the glossary

Riflessioni di tipo linguistico e metodologico sui libri interattivi/Linguistic and methodological reflections on interactive books

Abstract

The availability of a glossary for interactive books has long been hoped for in particular by those who, in the absence of standardized guidelines, deal with the cataloging of interactive books but also by scholars and specialists who often find themselves discussing these materials starting from different presuppositions, conceptual and linguistic. In the first instance the glossary problem concerns books, but in practice it also includes objects which are not books but which present similar devices.

The current situation sees a variety of definitions consolidated in various languages and even within the same language, which show terminological habits and implicit choices that make comparison and standardization difficult. This phenomenon is particularly relevant with regard to children’s books which present an extreme variety in devices and their combinations, require multiple actions and generate different effects, often with narrative functions and with playful and educational objectives.
The methodological hypothesis is that the glossary should start not so much from the comparison of the various definitions currently in place (which in any case must be kept in mind) but from the construction of an explicit taxonomy, a tree classification of similar objects in classes and subclasses, based on which to standardize the lexical aspects. That is, starting from the observation of objects and inductively proposing definitions.
In the second part of the article, a close analysis of the ‘flap’ device is proposed as an example, apparently simple but extremely flexible, capable of stimulating, especially in the field of children’s books, ever new creative experiments for which ones to find the ‘right’ name.