Overview of IAT/ML

IAT/ML is a methodology for the ontological, argumentation and agency analysis of discourse.

By using IAT/ML, you can analyse a text jointly from the three points of view: ontological (what the text refers to), argumentation (how the text justifies what it says), and agency (what the speakers believe, desire and intend).

IAT/ML starts from the premise that everything that a speaker says involves an intention, and provides the concepts and guidance to discover, represent and analyse these intentions throughout the discourse. You can record what things in the world the discourse is referring to, and how intentions and beliefs are expressed in the text. IAT/ML can help you analyse discourse of any kind, including academic prose, news articles, legal documents, debates, informal conversation, or even posts on social networks. In addition, IAT/ML supports both monological (one speaker) and dialogical (multiple speakers) discourses, and using different languages.

IAT/ML is supported by LogosLink, a suite of software tools that you can use to carry out IAT/ML analyses. LogosLink also has some corpus management and analysis features, so you can benefit from an integrated and seamless workflow for your discourse analysis project. LogosLink is free to download and use. Please see the LogosLink section for details.

IAT/ML is based on IAT (Inference Anchoring Theory), a well known approach to argument analysis. It also builds on ConML, a lightweight conceptual modelling language, so that you can analyse the argumentation in a discourse together with the underlying ontology.

For additional details, please see the FAQ section, or the Resources section for comprehensive documentation about IAT/ML and LogosLink.