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Indexicality

In semiotics, linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy of language, indexicality is the phenomenon of a sign pointing to (or indexing) some element in the context in which it occurs. A sign that signifies indexically is called an index or, in philosophy, an indexical.

The modern concept originates in the semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce, in which indexicality is one of the three fundamental sign modalities by which a sign relates to its referent (the others being iconicity and symbolism). Peirce's concept has been adopted and extended by several twentieth-century academic traditions, including those of linguistic pragmatics, linguistic anthropology, and Anglo-American philosophy of language.

Words and expressions in language often derive some part of their referential meaning from indexicality. For example, I indexically refers to the entity that is speaking; now indexically refers to a time frame including the moment at which the word is spoken; and here indexically refers to a locational frame including the place where the word is spoken. Linguistic expressions that refer indexically are known as deictics, which thus form a particular subclass of indexical signs, though there is some terminological variation among scholarly traditions.

Linguistic signs may also derive nonreferential meaning from indexicality, for example when features of a speaker's register indexically signal their social class. Nonlinguistic signs may also display indexicality: for example, a pointing index finger may index (without referring to) some object in the direction of the line implied by the orientation of the finger, and smoke may index the presence of a fire.

In linguistics and philosophy of language, the study of indexicality tends to focus specifically on deixis, while in semiotics and anthropology equal attention is generally given to nonreferential indexicality, including altogether nonlinguistic indexicality.

In linguistic pragmatics
In disciplinary linguistics, indexicality is studied in the subdiscipline of pragmatics. Specifically, pragmatics tends to focus on deictics—words and expressions of language that derive some part of their referential meaning from indexicality—since these are regarded as "[t]he single most obvious way in which the relationship between language and context is reflected in the structures of languages themselves" Indeed, in linguistics the terms deixis and indexicality are often treated as synonymous, the only distinction being that the former is more common in linguistics and the latter in philosophy of language. This usage stands in contrast with that of linguistic anthropology, which distinguishes deixis as a particular subclass of indexicality.

In linguistic anthropology
The concept of indexicality was introduced into the literature of linguistic anthropology by Michael Silverstein in a foundational 1976 paper, "Shifters, Linguistic Categories and Cultural Description". Silverstein draws on "the tradition extending from Peirce to Jakobson" of thought about sign phenomena to propose a comprehensive theoretical framework in which to understand the relationship between language and culture, the object of study of modern sociocultural anthropology. This framework, while also drawing heavily on the tradition of structural linguistics founded by Ferdinand de Saussure, rejects the other theoretical approaches known as structuralism, which attempted to project the Saussurean method of linguistic analysis onto other realms of culture, such as kinship and marriage (see structural anthropology), literature (see semiotic literary criticism), music, film and others. Silverstein claims that "[t]hat aspect of language which has traditionally been analyzed by linguistics, and has served as a model" for these other structuralisms, "is just the part that is functionally unique among the phenomena of culture." It is indexicality, not Saussurean grammar, which should be seen as the semiotic phenomenon which language has in common with the rest of culture.

Silverstein argues that the Saussurean tradition of linguistic analysis, which includes the tradition of structural linguistics in the United States founded by Leonard Bloomfield and including the work of Noam Chomsky and contemporary generative grammar, has been limited to identifying "the contribution of elements of utterances to the referential or denotative value of the whole", that is, the contribution made by some word, expression, or other linguistic element to the function of forming "propositions—predications descriptive of states of affairs". This study of reference and predication yields an understanding of one aspect of the meaning of utterances, their semantic meaning, and the subdiscipline of linguistics dedicated to studying this kind of linguistic meaning is semantics.

Yet linguistic signs in contexts of use accomplish other functions than pure reference and predication—though they often do so simultaneously, as though the signs were functioning in multiple analytically distinct semiotic modalities at once. In the philosophical literature, the most widely discussed examples are those identified by J.L. Austin as the performative functions of speech, for instance when a speaker says to an addressee "I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow", and in so saying, in addition to simply making a proposition about a state of affairs, actually enters into a socially constituted type of agreement with the addressee, a wager. Thus, concludes Silverstein, "[t]he problem set for us when we consider the actual broader uses of language is to describe the total meaning of constituent linguistic signs, only part of which is semantic." This broader study of linguistic signs relative to their general communicative functions is pragmatics, and these broader aspects of the meaning of utterances is pragmatic meaning. (From this point of view, semantic meaning is a special subcategory of pragmatic meaning, that aspect of meaning which contributes to the communicative function of pure reference and predication.).

Silverstein introduces some components of the semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce as the basis for a pragmatics which, rather than assuming that reference and predication are the essential communicative functions of language with other nonreferential functions being mere addenda, instead attempts to capture the total meaning of linguistic signs in terms of all of their communicative functions. From this perspective, the Peircean category of indexicality turns out to "give the key to the pragmatic description of language."

This theoretical framework became an essential presupposition of work throughout the discipline in the 1980s and remains so in the present.

Adaptation of Peircean semiotics
The concept of indexicality has been greatly elaborated in the literature of linguistic anthropology since its introduction by Silverstein, but Silverstein himself adopted the term from the theory of sign phenomena, or semiotics, of Charles Sanders Peirce. As an implication of his general metaphysical theory of the three universal categories, Peirce proposed a model of the sign as a triadic relationship: a sign is "something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity." Thus, more technically, a sign consists of

 * A sign-vehicle or representamen, the perceptible phenomenon which does the representing, whether audibly, visibly or in some other sensory modality;
 * An object, the entity of whatever kind, with whatever modal status (experienceable, potential, imaginary, law-like, etc.), which is represented by the sign; and
 * An interpretant, the "idea in the mind" of the perceiving individual, which interprets the sign-vehicle as representing the object.

Peirce further proposed to classify sign phenomena along three different dimensions by means of three trichotomies, the second of which classifies signs into three categories according to the nature of the relationship between the sign-vehicle and the object it represents. As captioned by Silverstein, these are:

 * Icon: a sign in which "the perceivable properties of the sign vehicle itself have isomorphism to (up to identity with) those of the entity signaled. That is, the entities are 'likenesses' in some sense."
 * Index: a sign in which "the occurrence of a sign vehicle token bears a connection of understood spatio-temporal contiguity to the occurrence of the entity signaled. That is, the presence of some entity is perceived to be signaled in the context of communication incorporating the sign vehicle."
 * Symbol: the residual class, a sign which is not related to its object by virtue of bearing some qualitative likeness to it, nor by virtue of co-occurring with it in some contextual framework. These "form the class of 'arbitrary' signs traditionally spoken of as the fundamental kind of linguistic entity. Sign vehicle and entity signaled are related through the bond of a semantico-referential meaning" which permits them to be used to refer to any member of a whole class or category of entities.

Silverstein observes that multiple signs may share the same sign-vehicle. For instance, as mentioned, linguistic signs as traditionally understood are symbols, and analyzed in terms of their contribution to reference and predication, since they arbitrarily denote a whole class of possible objects of reference by virtue of their semantic meanings. But in a trivial sense each linguistic sign token (word or expression spoken in an actual context of use) also functions iconically, since it is an icon of its type in the code (grammar) of the language. It also functions indexically, by indexing its symbol type, since its use in context presupposes that such a type exists in the semantico-referential grammar in use in the communicative situation (grammar is thus understood as an element of the context of communication).

So icon, index and symbol are not mutually exclusive categories—indeed, Silverstein argues, they are to be understood as distinct modes of semiotic function, which may be overlaid on a single sign-vehicle. This entails that one sign-vehicle may function in multiple semiotic modes simultaneously. This observation is the key to understanding deixis, traditionally a difficult problem for semantic theory.

Referential indexicality (deixis)
In linguistic anthropology, deixis is defined as referential indexicality—that is, morphemes or strings of morphemes, generally organized into closed paradigmatic sets, which function to "individuate or single out objects of reference or address in terms of their relation to the current interactive context in which the utterance occurs". Deictic expressions are thus distinguished, on the one hand, from standard denotational categories such as common nouns, which potentially refer to any member of a whole class or category of entities: these display purely semantico-referential meaning, and in the Peircean terminology are known as symbols. On the other hand, deixis is distinguished as a particular subclass of indexicality in general, which may be nonreferential or altogether nonlinguistic.

In the older terminology of Otto Jespersen and Roman Jakobson, these forms were called shifters. Silverstein, by introducing the terminology of Peirce, was able to define them more specifically as referential indexicals.

Non-referential indexicality
Non-referential indices or "pure" indices do not contribute to the semantico-referential value of a speech event yet "signal some particular value of one or more contextual variables." Non-referential indices encode certain metapragmatic elements of a speech event's context through linguistic variations. The degree of variation in non-referential indices is considerable and serves to infuse the speech event with, at times, multiple levels of pragmatic "meaning". Of particular note are: sex/gender indices, deference indices (including the affinal taboo index), affect indices, as well as the phenomena of phonological hypercorrection and social identity indexicality.

Examples of non-referential forms of indexicality include sex/gender, affect, deference, social class, and social identity indices. Many scholars, notably Silverstein, argue that occurrences of non-referential indexicality entail not only the context-dependent variability of the speech event, but also increasingly subtle forms of indexical meaning (first, second, and higher-orders) as well.

Sex/gender indices
One common system of non-referential indexicality is sex/gender indices. These indices index the gender or "female/male" social status of the interlocutor. There are a multitude of linguistic variants that act to index sex and gender such as:

 * word-final or sentence-final particles:many languages employ the suffixation of word-final particles to index the gender of the speaker. These particles vary from phonological alterations such as the one explored by William Labov in his work on postvocalic /r/ employment in words that had no word final "r" (which is claimed, among other things, to index the "female" social sex status by virtue of the statistical fact that women tend to hypercorrect their speech more often than men); suffixation of single phonemes, such as  /-s/  in Muskogean languages of the southeastern United States; or particle suffixation (such as the Japanese sentence-final use of -wa with rising intonation to indicate increasing affect and, via second-order indexicality, the gender of the speaker (in this case, female))
 * morphological and phonological mechanisms: such as in Yana, a language where one form of all major words are spoken by sociological male to sociological male, and another form (which is constructed around phonological changes in word forms) is used for all other combination of interlocutors; or the Japanese prefix-affixation of o- to indicate politeness and, consequently, feminine social identity.

Many instances of sex/gender indices incorporate multiple levels of indexicality (also referred to as indexical order). In fact, some, such as the prefix-affixation of o- in Japanese, demonstrate complex higher-order indexical forms. In this example, the first order indexes politeness and the second order indexes affiliation with a certain gender class. It is argued that there is an even higher level of indexical order evidenced by the fact that many jobs use the o- prefix to attract female applicants. This notion of higher-order indexicality is similar to Silverstein's discussion of "wine talk" in that it indexes "an identity-by-visible-consumption [here, employment]" that is an inherent of a certain social register (i.e. social gender indexicality).

Affect indices
Affective meaning is seen as "the encoding, or indexing of speakers emotions into speech events." The interlocutor of the event "decodes" these verbal messages of affect by giving "precedence to intentionality"; that is, by assuming that the affective form intentionally indexes emotional meaning.

Some examples of affective forms are: diminutives (for example, diminutive affixes in Indo-European and Amerindian languages indicate sympathy, endearment, emotional closeness, or antipathy, condescension, and emotional distance); ideophones and onomatopoeias; expletives, exclamations, interjections, curses, insults, and imprecations (said to be "dramatizations of actions or states"); intonation change (common in tone languages such as Japanese); address terms, kinship terms, and pronouns which often display clear affective dimensions (ranging from the complex address-form systems found languages such a Javanese to inversions of vocative kin terms found in Rural Italy); lexical processes such as synecdoche and metonymy involved in effect meaning manipulation; certain categories of meaning like evidentiality; reduplication, quantifiers, and comparative structures; as well as inflectional morphology.

Affective forms are a means by which a speaker indexes emotional states through different linguistic mechanisms. These indices become important when applied to other forms of non-referential indexicality, such as sex indices and social identity indices, because of the innate relationship between first-order indexicality and subsequent second-order (or higher) indexical forms. (See multiple indices section for Japanese example).

Deference indices
Deference indices encode deference from one interlocutor to another (usually representing inequalities of status, rank, age, sex, etc.). Some examples of deference indices are:

T/V deference entitlement
The T/V deference entitlement system of European languages was famously detailed by linguists Brown and Gilman. T/V deference entitlement is a system by which a speaker/addressee speech event is determined by perceived disparities of 'power' and 'solidarity' between interlocutors. Brown and Gilman organized the possible relationships between the speaker and the addressee into six categories: The 'power semantic' indicates that the speaker in a superior position uses T and the speaker in an inferior position uses V. The 'solidarity semantic' indicates that speakers use T for close relationships and V for more formal relationships. These two principles conflict in categories 2 and 5, allowing either T or V in those cases: Brown and Gilman observed that as the solidarity semantic becomes more important than the power semantic in various cultures, the proportion of T to V use in the two ambiguous categories changes accordingly.
 * 1) Superior and solidary
 * 2) Superior and not solidary
 * 3) Equal and solidary
 * 4) Equal and not solidary
 * 5) Inferior and solidary
 * 6) Inferior and not solidary
 * 1) Superior and solidary: T
 * 2) Superior and not solidary: T/V
 * 3) Equal and solidary: T
 * 4) Equal and not solidary: V
 * 5) Inferior and solidary: T/V
 * 6) Inferior and not solidary: V

Silverstein comments that while exhibiting a basic level of first-order indexicality, the T/V system also employs second-order indexicality vis-à-vis 'enregistered honorification'. He cites that the V form can also function as an index of valued "public" register and the standards of good behavior that are entailed by use of V forms over T forms in public contexts. Therefore, people will use T/V deference entailment in 1) a first-order indexical sense that distinguishes between speaker/addressee interpersonal values of 'power' and 'solidarity' and 2) a second-order indexical sense that indexes an interlocutor's inherent "honor" or social merit in employing V forms over T forms in public contexts.

Japanese honorifics
Japanese provides an excellent case study of honorifics. Honorifics in Japanese can be divided into two categories: addressee honorifics, which index deference to the addressee of the utterance; and referent honorifics, which index deference to the referent of the utterance. Cynthia Dunn claims that "almost every utterance in Japanese requires a choice between direct and distal forms of the predicate." The direct form indexes intimacy and "spontaneous self-expression" in contexts involving family and close friends. Contrarily, distal form index social contexts of a more formal, public nature such as distant acquaintances, business settings, or other formal settings.

Japanese also contains a set of humble forms (Japanese kenjōgo 謙譲語) which are employed by the speaker to index their deference to someone else. There are also suppletive forms that can be used in lieu of regular honorific endings (for example, the subject honorific form of to eat (食べる): . Verbs that involve human subjects must choose between distal or direct forms (towards the addressee) as well as a distinguish between either no use of referent honorifics, use of subject honorific (for others), or use of humble form (for self). The Japanese model for non-referential indexicality demonstrates a very subtle and complicated system that encodes social context into almost every utterance.

Affinal taboo index
Dyirbal, a language of the Cairns rain forest in Northern Queensland, employs a system known as the affinal taboo index. Speakers of the language maintain two sets of lexical items: 1) an "everyday" or common interaction set of lexical items and 2) a "mother-in-law" set that is employed when the speaker is in the very distinct context of interaction with their mother-in-law. In this particular system of deference indices, speakers have developed an entirely separate lexicon (there are roughly four "everyday" lexical entries for every one "mother-in-law" lexical entry; 4:1) to index deference in contexts inclusive of the mother-in-law.

Hypercorrection as a social class index
Hypercorrection is defined by Wolfram as "the use of speech form on the basis of false analogy." DeCamp defines hypercorrection in a more precise fashion claiming that "hypercorrection is an incorrect analogy with a form in a prestige dialect which the speaker has imperfectly mastered." Many scholars argue that hypercorrection provides both an index of "social class" and an "Index of Linguistic insecurity". The latter index can be defined as a speaker's attempts at self-correction in areas of perceived linguistic insufficiencies which denote their lower social standing and minimal social mobility.

Donald Winford conducted a study that measured the phonological hypercorrection in creolization of English speakers in Trinidad. He claims that the ability to use prestigious norms goes "hand-in-hand" with knowledge of stigmatization afforded to use of "lesser" phonological variants. He concluded that sociologically "lesser" individuals would try to increase the frequency of certain vowels that were frequent in the high prestige dialect, but they ended up using those vowels even more than their target dialect. This hypercorrection of vowels is an example of non-referential indexicality that indexes, by virtue of innate urges forcing lower class civilians to hypercorrect phonological variants, the actual social class of the speaker. As Silverstein claims, this also conveys an "Index of Linguistic insecurity" in which a speaker not only indexes their actual social class (via first-order indexicality) but also the insecurities about class constraints and subsequent linguistic effects that encourage hypercorrection in the first place (an incidence of second-order indexicality).

William Labov and many others have also studied how hypercorrection in African American Vernacular English demonstrates similar social class non-referential indexicality.

Multiple indices in social identity indexicality
Multiple non-referential indices can be employed to index the social identity of a speaker. An example of how multiple indexes can constitute social identity is exemplified by Ochs discussion of copula deletion: "That Bad" in American English can index a speaker to be a child, foreigner, medical patient, or elderly person. Use of multiple non-referential indices at once (for example copula deletion and raising intonation), helps further index the social identity of the speaker as that of a child.

Linguistic and non-linguistic indices are also an important ways of indexing social identity. For example, the Japanese utterance -wa in conjunction with raising intonation (indexical of increasing affect) by one person who "looks like a woman" and another who looks "like a man" may index different affective dispositions which, in turn, can index gender difference. Ochs and Schieffilen also claim that facial features, gestures, as well as other non-linguistic indices may actually help specify the general information provided by the linguistic features and augment the pragmatic meaning of the utterance.

Indexical order
In much of the research currently conducted upon various phenomena of non-referential indexicality, there is an increased interest in not only what is called first-order indexicality, but subsequent second-order as well as "higher-order" levels of indexical meaning. First-order indexicality can be defined as the first level of pragmatic meaning that is drawn from an utterance. For example, instances of deference indexicality, such as the variation between informal tu and formal vous in French, indicate a speaker/addressee communicative relationship built upon the values of power and solidarity possessed by the interlocutors. When a speaker addresses somebody using the V form instead of the T form, they index (via first-order indexicality) their understanding of the need for deference to the addressee. In other words, they perceive or recognize an incongruence between their levels of power and/or solidarity and employ a more formal way of addressing that person to suit the contextual constraints of the speech event.

Second-Order Indexicality is concerned with the connection between linguistic variables and the metapragmatic meanings that they encode. For example, a woman is walking down the street in Manhattan and she stops to ask somebody where a McDonald's is. He responds to her talking in a heavy "Brooklyn" accent. She notices this accent and considers a set of possible personal characteristics that might be indexed by it (such as the man's intelligence, economic situation, and other non-linguistic aspects of his life). The power of language to encode these preconceived "stereotypes" based solely on accent is an example of second-order indexicality (representative of a more complex and subtle system of indexical form than that of first-order indexicality).

Oinoglossia (wine talk)
For demonstrations of higher (or rarefied) indexical orders, Michael Silverstein discusses the particularities of "life-style emblematization" or "convention-dependent-indexical iconicity" which, as he claims, is prototypical of a phenomenon he dubs "wine talk". Professional wine critics use a certain "technical vocabulary" that are "metaphorical of prestige realms of traditional English gentlemanly horticulture." Thus, a certain "lingo" is created for wine that indexically entails certain notions of prestigious social classes or genres. When "yuppies" use the lingo for wine flavors created by these critics in the actual context of drinking wine, Silverstein argues that they become the "well-bred, interesting (subtle, balanced, intriguing, winning, etc.) person" that is iconic of the metaphorical "fashion of speaking" employed by people of higher social registers, demanding notoriety as a result of this high level of connoisseurship. In other words, the wine drinker becomes a refined, gentlemanly critic and, in doing so, adopts a similar level of connoisseurship and social refinement. Silverstein defines this as an example of higher-order indexical "authorization" in which the indexical order of this "wine talk" exists in a "complex, interlocking set of institutionally formed macro-sociological interests." A speaker of English metaphorically transfers him- or herself into the social structure of the "wine world" that is encoded by the oinoglossia of elite critics using a very particular "technical" terminology.

The use of "wine talk" or similar "fine-cheeses talk", "perfume talk", "Hegelian-dialectics talk", "particle-physics talk", "DNA-sequencing talk", "semiotics talk" etc. confers upon an individual an identity-by-visible-consumption indexical of a certain macro-sociological elite identity and is, as such, an instance of higher-order indexicality.

In philosophy of language
Philosophical work on language from the mid-20th century, such as that of J.L. Austin and the ordinary language philosophers, has provided much of the originary inspiration for the study of indexicality and related issues in linguistic pragmatics (generally under the rubric of the term deixis), though linguists have appropriated concepts originating in philosophical work for purposes of empirical study, rather than for more strictly philosophical purposes.

However, indexicality has remained an issue of interest to philosophers who work on language. In contemporary analytic philosophy, the preferred nominal form of the term is indexical (rather than index), defined as "any expression whose content varies from one context of use to another ... [for instance] pronouns such as 'I', 'you', 'he', 'she', 'it', 'this', 'that', plus adverbs such as 'now', 'then', 'today', 'yesterday', 'here', and 'actually'. This exclusive focus on linguistic expressions represents a narrower construal than is preferred in linguistic anthropology, which regards linguistic indexicality (deixis) as a special subcategory of indexicality in general, which is often nonlinguistic.

Indexicals appear to represent an exception to, and thus a challenge for, the understanding of natural language as the grammatical coding of logical propositions; they thus "raise interesting technical challenges for logicians seeking to provide formal models of correct reasoning in natural language." They are also studied in relation to fundamental issues in epistemology, self-consciousness, and metaphysics, for example asking whether indexical facts are facts that do not follow from the physical facts, and thus also form a link between philosophy of language and philosophy of mind.

The American logician David Kaplan is regarded as having developed "[b]y far the most influential theory of the meaning and logic of indexicals".

title: Indexicality


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Vidar Riseth

Vidar Riseth (born 21 April 1972) is a Norwegian former professional footballer who played as a centre-back or midfielder. He played for Neset, Rosenborg, Kongsvinger, Lillestrøm and Strømsgodset in Norway, and Luton Town, LASK Linz, Celtic and 1860 Munich abroad. He played 52 times for the Norway national team, scoring four goals, and played for his country at the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000. He retired as a professional footballer in June 2010. He later worked as a professional football commentator.

Early career
Riseth joined Rosenborg from local side Neset in January 1991. He played one game in the 1992 championship winning season, but had more games as Rosenborg won back to back in 1993. In 1994, he joined Kongsvinger. He played there for three seasons, scoring regularly as he played as a centre forward at this time of his career. Late in his Kongsvinger career, he went for a brief loan to Luton.

On 20 March 2000, while playing for Scottish club Celtic, he scored the opening goal in the 2000 Scottish League Cup Final, which Celtic went on to win 2–0. In November, he moved on loan to German club 1860 Munich until the end of the season. At the end of his loan spell, the two clubs discussed making the deal permanent.

He returned to Norway to play for Rosenborg, and on 24 October 2007, helped secure their first UEFA Champions League home victory in six years, scoring the second in a shock 2–0 win against Spanish club Valencia.

International

 * Scores and results list Norway's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Riseth goal.

Honours
Rosenborg
 * Tippeligaen: 1993, 2003, 2004, 2006
 * Norwegian Cup: 2003

Celtic
 * League Cup: 1999–2000

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Vidar Riseth


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User:Topbanana/Reports/This image may be GFDL but not properly marked as such/SQL

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Talk:Ancient Orient

I'm not sure wheter Egypt should be included in the term. dab 10:12, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Ancient Orient


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Thick description

In the social sciences and related fields, a thick description is a description of human social action that describes not just physical behaviors, but their context as interpreted by the actors as well, so that it can be better understood by an outsider. A thick description typically adds a record of subjective explanations and meanings provided by the people engaged in the behaviors, making the collected data of greater value for studies by other social scientists.

The term was first introduced by 20th-century philosopher Gilbert Ryle. However, the predominant sense in which it is used today was developed by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his book The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) to characterise his own method of doing ethnography. Since then, the term and the methodology it represents has gained widespread currency, not only in the social sciences but also, for example, in the type of literary criticism known as New Historicism.

Gilbert Ryle
Thick description was first introduced by the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle in 1968 in "The Thinking of Thoughts: What is 'Le Penseur' Doing?" and "Thinking and Reflecting".

 * 1) thin, which includes surface-level observations of behaviour; and
 * 2) thick, which adds context to such behaviour.

To explain such context required grasping individuals' motivations for their behaviors and how these behaviors were understood by other observers of the community as well.

This method emerged at a time when the ethnographic school was pushing for an ethnographic approach that paid particular attention to everyday events. The school of ethnography thought seemingly arbitrary events could convey important notions of understanding that could be lost at a first glance. Similarly Bronisław Malinowski put forth the concept of a native point of view in his 1922 work, Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Malinowski felt that an anthropologist should try to understand the perspectives of ethnographic subjects in relation to their own world.

Clifford Geertz
Following Ryle's work, the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz re-popularized the concept. Known for his symbolic and interpretive anthropological work, Geertz's methods were in response to his critique of existing anthropological methods that searched for universal truths and theories. He was against comprehensive theories of human behavior; rather, he advocated methodologies that highlight culture from the perspective of how people looked at and experienced life. His 1973 article, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture", synthesizes his approach.

Thick description emphasized a more analytical approach, whereas previously observation alone was the primary approach. To Geertz, analysis separated observation from interpretative methodologies. An analysis is meant to pick out the critical structures and established codes. This analysis begins with distinguishing all individuals present and coming to an integrative synthesis that accounts for the actions produced. The ability of thick descriptions to showcase the totality of a situation to aid in the overall understanding of findings was called mélange of descriptors. As Lincoln & Guba (1985) indicate, findings are not the result of thick description; rather they result from analyzing the materials, concepts, or persons that are "thickly described."

takes issue with the state of anthropological practices in understanding culture. By highlighting the reductive nature of ethnography, to reduce culture to "menial observations," Geertz hoped to reintroduce ideas of culture as semiotic. By this he intended to add signs and deeper meaning to the collection of observations. These ideas would challenge Edward Burnett Tylor's concepts of culture as a "most complex whole" that is able to be understood; instead culture, to Geertz, could never be fully understood or observed. Because of this, ethnographic observations must rely on the context of the population being studied by understanding how the participants come to recognize actions in relation to one another and to the overall structure of the society in a specific place and time. Today, various disciplines have implemented thick description in their work.

Geertz pushes for a search for a "web of meaning". These ideas were incompatible with textbook definitions of ethnography of the times that described ethnography as systematic observations of different populations under the guise of Race categorization and categorizing the "other." To Geertz, culture should be treated as symbolic, allowing for observations to be connected with greater meanings.

This approach brings about its own difficulties. Studying communities via large-scale anthropological interpretation will bring about discrepancies in understanding. As cultures are dynamic and changing, Geertz also emphasizes the importance of speaking to rather than speaking for the subjects of ethnographic research and recognizing that cultural analysis is never complete. This method is essential to approach the actual context of a culture. As such, Geertz points out that interpretive works provide ethnographers the ability to have conversations with the people they study.

Interpretive turn
Geertz is revered for his pioneering field methods and clear, accessible prose writing style (cf. Robinson's critique, 1983). He was considered "for three decades...the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States."

Interpretive methodologies were needed to understand culture as a system of meaning. Because of this, Geertz's influence is connected with "a massive cultural shift" in the social sciences referred to as the interpretive turn. The interpretive turn in the social sciences had strong foundations in cultural anthropological methodology. In doing so, there was a shift from structural approaches as an interpretive lens, towards meaning. With the interpretive turn, contextual and textual information took the lead in understanding reality, language, and culture. This was all under the assumption that a better anthropology included understanding the particular behaviors of the communities being studied.

Geertz's thick description approach, along with the theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss, has become increasingly recognized as a method of symbolic anthropology, enlisted as a working antidote to overly technocratic, mechanistic means of understanding cultures, organizations, and historical settings. Influenced by Gilbert Ryle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Max Weber, Paul Ricoeur, and Alfred Schütz, the method of descriptive ethnography that came to be associated with Geertz is credited with resuscitating field research from an endeavor of ongoing objectification—the focus of research being "out there"—to a more immediate undertaking, where participant observation embeds the researcher in the enactment of the settings being reported. However, despite its dissemination among the disciplines, some theorists pushed back on thick description, skeptical about its ability to somehow interpret meaning by compiling large amounts of data. They also questioned how this data was supposed to provide the totality of a society naturally.

title: Thick description


text:
User:TPermyakoff

What up?

title: User:TPermyakoff


text:
Busbar

In electric power distribution, a busbar  (also bus bar) is a metallic strip or bar, typically housed inside switchgear, panel boards, and busway enclosures for local high current power distribution. They are also used to connect high voltage equipment at electrical switchyards, and low voltage equipment in battery banks. They are generally uninsulated, and have sufficient stiffness to be supported in air by insulated pillars. These features allow sufficient cooling of the conductors, and the ability to tap in at various points without creating a new joint.

Design and placement
The busbar's material composition and cross-sectional size determine the maximum current it can safely carry. Busbars can have a cross-sectional area of as little as 10 mm2, but electrical substations may use metal tubes 50 mm in diameter (2000 mm2) or more as busbars. Aluminium smelters use very large busbars to carry tens of thousands of amperes to the electrochemical cells that produce aluminium from molten salts.

Busbars are produced in a variety of shapes, including flat strips, solid bars and rods, and are typically composed of copper, brass or aluminium as solid or hollow tubes. Some of these shapes allow heat to dissipate more efficiently due to their high surface area to cross-sectional area ratio. The skin effect makes 50–60 Hz AC busbars more than about 8 mm thickness inefficient, so hollow or flat shapes are prevalent in higher-current applications. A hollow section also has higher stiffness than a solid rod of equivalent current-carrying capacity, which allows a greater span between busbar supports in outdoor electrical switchyards.

A busbar must be sufficiently rigid to support its own weight, and forces imposed by mechanical vibration and possibly earthquakes, as well as accumulated precipitation in outdoor exposures. In addition, thermal expansion from temperature changes induced by ohmic heating and ambient temperature variations, and magnetic forces induced by large currents, must be considered. To address these concerns, flexible bus bars, typically a sandwich of thin conductor layers, were developed. They require a structural frame or cabinet for their installation.

Distribution boards split the electrical supply into separate circuits at one location. Busways, or bus ducts, are long busbars with protective covers. Rather than branching from the main supply at one location, they allow new circuits to branch off anywhere along the busway.

A busbar may be either supported on insulators, or wrapped in insulation. They are protected from accidental contact either by a metal earthed enclosure or by elevation out of normal reach. Insulated bus bars are used in busways listed to UL 857 standards. Power neutral busbars may also be insulated because it is not guaranteed that the potential between power neutral and safety grounding is always zero. Earthing (safety grounding) busbars are typically bare and bolted directly onto any metal chassis of their enclosure. They may be enclosed in a metal housing, in the form of a bus duct or busway, segregated-phase bus, or isolated-phase bus.

Busbars may be connected to each other and to electrical apparatus by bolting, clamping or welding. Joints between high-current bus sections often have precisely machined matching surfaces that are silver-plated to reduce contact resistance. At extra high voltages (more than 300 kV) in outdoor buses, corona discharge around the connections becomes a source of radio-frequency interference and power loss, so special connection fittings designed for these voltages are used.

title: Busbar


text:
Ndwandwe

The Ndwandwe are a Bantu Nguni-speaking people who populate sections of southern Africa. They are also known as the Nxumalo's

The Ndwandwe, with the Mthethwa, were a significant power in present-day Zululand at the turn of the nineteenth century. Under the leadership of King Zwide, the Ndwandwe nation destroyed the Mthethwa under their king Dingiswayo, and the power vacuum was filled by Shaka Zulu and the Zulu tribe. In a common front against the Ndwandwe, Shaka collected the remains of the Mthethwa and other regional tribes, and survived the first encounter of the Zulu Civil War with Zwide at the Battle of Gqokli Hill in 1818.

In 1819, Zwide made another expedition against the Zulus, but Shaka again changed his tactics, letting the Ndwandwe army penetrate his territory and responding with guerrilla warfare. Shortage of supplies caused the Ndandwe to return home, but when they were crossing the river Mhlatuze in early 1820, their forces were split and defeated at the Battle of Mhlatuze River.

This led to the disintegration of the Ndwandwe nation as Zwide's generals and sons led sections of the Ndwandwe northwards. One such group, under Soshangane, formed the Gaza Empire in present-day central Mozambique while another, under Zwangendaba, established rule as the waNgoni in present-day Malawi. Others established themselves as chiefs of note in Swaziland and Zambia to create a Ndwandwe legacy of enduring power that is scattered across Southern Africa.

They speak Nguni dialects and their nations’ official languages are English in Zambia and Zimbabwe, and Portuguese in Mozambique.

title: Ndwandwe


text:
Bluff

Bluff or The Bluff may refer to:

Australia

 * Bluff, Queensland, Australia, a town
 * The Bluff, Queensland (Ipswich), a rural locality in the city of Ipswich
 * The Bluff, Queensland (Toowoomba Region), a rural locality
 * Bluff River (New South Wales)
 * Bluff River (Murchison River), a river of Tasmania
 * Bluff River (Prosser River), Tasmania; see Levendale, Tasmania
 * "The Bluff", common name of Rosetta Head, a headland adjoining Victor Harbor in South Australia

United States

 * Bluff, Alabama, an unincorporated community
 * Bluff, Alaska, a ghost town
 * The Bluff (Atlanta), Georgia, a neighborhood of Atlanta
 * Bluff (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, a neighborhood
 * Bluff, Texas, an unincorporated community
 * Bluff, Utah, a town
 * Bluff Creek (California), a watercourse in California that empties into Ballona Wetlands
 * Bluff Creek (Des Moines River tributary), a stream in Iowa
 * Bluff Creek (Cimarron River tributary), a stream in Kansas; see Clark County State Lake
 * Bluff Swamp, Ascension Parish, Louisiana

Other places

 * Bluff, New Zealand, a town and seaport in the South Island (colloquially known as The Bluff)
 * Bluff River (New Zealand)
 * Bluff, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, a geographical region of Durban
 * Yamate, a neighborhood of Yokohama, Japan, often called "The Bluff" in English
 * The Bluff, a mound near Ypres, Belgium, fought over by the British and Germans in the First World War Actions of the Bluff, 1916
 * The Bluff, Bahamas, the name of three communities
 * The Bluff (Cayman Islands), the highest point of the Cayman Islands, located on the island of Cayman Brac
 * Bluff Island (Andaman and Nicobar Islands)
 * Bluff Island (Antarctica), Prydz Bay, Antarctica
 * Bluff Island (Hong Kong), Port Shelter, Sai Kung District, Hong Kong

Game-oriented

 * Bluff (poker), a tactic in the game of poker
 * Bluff (magazine), covering poker
 * A slang term for liar's dice, a dice game

Film and TV

 * Bluff (2007 film), a Canadian film
 * Bluff (1976 film) an Italian crime-comedy film
 * Bluff (1924 film), an American drama silent film
 * Bluff (1916 film), an American comedy silent film directed by Rae Berger
 * "Bluff" (Prison Break episode), an episode of the 2006 television series Prison Break
 * Bluff (TV series), a Canadian game show broadcast by CBC Television

People

 * nickname of Benjamin Wade (1800–1878), American lawyer and politician
 * Richard Bluff, English visual effects supervisor

Other uses

 * Bluff (Canadian prairies) is a term in Canadian English for a group of trees on the prairies
 * Bluff (geography) is a steep slope or rounded cliff, usually overlooking a shoreline or other body of water
 * The Bluff (album), a 2001 album by Sarah Dougher

title: Bluff


text:
User talk:194.83.77.2

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title: User talk:194.83.77.2


text:
Fourchette

Fourchette can refer to:
 * fr:Fourchette, the French word for fork
 * In English, a technical term for
 * a type of dessert fork
 * a component of a glove
 * In female human anatomy, the frenulum labiorum pudendi
 * Fourchette piercing

title: Fourchette


text:
Talk:Thick description

Untitled
Sadly, this page says nothing at all about what thick description is. The argument about semantics needing context (repeated at indexicality, really) is nothing like specific enough. Certainly some historians find thick description a useful working concept, for other reasons.

Charles Matthews 10:38, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 January 2019 and 30 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Win2121. Peer reviewers: Eumenade, JamesZD online.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:17, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

An example?
I think the average reader would need to see an example to have some sort of an idea about what thick description is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.181.209.50 (talk) 09:00, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

From User:Carwil
There's a significant amount of added material here and the work of describing the work is partially accomplished. I have a number of recommendations for making this a good article, which include:
 * The first paragraph of "The Geertz Article" section is difficult for a non-specialist to understand. I suggest finding a non-anthropologist to read it (without getting to ask you questions), and working to improve it on that basis.
 * Please tell us more about what ethnographies typically were pre-Geertz. Expand upon: "These ideas were incompatible with textbook definitions of ethnography of the times that described ethnography as systematic observations."
 * I'm not sure this is contributing anything where it is: "In Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture Geertz address culture and concludes that men produce culture."
 * "Natives" is a charged word, but one with a particular meaning within the discipline of anthropology. Explain that to readers when you first use it. (Possibly by connected "thick description" to Malinowski's "native point of view.")
 * "Culture should be treated as symbolic.": Non-anthropologists might not know what this means.
 * Avoid "current" when you mean "at the time Geertz was writing."
 * The adoption section should explain how Geertz's approach was widely influential. It should connect him to the "interpretive turn in social sciences. See:
 * Discussion of the "interpretive turn" in
 * Gellner's chapter in
 * This is a non-sequitur: "Because of its versatile nature, various disciplines popularized thick description."
 * Sentences that obviously represent someone's opinion—"is credited with resuscitating field research from an endeavor of ongoing objectification"; "enlisted as a working antidote to overly technocratic, mechanistic means of understanding." Tell the reader in whose opinion this is so. See WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV

Good luck!--Carwil (talk) 18:48, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
 * No biographical material like this belongs in articles on concepts: "He served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton."

title: Talk:Thick description


text:
Metabolomics

Metabolomics is the scientific study of chemical processes involving metabolites, the small molecule substrates, intermediates, and products of cell metabolism. Specifically, metabolomics is the "systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind", the study of their small-molecule metabolite profiles. The metabolome represents the complete set of metabolites in a biological cell, tissue, organ, or organism, which are the end products of cellular processes. Messenger RNA (mRNA), gene expression data, and proteomic analyses reveal the set of gene products being produced in the cell, data that represents one aspect of cellular function. Conversely, metabolic profiling can give an instantaneous snapshot of the physiology of that cell, and thus, metabolomics provides a direct "functional readout of the physiological state" of an organism. There are indeed quantifiable correlations between the metabolome and the other cellular ensembles (genome, transcriptome, proteome, and lipidome), which can be used to predict metabolite abundances in biological samples from, for example mRNA abundances. One of the ultimate challenges of systems biology is to integrate metabolomics with all other -omics information to provide a better understanding of cellular biology.

History
The concept that individuals might have a "metabolic profile" that could be reflected in the makeup of their biological fluids was introduced by Roger Williams in the late 1940s, who used paper chromatography to suggest characteristic metabolic patterns in urine and saliva were associated with diseases such as schizophrenia. However, it was only through technological advancements in the 1960s and 1970s that it became feasible to quantitatively (as opposed to qualitatively) measure metabolic profiles. The term "metabolic profile" was introduced by Horning, et al. in 1971 after they demonstrated that gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) could be used to measure compounds present in human urine and tissue extracts. The Horning group, along with that of Linus Pauling and Arthur B. Robinson led the development of GC-MS methods to monitor the metabolites present in urine through the 1970s.

Concurrently, NMR spectroscopy, which was discovered in the 1940s, was also undergoing rapid advances. In 1974, Seeley et al. demonstrated the utility of using NMR to detect metabolites in unmodified biological samples. This first study on muscle highlighted the value of NMR in that it was determined that 90% of cellular ATP is complexed with magnesium. As sensitivity has improved with the evolution of higher magnetic field strengths and magic angle spinning, NMR continues to be a leading analytical tool to investigate metabolism. Recent efforts to utilize NMR for metabolomics have been largely driven by the laboratory of Jeremy K. Nicholson at Birkbeck College, University of London and later at Imperial College London. In 1984, Nicholson showed 1H NMR spectroscopy could potentially be used to diagnose diabetes mellitus, and later pioneered the application of pattern recognition methods to NMR spectroscopic data.

In 1994 and 1996, liquid chromatography mass spectrometry metabolomics experiments were performed by Gary Siuzdak while working with Richard Lerner (then president of the Scripps Research Institute) and Benjamin Cravatt, to analyze the cerebral spinal fluid from sleep deprived animals. One molecule of particular interest, oleamide, was observed and later shown to have sleep inducing properties. This work is one of the earliest such experiments combining liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry in metabolomics.

In 2005, the first metabolomics tandem mass spectrometry database, METLIN, for characterizing human metabolites was developed in the Siuzdak laboratory at the Scripps Research Institute. METLIN has since grown and as of December, 2023, METLIN contains MS/MS experimental data on over 930,000 molecular standards and other chemical entities, each compound having experimental tandem mass spectrometry data generated from molecular standards at multiple collision energies and in positive and negative ionization modes. METLIN is the largest repository of tandem mass spectrometry data of its kind. The dedicated academic journal Metabolomics first appeared in 2005, founded by its current editor-in-chief Roy Goodacre.

In 2005, the Siuzdak lab was engaged in identifying metabolites associated with sepsis and in an effort to address the issue of statistically identifying the most relevant dysregulated metabolites across hundreds of LC/MS datasets, the first algorithm was developed to allow for the nonlinear alignment of mass spectrometry metabolomics data. Called XCMS, it has since (2012) been developed as an online tool and as of 2019 (with METLIN) has over 30,000 registered users.

On 23 January 2007, the Human Metabolome Project, led by David S. Wishart, completed the first draft of the human metabolome, consisting of a database of approximately 2,500 metabolites, 1,200 drugs and 3,500 food components. Similar projects have been underway in several plant species, most notably Medicago truncatula and Arabidopsis thaliana for several years.

As late as mid-2010, metabolomics was still considered an "emerging field". Further, it was noted that further progress in the field depended in large part, through addressing otherwise "irresolvable technical challenges", by technical evolution of mass spectrometry instrumentation.

In 2015, real-time metabolome profiling was demonstrated for the first time.

Metabolome

The metabolome refers to the complete set of small-molecule (<1.5 kDa) metabolites (such as metabolic intermediates, hormones and other signaling molecules, and secondary metabolites) to be found within a biological sample, such as a single organism. The word was coined in analogy with transcriptomics and proteomics; like the transcriptome and the proteome, the metabolome is dynamic, changing from second to second. Although the metabolome can be defined readily enough, it is not currently possible to analyse the entire range of metabolites by a single analytical method.

In January 2007, scientists at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary completed the first draft of the human metabolome. The Human Metabolome Database (HMDB) is perhaps the most extensive public metabolomic spectral database to date and is a freely available electronic database (www.hmdb.ca) containing detailed information about small molecule metabolites found in the human body. It is intended to be used for applications in metabolomics, clinical chemistry, biomarker discovery and general education. The database is designed to contain or link three kinds of data: The database contains 220,945 metabolite entries including both water-soluble and lipid soluble metabolites. Additionally, 8,610 protein sequences (enzymes and transporters) are linked to these metabolite entries. Each MetaboCard entry contains 130 data fields with 2/3 of the information being devoted to chemical/clinical data and the other 1/3 devoted to enzymatic or biochemical data. The version 3.5 of the HMDB contains >16,000 endogenous metabolites, >1,500 drugs and >22,000 food constituents or food metabolites. This information, available at the Human Metabolome Database and based on analysis of information available in the current scientific literature, is far from complete. In contrast, much more is known about the metabolomes of other organisms. For example, over 50,000 metabolites have been characterized from the plant kingdom, and many thousands of metabolites have been identified and/or characterized from single plants.
 * 1) Chemical data,
 * 2) Clinical data and
 * 3) Molecular biology/biochemistry data.

Each type of cell and tissue has a unique metabolic ‘fingerprint’ that can elucidate organ or tissue-specific information. Bio-specimens used for metabolomics analysis include but not limit to plasma, serum, urine, saliva, feces, muscle, sweat, exhaled breath and gastrointestinal fluid. The ease of collection facilitates high temporal resolution, and because they are always at dynamic equilibrium with the body, they can describe the host as a whole. Genome can tell what could happen, transcriptome can tell what appears to be happening, proteome can tell what makes it happen and metabolome can tell what has happened and what is happening.

Metabolites
Metabolites are the substrates, intermediates and products of metabolism. Within the context of metabolomics, a metabolite is usually defined as any molecule less than 1.5 kDa in size. However, there are exceptions to this depending on the sample and detection method. For example, macromolecules such as lipoproteins and albumin are reliably detected in NMR-based metabolomics studies of blood plasma. In plant-based metabolomics, it is common to refer to "primary" and "secondary" metabolites. A primary metabolite is directly involved in the normal growth, development, and reproduction. A secondary metabolite is not directly involved in those processes, but usually has important ecological function. Examples include antibiotics and pigments. By contrast, in human-based metabolomics, it is more common to describe metabolites as being either endogenous (produced by the host organism) or exogenous. Metabolites of foreign substances such as drugs are termed xenometabolites.

The metabolome forms a large network of metabolic reactions, where outputs from one enzymatic chemical reaction are inputs to other chemical reactions. Such systems have been described as hypercycles.

Metabonomics
Metabonomics is defined as "the quantitative measurement of the dynamic multiparametric metabolic response of living systems to pathophysiological stimuli or genetic modification". The word origin is from the Greek μεταβολή meaning change and nomos meaning a rule set or set of laws. This approach was pioneered by Jeremy Nicholson at Murdoch University and has been used in toxicology, disease diagnosis and a number of other fields. Historically, the metabonomics approach was one of the first methods to apply the scope of systems biology to studies of metabolism.

There has been some disagreement over the exact differences between 'metabolomics' and 'metabonomics'. The difference between the two terms is not related to choice of analytical platform: although metabonomics is more associated with NMR spectroscopy and metabolomics with mass spectrometry-based techniques, this is simply because of usages amongst different groups that have popularized the different terms. While there is still no absolute agreement, there is a growing consensus that 'metabolomics' places a greater emphasis on metabolic profiling at a cellular or organ level and is primarily concerned with normal endogenous metabolism. 'Metabonomics' extends metabolic profiling to include information about perturbations of metabolism caused by environmental factors (including diet and toxins), disease processes, and the involvement of extragenomic influences, such as gut microflora. This is not a trivial difference; metabolomic studies should, by definition, exclude metabolic contributions from extragenomic sources, because these are external to the system being studied. However, in practice, within the field of human disease research there is still a large degree of overlap in the way both terms are used, and they are often in effect synonymous.

Exometabolomics
Exometabolomics, or "metabolic footprinting", is the study of extracellular metabolites. It uses many techniques from other subfields of metabolomics, and has applications in biofuel development, bioprocessing, determining drugs' mechanism of action, and studying intercellular interactions.

Analytical technologies
The typical workflow of metabolomics studies is shown in the figure. First, samples are collected from tissue, plasma, urine, saliva, cells, etc. Next, metabolites extracted often with the addition of internal standards and derivatization. During sample analysis, metabolites are quantified (liquid chromatography or gas chromatography coupled with MS and/or NMR spectroscopy). The raw output data can be used for metabolite feature extraction and further processed before statistical analysis (such as principal component analysis, PCA). Many bioinformatic tools and software are available to identify associations with disease states and outcomes, determine significant correlations, and characterize metabolic signatures with existing biological knowledge.

Separation methods
Initially, analytes in a metabolomic sample comprise a highly complex mixture. This complex mixture can be simplified prior to detection by separating some analytes from others. Separation achieves various goals: analytes which cannot be resolved by the detector may be separated in this step; in MS analysis, ion suppression is reduced; the retention time of the analyte serves as information regarding its identity. This separation step is not mandatory and is often omitted in NMR and "shotgun" based approaches such as shotgun lipidomics.

Gas chromatography (GC), especially when interfaced with mass spectrometry (GC-MS), is a widely used separation technique for metabolomic analysis. GC offers very high chromatographic resolution, and can be used in conjunction with a flame ionization detector (GC/FID) or a mass spectrometer (GC-MS). The method is especially useful for identification and quantification of small and volatile molecules. However, a practical limitation of GC is the requirement of chemical derivatization for many biomolecules as only volatile chemicals can be analysed without derivatization. In cases where greater resolving power is required, two-dimensional chromatography (GCxGC) can be applied.

High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) has emerged as the most common separation technique for metabolomic analysis. With the advent of electrospray ionization, HPLC was coupled to MS. In contrast with GC, HPLC has lower chromatographic resolution, but requires no derivatization for polar molecules, and separates molecules in the liquid phase. Additionally HPLC has the advantage that a much wider range of analytes can be measured with a higher sensitivity than GC methods.

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) has a higher theoretical separation efficiency than HPLC (although requiring much more time per separation), and is suitable for use with a wider range of metabolite classes than is GC. As for all electrophoretic techniques, it is most appropriate for charged analytes.

Detection methods
Mass spectrometry (MS) is used to identify and quantify metabolites after optional separation by GC, HPLC, or CE. GC-MS was the first hyphenated technique to be developed. Identification leverages the distinct patterns in which analytes fragment. These patterns can be thought of as a mass spectral fingerprint. Libraries exist that allow identification of a metabolite according to this fragmentation pattern. MS is both sensitive and can be very specific. There are also a number of techniques which use MS as a stand-alone technology: the sample is infused directly into the mass spectrometer with no prior separation, and the MS provides sufficient selectivity to both separate and to detect metabolites.

For analysis by mass spectrometry, the analytes must be imparted with a charge and transferred to the gas phase. Electron ionization (EI) is the most common ionization technique applied to GC separations as it is amenable to low pressures. EI also produces fragmentation of the analyte, both providing structural information while increasing the complexity of the data and possibly obscuring the molecular ion. Atmospheric-pressure chemical ionization (APCI) is an atmospheric pressure technique that can be applied to all the above separation techniques. APCI is a gas phase ionization method, which provides slightly more aggressive ionization than ESI which is suitable for less polar compounds. Electrospray ionization (ESI) is the most common ionization technique applied in LC/MS. This soft ionization is most successful for polar molecules with ionizable functional groups. Another commonly used soft ionization technique is secondary electrospray ionization (SESI).

In the 2000s, surface-based mass analysis has seen a resurgence, with new MS technologies focused on increasing sensitivity, minimizing background, and reducing sample preparation. The ability to analyze metabolites directly from biofluids and tissues continues to challenge current MS technology, largely because of the limits imposed by the complexity of these samples, which contain thousands to tens of thousands of metabolites. Among the technologies being developed to address this challenge is Nanostructure-Initiator MS (NIMS), a desorption/ ionization approach that does not require the application of matrix and thereby facilitates small-molecule (i.e., metabolite) identification. MALDI is also used; however, the application of a MALDI matrix can add significant background at < 1000 Da that complicates analysis of the low-mass range (i.e., metabolites). In addition, the size of the resulting matrix crystals limits the spatial resolution that can be achieved in tissue imaging. Because of these limitations, several other matrix-free desorption/ionization approaches have been applied to the analysis of biofluids and tissues.

Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) was one of the first matrix-free desorption/ionization approaches used to analyze metabolites from biological samples. SIMS uses a high-energy primary ion beam to desorb and generate secondary ions from a surface. The primary advantage of SIMS is its high spatial resolution (as small as 50 nm), a powerful characteristic for tissue imaging with MS. However, SIMS has yet to be readily applied to the analysis of biofluids and tissues because of its limited sensitivity at >500 Da and analyte fragmentation generated by the high-energy primary ion beam. Desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) is a matrix-free technique for analyzing biological samples that uses a charged solvent spray to desorb ions from a surface. Advantages of DESI are that no special surface is required and the analysis is performed at ambient pressure with full access to the sample during acquisition. A limitation of DESI is spatial resolution because "focusing" the charged solvent spray is difficult. However, a recent development termed laser ablation ESI (LAESI) is a promising approach to circumvent this limitation. Most recently, ion trap techniques such as orbitrap mass spectrometry are also applied to metabolomics research.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is the only detection technique which does not rely on separation of the analytes, and the sample can thus be recovered for further analyses. All kinds of small molecule metabolites can be measured simultaneously - in this sense, NMR is close to being a universal detector. The main advantages of NMR are high analytical reproducibility and simplicity of sample preparation. Practically, however, it is relatively insensitive compared to mass spectrometry-based techniques.

Although NMR and MS are the most widely used modern-day techniques for detection, there are other methods in use. These include Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance, ion-mobility spectrometry, electrochemical detection (coupled to HPLC), Raman spectroscopy and radiolabel (when combined with thin-layer chromatography).

Statistical methods
The data generated in metabolomics usually consist of measurements performed on subjects under various conditions. These measurements may be digitized spectra, or a list of metabolite features. In its simplest form, this generates a matrix with rows corresponding to subjects and columns corresponding with metabolite features (or vice versa). Several statistical programs are currently available for analysis of both NMR and mass spectrometry data. A great number of free software are already available for the analysis of metabolomics data shown in the table. Some statistical tools listed in the table were designed for NMR data analyses were also useful for MS data. For mass spectrometry data, software is available that identifies molecules that vary in subject groups on the basis of mass-over-charge value and sometimes retention time depending on the experimental design.

Once metabolite data matrix is determined, unsupervised data reduction techniques (e.g. PCA) can be used to elucidate patterns and connections. In many studies, including those evaluating drug-toxicity and some disease models, the metabolites of interest are not known a priori. This makes unsupervised methods, those with no prior assumptions of class membership, a popular first choice. The most common of these methods includes principal component analysis (PCA) which can efficiently reduce the dimensions of a dataset to a few which explain the greatest variation. When analyzed in the lower-dimensional PCA space, clustering of samples with similar metabolic fingerprints can be detected. PCA algorithms aim to replace all correlated variables with a much smaller number of uncorrelated variables (referred to as principal components (PCs)) and retain most of the information in the original dataset. This clustering can elucidate patterns and assist in the determination of disease biomarkers – metabolites that correlate most with class membership.

Linear models are commonly used for metabolomics data, but are affected by multicollinearity. On the other hand, multivariate statistics are thriving methods for high-dimensional correlated metabolomics data, of which the most popular one is Projection to Latent Structures (PLS) regression and its classification version PLS-DA. Other data mining methods, such as random forest, support-vector machines, etc. are received increasing attention for untargeted metabolomics data analysis. In the case of univariate methods, variables are analyzed one by one using classical statistics tools (such as Student's t-test, ANOVA or mixed models) and only these with sufficient small p-values are considered relevant. However, correction strategies should be used to reduce false discoveries when multiple comparisons are conducted since there is no standard method for measuring the total amount of metabolites directly in untargeted metabolomics. For multivariate analysis, models should always be validated to ensure that the results can be generalized.

Machine learning and data mining
Machine learning is a powerful tool that can be used in metabolomics analysis. Recently, scientists have developed retention time prediction software. These tools allow researchers to apply artificial intelligence to the retention time prediction of small molecules in complex mixture, such as human plasma, plant extracts, foods, or microbial cultures. Retention time prediction increases the identification rate in liquid chromatography and can lead to an improved biological interpretation of metabolomics data.

Key applications
Toxicity assessment/toxicology by metabolic profiling (especially of urine or blood plasma samples) detects the physiological changes caused by toxic insult of a chemical (or mixture of chemicals). In many cases, the observed changes can be related to specific syndromes, e.g. a specific lesion in liver or kidney. This is of particular relevance to pharmaceutical companies wanting to test the toxicity of potential drug candidates: if a compound can be eliminated before it reaches clinical trials on the grounds of adverse toxicity, it saves the enormous expense of the trials.

For functional genomics, metabolomics can be an excellent tool for determining the phenotype caused by a genetic manipulation, such as gene deletion or insertion. Sometimes this can be a sufficient goal in itself—for instance, to detect any phenotypic changes in a genetically modified plant intended for human or animal consumption. More exciting is the prospect of predicting the function of unknown genes by comparison with the metabolic perturbations caused by deletion/insertion of known genes. Such advances are most likely to come from model organisms such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Arabidopsis thaliana. The Cravatt laboratory at the Scripps Research Institute has recently applied this technology to mammalian systems, identifying the N-acyltaurines as previously uncharacterized endogenous substrates for the enzyme fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) and the monoalkylglycerol ethers (MAGEs) as endogenous substrates for the uncharacterized hydrolase KIAA1363.

Metabologenomics is a novel approach to integrate metabolomics and genomics data by correlating microbial-exported metabolites with predicted biosynthetic genes. This bioinformatics-based pairing method enables natural product discovery at a larger-scale by refining non-targeted metabolomic analyses to identify small molecules with related biosynthesis and to focus on those that may not have previously well known structures.

Fluxomics is a further development of metabolomics. The disadvantage of metabolomics is that it only provides the user with abundances or concentrations of metabolites, while fluxomics determines the reaction rates of metabolic reactions and can trace metabolites in a biological system over time.

Nutrigenomics is a generalised term which links genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics to human nutrition. In general, in a given body fluid, a metabolome is influenced by endogenous factors such as age, sex, body composition and genetics as well as underlying pathologies. The large bowel microflora are also a very significant potential confounder of metabolic profiles and could be classified as either an endogenous or exogenous factor. The main exogenous factors are diet and drugs. Diet can then be broken down to nutrients and non-nutrients. Metabolomics is one means to determine a biological endpoint, or metabolic fingerprint, which reflects the balance of all these forces on an individual's metabolism. Thanks to recent cost reductions, metabolomics has now become accessible for companion animals, such as pregnant dogs.

Plant metabolomics is designed to study the overall changes in metabolites of plant samples and then conduct deep data mining and chemometric analysis. Specialized metabolites are considered components of plant defense systems biosynthesized in response to biotic and abiotic stresses. Metabolomics approaches have recently been used to assess the natural variance in metabolite content between individual plants, an approach with great potential for the improvement of the compositional quality of crops.

title: Metabolomics