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DERIDASC Scientific Background

Lookup NU author(s): Dr James Armstrong

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Abstract

Deconstructive Evaluation of Risk In Dependability Arguments and Safety Cases (DERIDASC) is a study focussed on the language used by safety engineers in their intellectual discourse. The DERIDASC project is inter-disciplinary in the sense that it uses techniques from philosophy, literary theory and semiotics to diagnose problems of language, definition, and interpretation in safety engineering. The project aims to make safety engineers re-think and perhaps improve some of their habitual definitions. The project adopts methods of textual analysis usually found only in studies of the arts and literature. In particular, the project will apply the ideas of “deconstruction” to safety texts. Deconstruction is a term coined by philosopher Jacques Derrida and describes the analysis of a text to reveal hidden meanings, especially those which contradict the surface message of a text; the critical reader reads a text “against the grain”, concentrating less on what the author is trying to say than on issues such as what the text tries to avoid saying (e.g. the playing down of facts that might undermine what is argued) and on what is asserted rhetorically.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Armstrong J

Publication type: Report

Publication status: Published

Series Title: School of Computing Science Technical Report Series

Year: 2004

Pages: 40

Print publication date: 01/03/2004

Source Publication Date: March 2004

Report Number: 828

Institution: School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Place Published: Newcastle upon Tyne

URL: http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/publications/trs/papers/828.pdf

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