Hi! Recently, I created a taxonomy and a folksonomy for my English 212 class. For starters I’m going to define each of these terms. A taxonomy is simply a classification of something. A folksonomy is a classification system derived from user generated keywords. So, these terms have a pretty similar definition, but the following attached images will help to gain a better understanding of what I’m talking about.
As you can see, for my taxonomy I established an outline of different topics and terms that I’ve used throughout my English 212 class. I used the two most important topics that we have talked about thus far and then included some of the other terms that we have explored throughout those topics to create this outline. For the folksonomy I created a wordcloud. To create my wordcloud, I copied all the words from my taxonomy/outline and put them into a huge jumbled up cloud of words. It was interesting to see how the colors were used and which words were emphasized more. The worldcloud’s purpose is to open the eyes of the reader.
During this English course I’ve observed that we are really focusing on analyzing maps and lines and finding a deeper meaning for them. After comparing both my taxonomy and folksonomy’s, side-by-side I detected that my observation very much reflected what my wordcloud generated. The wordcloud chose to make terms like maps, lines, and the rhetorical appeals to appear bigger. All of this information makes sense considering the course is about Maps, Lines, and Numbers.
In my opinion, I like the taxonomy better because it is in the form of a list. I prefer a list over a wordcloud because it is easier for me to visualize what I’m working with. This way I can feel more organized and keep all the same thoughts under the correct categories. Although I like lists better I did really like how my folksonomy turned out. I also found it to be very helpful because of the way it broke the words into different areas. Overall, I enjoyed reflecting on the differences between a taxonomy (my outline), and a folksonomy (my wordcloud).
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