A speech, a scene (e.g. applause), a narrative (e.g. “The House rose at 3:20pm”), or another part of a transcript (e.g. a list of bills).

1. Use cases & requirements

The Speech class should have properties for:

  1. speaker

    Alice checks what her representative said in favor of Bill No. 1.

  2. the speaker’s role while speaking

    e.g. Speaker.

  3. the attribution text identifying the speaker

    e.g. to reproduce an exact copy of a transcript.

  4. audience

    Carol answers Bob’s question from yesterday.

  5. text

    Order, please. We will now begin the daily routine.

  6. audio

    e.g. to capture the tone of the speech.

  7. video

    e.g. to capture the context of the speech.

  8. the time at which the speech is spoken

    January 1, 2013 at 12:30pm

  9. title

    Gettysburg Address

  10. type

    e.g. a speech, scene or narrative.

  11. position

    A representative interrupts another’s speech with an interjection.

  12. event

    The last sitting of the 1st Session of the 41st Parliament.

2. Standard reuse

Dublin Core, Schema.org, and BIBFRAME Vocabulary terms are retained from the inventory of terms.

2.1. Range restrictions

Either a person or an organization can create a CreativeWork. A Speech is a subclass of CreativeWork, and only a person can create a Speech.

In Dublin Core, an audience is an AgentClass, that is, a group of people or organizations; in this data specification, an audience is a single person.

3. Classes and properties

Term Mapping Definition
Speech No rdf:type A speech, a scene, a narrative, or another part of a transcript
speaker schema:creator The person who is speaking
role opengov:role The speaker's role while speaking
attribution text odrs:attributionText The text identifying the speaker
audience dcterms:audience The person to whom the speaker is speaking
text schema:text The transcript or text of the speech
audio schema:audio The audio recording of the speech
video schema:video The video recording of the speech
date dcterms:date The time at which the speech is spoken
title schema:title A name given to the speech
type rdf:type The type of the part of the transcript
position schema:position The position of the speech within a transcript
event bf:event The event at which the speech is spoken

4. Serialization

  • The term creator is used instead of speaker (which would be clearer), to be consistent with the Motion class.
  • The value of the role property is a string, instead of an org:Role.
  • The value of the audio property is a URI, instead of a schema:AudioObject.
  • The value of the video property is a URI, instead of a schema:VideoObject.

5. Code lists

Implementations may use values from outside the following lists.

Role

  • chair
  • speaker

Type

The following is a copy of Akoma Ntoso containers.

  • speech
  • question
  • answer
  • scene: a scene description of events, e.g. applause.
  • narrative: a third-person description of events, e.g. “The Speaker leaves the Chair.”
  • summary: a summary of speeches that are individually not interesting, e.g. “Question put and agreed to.”
  • other