The world of information is increasingly becoming a global network. All kinds of resources are spread all over the world via internet. Subject indexing offers the users of a bibliographic system, especially the academic users, an indispensable access to the content of these resources. The RSWK, as used in the national bibliographies, is the authoritative code of rules regarding subject cataloguing in the German speaking countries – comparable to the “Library of Congress Subject Headings” (LCSH) in the English speaking world. Although controversially discussed since its development and implementation – the first edition came at 1986 – there is no monographic description of the RSWK up to now. This work intends to supply a contribution to such a description by analyzing the indexing language that is shaped by this special cataloguing code as a system of sings in its semantic, syntactic and pragmatic dimensions.
At first the semiotics of Charles Morris is characterized as a theoretical foundation of this investigation. Then indexing languages are described as a special type of sign systems under their semiotic aspects following Morris. Then two international efforts of information organization are described as instruments for analyzing the RSWK:
- The “Functional requirements for bibliographic records” (FRBR), together with its sisters, the “Functional requirements for authority data” (FRAD) and the “Functional requirements for subject authority data” (FRSAD).
- The “Principles underlying subject heading languages”
Based on the results of these investigations, the RSWK is analyzed as a subject heading language in view of its theoretical appropriateness and consistency. The investigation characterizes the RSWK as a synthetic precoordinate subject heading language, with its three linguistic levels:
- The indexing term as the lexical representation of a single bibliographic entity
- The whole subject heading, a compound of one or more indexing terms, representing the theme, or a theme of a work
- The ensemble of subject headings indexed for a work, representing the complete subject of the work, which may comprise of one or more themes.
Some semiotic deficits of the RSWK are mentioned, regarding its sufficiency and consistency and some corresponding alterations are proposed for its further development. The last three chapters deal with special categories of indexing terms, representing the bibliographic entities corporate body, event and work.