kategorialisation

Kategorialisering, or kategorialisation, is the process by which phenomena, objects, or ideas are grouped into categories according to shared attributes or functions. The term is used across disciplines to describe how humans and institutions create order by classification—from everyday perception to scientific taxonomy. In cognitive terms, categorization helps reduce cognitive load by organizing stimuli into manageable units; in social practice, categories shape how people are perceived and addressed.

There are several layers of kategorialisering. Cognitive categorization involves mental representations and feature abstractions. In information science and data analysis, categorization (or operationalization) translates observations into discrete classes to enable comparison and computation. In the social realm, categories such as age, gender, occupation, or nationality are constructed and negotiated within discourse; such categorizations can enable communication but also reproduce power relations and stereotypes. Taxonomies, ontologies, and typologies are formal manifestations of kategorialisering used to organize knowledge in libraries, databases, or research programs.

Key processes include abstraction (identifying common properties), differentiation (establishing boundaries), and, in some theories, reification (treating fluid realities as fixed categories). Critically, kategorialisering is context-dependent and culture-dependent; responses to new information may require revising categories, a process known as reclassification.

Applications range from biological classification and linguistic typology to data mining and policy analysis. In linguistics, for example, data are categorized into parts of speech or semantic groups; in sociology, social stratification is analyzed through class categories; in computer science, machine learning models assign inputs to labeled classes. See also categorization, taxonomy, ontology, classification, discourse analysis.