Electronic Texts and Their Study

1

• Electronic Texts and Their Study
• Geoffrey M. Rockwell
• x 24072
• TSH 312
• grockwel_at_mcmaster.ca
• http//www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/hc-courses/tex
  tanalysis/

2
Research with E-Texts

• What can we learn from the texts created?
• How do we go about doing text analysis?

3
History of Text-Analysis Tools

• Text-analysis tools grew out of concordances
• 1247, Concordance to the Vulgate Bible, Paris
• 1949, Father Busa Index Thomisticus
• 1970s, Batch Concordancers like OCP
• 1989, TACT - Interactive Concordancers
• 1990s, Textual Visualization
• Text-analysis tools provide by comparison
• Speed, Complex Searches, Reconfigured Views,
  Statistics

The researcher can generate personal concordances
interactively
4
Concordance - Rearranged Text

• Types of Concordances
• verbal - index without context
• contextual - KWIC (Key Word In Context)
• glossarial - word-forms
• conceptual - organized by idea or sense
• An alphabetical arrangement of the principal
  words contained in a book, with citations of the
  passages in which they occur (OED)

5
Concordances and Interpretation

• Concordances provide an alternative arrangement
  of the text that brings disjunct passages
  together into a concordantia.
• Interpretative strategy where answers are drawn
  from the text (Bible) by assembling passages on
  the subject in question and reading this
  rearranged text as a meaningful whole.
• Concordance facilitates this rearrangement
  providing alternative views.

6
Types of Text-Analysis

• Stylistic
• Describing authors style and comparing it
• Authorship studies
• Linguistic
• Create representative corpus
• Describe linguistic use
• Thematic Analysis
• Finding patterns (words) in a text
• Following themes through a work
• Comparing themes
• Asking what a work is about - identifying themes

7
What is a theme?

• Theme, a salient abstract idea that emerges
  from a literary works treatment of its
  subject-matter, or a topic recurring in a number
  of literary works. (Concise Oxford Dict. Lit.
  Terms)
• Oedipus theme, theme of the heros return, image
  of swan, water theme, love theme

8
Following a Theme

• Theme - Scepticism
• Identify Patterns to Search for (Thesaurus)
• sceptic.
• Look at Distribution
• Distribution by part and character
• Collocates
• What words are used in the neighborhood?
• Compare to other themes

9
Example from my work

• Study of Humes Dialogues
• Problem of Scepticism
• Search on sceptic.
• Distribution graphs
• Look at how characters use the term
• sceptic. when speakercleanthes
• sceptic. when speakerphilo
• Tell a story based on evidence

http//tactweb.humanities.mcmaster.ca/dialogs/tact
web.htm
10
Looking at Text-Analysis

• Distribution for Cleanthes
• 0 0
• 1 18
• 2 0
• 3 4
• 4 1
• 5 0
• 6 0
• 7 0
• 8 0
• 9 0
• 10 0
• 11 0
• 12 0

• Distribution for Philo
• 0 0
• 1 11
• 2 2
• 3 0
• 4 1
• 5 0
• 6 2
• 7 0
• 8 1
• 9 0
• 10 2
• 11 4
• 12 8

11
Looking at Text-Analysis

• Scepticism is a framing issue
• Cleanthes insults Philo who has positioned
  himself as a sceptic
• Philo avoids answering
• Philo returns to it in later passages - he
  demonstrates what it is to be a sceptic

12
Problems
Surface Measurement (Quantification)
Interesting Interpretation (Understanding)

• That a theme is the passages where a set of words
  appear
• Can themes be identified by key words?
• What about ambiguous words?
• That concording passages into a new text is an
  acceptable interpretative strategy
• Where does the passage start and end around a
  word?
• Is reading a rearranged text useful?
• That the distribution of words indicates the
  progress of a theme
• Do the number of hits indicate intensity of theme?

13
Two Views of Text-Analysis

• Text-analysis is about proving things about texts
• Stylistic analysis provides reproducible
  descriptions of authors style
• Measurement of surface features allows us to
  prove more interesting points
• Reaction to impressionistic reader oriented
  literary theory
• Text-analysis is the rereading a text in ways
  that help one better understand it
• Text-analysis is only one of many strategies
• Text-analysis reveals anomalies to be researched
• Text-analysis is useful precisely because the
  computer cant do well what we do well, and can
  do other things well - Alternative Perspective

14
Arguments for text-analysis

• There is a transfer of meaning for words across
  contexts
• Words can evoke themes
• Need for theoretical work?
• Tradition of concording
• Tradition of treating words as belonging to
  categories (Thesaurus)

15
Return to the text?

• We make soft quantitative claims anyway
• It counters impressionistic readings
• Reproducable and disputable results
• Text-Analysis Playpens
• Discipline of identifying what you mean for a
  machine