Chapter 4. Digital Dickens
-
Gerold Schneider
Abstract
This investigation employs computational linguistic methods such as document classification, topic modelling, and distributional semantics to scrutinize eight novels by Charles Dickens, uncovering dimensions of social criticism, literary realism, and narrative structures. While affirming positive results for automated analysis of social criticism, the study emphasizes that it could discover differing associations only due to semantic abstraction, which distributional semantics, word embeddings, and topic modelling can offer. Literary realism is successfully traced through detailed descriptions and everyday activities. Plotting plots with computational linguistic methods, specifically conceptual maps with textplot, shows promise but requires refinement. The study shows that current methods in content analysis offer new possibilities for literary analysis and digital humanities.
Abstract
This investigation employs computational linguistic methods such as document classification, topic modelling, and distributional semantics to scrutinize eight novels by Charles Dickens, uncovering dimensions of social criticism, literary realism, and narrative structures. While affirming positive results for automated analysis of social criticism, the study emphasizes that it could discover differing associations only due to semantic abstraction, which distributional semantics, word embeddings, and topic modelling can offer. Literary realism is successfully traced through detailed descriptions and everyday activities. Plotting plots with computational linguistic methods, specifically conceptual maps with textplot, shows promise but requires refinement. The study shows that current methods in content analysis offer new possibilities for literary analysis and digital humanities.
Chapters in this book
- 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 i
- Table of contents v
- Chapter 1. Introduction 1
-
Crossing boundaries
- Chapter 2. New approaches to investigating change in derivational productivity 8
- Chapter 3. A corpus-based comparative acoustic analysis of target-like vowel production by L1-Japanese learners and native speakers of English 41
- Chapter 4. Digital Dickens 62
-
Crossing boundaries
- Chapter 5. 120 years of reporting clauses 100
- Chapter 6. Establishing a ‘new normal’ 125
-
Crossing boundaries
- Chapter 7. Syntactic segmentation of spoken corpus data 154
- Chapter 8. Short-term diachronic and variety-internal approaches to textual functionality in South Asian Englishes 192
- Chapter 9. Do corpus data on World Englishes inspire tolerance of variation in ELT professionals? 217
-
Crossing boundaries
- Chapter 10. Query a corpus in near-natural language 248
- 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 263
Chapters in this book
- 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 i
- Table of contents v
- Chapter 1. Introduction 1
-
Crossing boundaries
- Chapter 2. New approaches to investigating change in derivational productivity 8
- Chapter 3. A corpus-based comparative acoustic analysis of target-like vowel production by L1-Japanese learners and native speakers of English 41
- Chapter 4. Digital Dickens 62
-
Crossing boundaries
- Chapter 5. 120 years of reporting clauses 100
- Chapter 6. Establishing a ‘new normal’ 125
-
Crossing boundaries
- Chapter 7. Syntactic segmentation of spoken corpus data 154
- Chapter 8. Short-term diachronic and variety-internal approaches to textual functionality in South Asian Englishes 192
- Chapter 9. Do corpus data on World Englishes inspire tolerance of variation in ELT professionals? 217
-
Crossing boundaries
- Chapter 10. Query a corpus in near-natural language 248
- 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 263
