Volume 15, Issue 1-2 - Special Issue: Concepts: Formation, Functions and Limits

The present article discusses and reflects on possible ways of operationalizing the terminology of traditional literary studies for use in computational literary studies. By »operationalization«, we mean the development of a method for tracing a (theoretical) term back to text-surface phenomena; this is done explicitly and in a rule-based manner, involving a series of substeps. This procedure is presented in detail using as a concrete example Norbert Altenhofer’s »model interpretation« ( Modellinterpretation ) of Heinrich von Kleist’s The Earthquake in Chile . In the process, we develop a multi-stage operation – reflected upon throughout in terms of its epistemological implications – that is based on a rational-hermeneutic reconstruction of Altenhofer’s interpretation, which focuses on »mysteriousness« ( Rätselhaftigkeit ), a concept from everyday language. As we go on to demonstrate, when trying to operationalize this term, one encounters numerous difficulties, which is owing to the fact that Altenhofer’s use of it is underspecified in a number of ways. Thus, for instance, and contrary to Altenhofer’s suggestion, Kleist’s sentences containing »relativizing or perspectivizing phrases such as ›it seemed‹ or ›it was as if‹« (Altenhofer 2007, 45) do by no means, when analyzed linguistically, suggest a questioning or challenge of the events narrated, since the unreal quality of those German sentences only relates to the comparison in the subordinate clause, not to the respective main clause. Another indicator central to Altenhofer’s ascription of »mysteriousness« is his concept of a »complete facticity« ( lückenlose Faktizität ) which »does not seem to leave anything ›open‹« (Altenhofer 2007, 45). Again, the precise designation of what exactly qualifies facticity as »complete« is left open, since Kleist’s novella does indeed select for portrayal certain phenomena and actions within the narrated world (and not others). The degree of factuality in Kleist’s text may be higher than it is in other texts, but it is by no means »complete«. In the context of Altenhofer’s interpretation, »complete facticity« may be taken to mean a narrative mode in which terrible events are reported using conspicuously sober and at times drastic language. Following the critical reconstruction of Altenhofer’s use of terminology, the central terms and their relationship to one another are first explicated (in natural language), which already necessitates intensive conceptual work. We do so implementing a hierarchical understanding of the terms discussed: the definition of one term uses other terms which also need to be defined and operationalized. In accordance with the requirements of computational text analysis, this hierarchy of terms should end in »directly measurable« terms – i. e., in terms that can be clearly identified on the surface of the text. This, however, leads to the question of whether (and, if so, on the basis of which theoretical assumptions) the terminology of literary studies may be traced back in this way to text-surface phenomena. Following the pragmatic as well as the theoretical discussion of this complex of questions, we indicate ways by which such definitions may be converted into manual or automatic recognition. In the case of manual recognition, the paradigm of annotation – as established and methodologically reflected in (computational) linguistics – will be useful, and a well-controlled annotation process will help to further clarify the terms in question. The primary goal, however, is to establish a recognition rule by which individuals may intersubjectively and reliably identify instances of the term in question in a given text. While it is true that in applying this method to literary studies, new challenges arise – such as the question of the validity and reliability of the annotations –, these challenges are at present being researched intensively in the field of computational literary studies, which has resulted in a large and growing body of research to draw on. In terms of computer-aided recognition, we examine, by way of example, two distinct approaches: 1) The kind of operationalization which is guided by precedent definitions and annotation rules benefits from the fact that each of its steps is transparent, may be validated and interpreted, and that existing tools from computational linguistics can be integrated into the process. In the scenario used here, these would be tools for recognizing and assigning character speech, for the resolution of coreference and the assessment of events; all of these, in turn, may be based on either machine learning, prescribed rules or dictionaries. 2) In recent years, so-called end-to-end systems have become popular which, with the help of neural networks, »infer« target terms directly from a numerical representation of the data. These systems achieve superior results in many areas. However, their lack of transparency also raises new questions, especially with regard to the interpretation of results. Finally, we discuss options for quality assurance and draw a first conclusion. Since numerous decisions have to be made in the course of operationalization, and these, in practice, are often pragmatically justified, the question quickly arises as to how »good« a given operationalization actually is. And since the tools borrowed from computational linguistics (especially the so-called inter-annotator agreement) can only partially be transferred to computational literary studies and, moreover, objective standards for the quality of a given implementation will be difficult to find, it ultimately falls to the community of researchers and scholars to decide, based on their research standards, which operationalizations they accept. At the same time, operationalization is the central link between the computer sciences and literary studies, as well as being a necessary component for a large part of the research done in computational literary studies. The advantage of a conscious, deliberate and reflective operationalization practice lies not only in the fact that it can be used to achieve reliable quantitative results (or that a certain lack of reliability at least is a known factor); it also lies in its facilitation of interdisciplinary cooperation: in the course of operationalization, concrete sets of data are discussed, as are the methods for analysing them, which taken together minimizes the risk of misunderstandings, »false friends« and of an unproductive exchange more generally.

In the first part of the paper, the interconnection of evaluation and classification in the literary field is discussed. Genre constitutes one of the central notions in Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of literature. Werner Michler’s suggestion to regard genres not as theoretical models or collections of features, but as classifications by agents of the literary field, is expanded by the aspect of genre evaluation. Both processes of classification and evaluation seem intertwined and could be understood as evaluation strategies by agents and communities of the literary field. Introduction of new genre terms and their modification are popular strategies of revaluation of genres, works, authors, and audiences. In the paper, four groups of agents of the generic process identified by Michler (producers, distributors, non-professional recipients, and professional agencies of evaluation) are analysed in view of their power of revaluation. Furthermore, they are placed in the contemporary German literary field on the basis of Heribert Tommek’s model and depicted as hypothetical members of evaluative genre communities. These communities consist of agents and groups (e. g. fandoms) that defend and support genres, seeing in them a stake in the game which is the illusio , the faith in the principles of the field. In the second part, agents, communities, and their evaluative strategies are presented. First of all, it is the reception mechanisms which decide on the attribution of values to genres and affect the production of literature. Therefore, the authors write their texts with regard to conventional classifications and take part as well, more or less directly, in the processes of revaluation of genres they want to be associated with. The avant-garde is either interested in original genre terms or it avoids any ascriptions whatsoever. In comparison, the mainstream and the subfield of mass production concentrate on medially attractive or conventional and recognizable terms. Authors which have accumulated large symbolic capital can also revaluate genres with their prestige. The potential of terms and evaluations is also reflected in the structure of the field as seen by distributors of literature. Paratexts, advertisements, blurbs, and brands change according to their place on the aesthetic or economic pole of the field. This way, audiences that can choose genres, values and evaluations on the basis of the existing classifications are created and influenced. Even if their symbolic power is small, they manage to formulate evaluative classifications, first of all in the flexible area (forums, blogs) close to the professional agencies of evaluation. Genres are re- and devaluated also in the literary studies and by the critics. Here, the conscious usage of genre terms characterizes the profession. Literary critics and reviewers often choose new, original terms in order to prove their professional abilities of classification. In the structure of the field, between the avant-garde and the subfield of mass production, struggles for symbolic capital and the right to establish new classifications and evaluations take place. In these struggles, there are various agents of the generic process with their specific strategies involved. Many of them can be grasped as members of more or less stable evaluative communities. In the third part, the mainly theoretical explanations are complemented by two case studies of a weak (the so-called Aussteigerroman ) and a strong (dystopian science fiction) revaluation of the genre in the last decades. Behind the career of the Aussteigerroman (novel about an outsider) there is of course the outsider-trend returning regularly since the 60’s, however, no strong evaluative communities in the form of institutions, media, or genre-oriented critics. In comparison, the career and popularity of dystopian fiction in all its variety and terminological modifications of the recent years cannot be reduced to external factors (like fear of the uncertain future, terrorism or pandemics), but it should be primarily explained in view of the influence exerted by agents and communities revaluating the genre. Both careers are cursorily depicted at the end of the paper.

The present article proposes a methodology for writing genre history that does not proceed from »always already« existing generic norms, but rather describes the processes through which genres and their conventions emerge in the first place. Scholars in the field have long been calling for a mediation between (systematic) genre theory and the (historical) exploration of genres – i. e., generic historiography (see Lamping 2007; Neumann/Nünning 2007). So far, however, the solutions proposed have been classificatory in nature, and have mainly been concerned with taking into account the historical diversity of genres more fully than had previously been done (Hempfer 1973; Fricke 1981). The theoretical and methodological questions raised by genre historiography regarding the emergence and transformation of genres, by contrast, have hardly ever been the focus of sustained enquiry, despite the fact that a historically adequate approach to the history of genres – meaning an approach not based on classificatory models – remains a desideratum to this day. Most contributions to the historiography of genre thus far make use of prototype theory or draw on scholarship analyzing schemata and patterns in order to identify genre norms in their historical setting and describe the correspondences with (and/or deviations from) those norms which may be observed in a given text. Yet the methodological problem here is that, ordinarily, prototype-theoretical and schema-oriented approaches raise systematic rather than historical claims. Thus, a »prototype« is understood to be an abstract, ideal model which might never have been realized historically but is still considered the most »typical« exemplar of a given genre whose individual, concrete manifestations may be described as placed along a scale of relative similarity with that exemplar (Tophinke 1997). By adopting such a perspective, the texts belonging to a certain genre may be categorized without having to draw »hard« (i. e., feature-based) boundaries. However, comparing a single text with an ideal model affords hardly any surplus value regarding the question of the origin and change of genres. Being an ideal model, after all, the prototype is constructed a posteriori, on the basis of all available texts assigned to a given genre; it has never served as an actual point of reference for the production or reception of individual texts in their historical context. A similar methodological difficulty arises with a view to scholarship on schemata and patterns, in that these are usually abstracted from all texts belonging to a given genre (like prototypes) or else are fashioned on the model of supposed »masterpieces«, which all but invalidates their explanatory power in a historical context (Schulz 2012). For the historiography of genres, however, one question of particular interest is a question treated only marginally in scholarship on prototypes and schemata. This is the question of how precisely literary speech acts (Warning 1996) – i. e., certain types of literary representation or the treatment of certain kinds of content – are conventionalized and are thus gradually turned into instances of expectable patterns: patterns to be expected, that is, both on the side of production and of reception. Some scholars answer this question by reference to »normative« works which, they claim, serve as »signposts« for the subsequent production and reception of texts (Voßkamp 1977; Gymnich 2010a). The problem with this position, however, is that it assigns to individual texts an unconditional authority, even though the binding conventionality and literary prestige of any given text only emerges over the course of literary or generic history (Strohschneider 1991). One defining purpose of genre historiography is to describe precisely those processes through which certain literary forms and topics become conventional in the first place – to the extent that any attempt, on the part of scholars, to identify supposedly »pioneering« or »authoritative« works is in stark contradiction to an historical approach to genres. At the same time, research on the history of genres simply cannot start from stable norms or ideal models, which is why it is precisely the constant changes to be observed in the conventional validity of literary speech acts that should be exposed and emphasized. In fact, the notion of »convention« is crucial to the approach proposed in this article, since conventions – different in this respect from norms or rules – do not arise as the result of (allegedly) authoritative postulates but rather establish themselves, over time, through communal agreement (Weninger 1994). The formation of conventions may be traced by analyzing intertextual references to literary speech acts: if a given text refers to a certain type of literary representation – either in order to reproduce it faithfully or to present alternatives to it –, this reference is selected from a wide array of options for referencing, and is thus recognized as being »worthy of reference«. Constant reference to the same (or similar) literary speech acts then leads to the emergence of a corresponding convention, whose validity, however, is itself subject to change: If intertextual relations change in such a way that the type of literary speech act previously conventionalized is no longer chosen for reference – and is disregarded, in fact, in favour of alternative topics or modes of representation –, this will result in an observable change in conventionality. After all, whatever is considered conventional is determined by intertextual processes of consensus-building, and is thus in a permanent state of renegotiation. The concrete methodological approach of the present article starts, therefore, from an analysis of intertextual references, insofar as the processes of conventionalization relevant to the historiography of genres can be traced by examining references between individual texts. If one focuses on the question of how genres – and the conventions governing them – arise, the notion of »single-text reference« is preferable to that of »systemic reference«. After all, »systemic reference« denotes the reference of a given text to an established system and thus already presupposes a genre and its systemic norms – elements not available at the outset of a genre’s history. Rather, any truly historical historiography of genres must strive to demonstrate how a set of literary speech acts gradually (by way of intertextual single-text references) forms a system whose conventions may later be referenced. The formation processes of individual genres may therefore be reconstructed by examining the intertextual single-text references that contribute to the conventionalization of literary speech acts and ultimately form a system in contrast to other literary forms of representation. The present article thus focuses on the Gewordensein – the quality of having become or fundamental »madeness« – of genres as subject to constant historical change. At the same time, it proposes a method for adequately tracing genre emergence and change through the analysis of intertextual references and dynamic processes of conventionalization.

There is a set of statistical measures developed mostly in corpus and computational linguistics and information retrieval, known as keyness measures, which are generally expected to detect textual features that account for differences between two texts or groups of texts. These measures are based on the frequency, distribution, or dispersion of words (or other features). Searching for relevant differences or similarities between two text groups is also an activity that is characteristic of traditional literary studies, whenever two authors, two periods in the work of one author, two historical periods or two literary genres are to be compared. Therefore, applying quantitative procedures in order to search for differences seems to be promising in the field of computational literary studies as it allows to analyze large corpora and to base historical hypotheses on differences between authors, genres and periods on larger empirical evidence. However, applying quantitative procedures in order to answer questions relevant to literary studies in many cases raises methodological problems, which have been discussed on a more general level in the context of integrating or triangulating quantitative and qualitative methods in mixed methods research of the social sciences. This paper aims to solve these methodological issues concretely for the concept of distinctiveness and thus to lay the methodological foundation permitting to operationalize quantitative procedures in order to use them not only as rough exploratory tools, but in a hermeneutically meaningful way for research in literary studies. Based on a structural definition of potential candidate measures for analyzing distinctiveness in the first section, we offer a systematic description of the issue of integrating quantitative procedures into a hermeneutically meaningful understanding of distinctiveness by distinguishing its epistemological from the methodological perspective. The second section develops a systematic strategy to solve the methodological side of this issue based on a critical reconstruction of the widespread non-integrative strategy in research on keyness measures that can be traced back to Rudolf Carnap’s model of explication. We demonstrate that it is, in the first instance, mandatory to gain a comprehensive qualitative understanding of the actual task. We show that Carnap’s model of explication suffers from a shortcoming that consists in ignoring the need for a systematic comparison of what he calls the explicatum and the explicandum. Only if there is a method of systematic comparison, the next task, namely that of evaluation can be addressed, which verifies whether the output of a quantitative procedure corresponds to the qualitative expectation that must be clarified in advance. We claim that evaluation is necessary for integrating quantitative procedures to a qualitative understanding of distinctiveness. Our reconstruction shows that both steps are usually skipped in empirical research on keyness measures that are the most important point of reference for the development of a measure of distinctiveness. Evaluation, which in turn requires thorough explication and conceptual clarification, needs to be employed to verify this relation. In the third section we offer a qualitative clarification of the concept of distinctiveness by spanning a three-dimensional conceptual space. This flexible framework takes into account that there is no single and proper concept of distinctiveness but rather a field of possible meanings depending on research interest, theoretical framework, and access to the perceptibility or salience of textual features. Therefore, we shall, instead of stipulating any narrow and strict definition, take into account that each of these aspects – interest, theoretical framework, and access to perceptibility – represents one dimension of the heuristic space of possible uses of the concept of distinctiveness. The fourth section discusses two possible strategies of operationalization and evaluation that we consider to be complementary to the previously provided clarification, and that complete the task of establishing a candidate measure successfully as a measure of distinctiveness in a qualitatively ambitious sense. We demonstrate that two different general strategies are worth considering, depending on the respective notion of distinctiveness and the interest as elaborated in the third section. If the interest is merely taxonomic, classification tasks based on multi-class supervised machine learning are sufficient. If the interest is aesthetic, more complex and intricate evaluation strategies are required, which have to rely on a thorough conceptual clarification of the concept of distinctiveness, in particular on the idea of salience or perceptibility. The challenge here is to correlate perceivable complex features of texts such as plot, theme (aboutness), style, form, or roles and constellation of fictional characters with the unperceived frequency and distribution of word features that are calculated by candidate measures of distinctiveness. Existing research did not clarify, so far, how to correlate such complex features with individual word features. The paper concludes with a general reflection on the possibility of mixed methods research for computational literary studies in terms of explanatory power and exploratory use. As our strategy of combining explication and evaluation shows, integration should be understood as a strategy of combining two different perspectives on the object area: in our evaluation scenarios, that of empirical reader response and that of a specific quantitative procedure. This does not imply that measures of distinctiveness, which proved to reach explanatory power in one qualitative aspect, should be supposed to be successful in all fields of research. As long as evaluation is omitted, candidate measures of distinctiveness lack explanatory power and are limited to exploratory use. In contrast with a skepticism that has sometimes been expressed from literary scholars with regard to the relevance of computational literary studies on proper issues of the humanities, we believe that integrating computational methods into hermeneutic literary studies can be achieved in a way that reaches higher explanatory power than the usual exploratory use of keyness measures, but it can only be achieved individually for concrete tasks and not once and for all based on a general theoretical demonstration.

My paper discusses the controversial relationship between literature and literary studies by using the example of the term ›migration literature‹. It demonstrates in the first part that ›migration literature‹ as a term in literary studies does not expose explications of rational reconstructions of a conceptual content in Harald Fricke’s and Klaus Weimar’s understanding. In its history (Adelson 1991; 2004), ›migration literature‹ goes back to a chain of different terms and definitions as Gastarbeiter- or Ausländerliteratur and reflects strategies of homogenization and exclusion. From the 1980s forward, those terms produce in cultural contexts a semantic field that propagates culture based on a definition of ex negativo (Tafazoli 2019). The first part of my paper describes an outline of influences of homogenization and reductionism on the discourses of migration in literary studies and explains in the second part an asymmetrical relationship between motive on the one hand and terminology on the other. The term ›migration literature‹ seems to dominate this relationship by determination of a source of ›accepted truths‹ related to the life and background – specifically to the place of birth and the origin – of the author (Bay 2017). By prioritization of criteria beyond narrative reality, literary studies led in the 1980s and 1990s discourses on migration on the sidelines of canon of German speaking literature (Weigel 1991; Wilpert 2001). With regard to terminological determination in order to produce interpretative sovereignty (Foucault 1994), my paper exemplifies in the second part that the term ›migration literature‹ collects selected and limited fields of social, historical and political knowledge in perspective adjustment and in order to classify literature beyond aesthetic criteria. By this means, inductive standards (Müller 2010a; 2010b) classify the literary object ›migration‹ ontologically and regardless of factuality of the author’s life on the one hand and fictionality of narrative text on the other. The ontological classification has been used, for example, in contexts that replace the figure of stranger ( Fremder ) by the figure of migrant and determines the latter as figuration of external space of culture. The replacement suggests a perspective rigidity in the cultural production of knowledge that flows into a terminological classification and claims with the term ›migration literature‹ sovereignty over culture. From this point of view, the author and his work should be located in the external space of canonized literature. The second part of my paper comes to the conclusion that the term ›migration literature‹ has been developed in politicized frames of external-textual ›accepted truths‹ and bases its stability on cultural essentialism and exclusion regardless of heterogenetic appearance (Bhatti 2015). With regard to theories of »literature on the move« (Ette 2001), my paper understands that migration has always formed a considerable part of literary production. Therefore, migration could be understood as a literary motive. This meaning would undermine an ontological understanding of culture. Narrative texts develop poetics of migration and create by figurations of migration a poly-perspectivity in which migration advances to a polysemantic motive. My paper discusses these thoughts in the context of cultural memory in the third part and understands varied and multifaceted constructions of cultural memory on all sides of cultural borders. This part confronts the asymmetrical relationship between motive and terminology with discussions on migration as narrative of cultural memory that belongs to cultural majority and minority equally, at the same time and in the same space. Based on this understanding, my paper argues that migration as a motive construct shapes and leads discourses of culture under the conditions of global re-formation. The shift of the perspective from conceptual classification to close-readings of literary constructions should lead us to considerations about the openness of the narrative in distinction to terminological unity and should also initiate a paradigm shift in locating migration in discourses of literary studies. The theoretical considerations will be exemplified in the fourth section by Mohammad Hossein Allafis Frankfurter Trilogie that is a collection of the novels Die Nächte am Main (1998), Die letzte Nacht mit Gabriela (2000) and Gabriela findet einen Stapel Papier (2012). The fourth part of my paper examines in Frankfurter Trilogie a reading that integrates migration as a motive into the discourse of cultural memory of global challenges. Using the example of the Trilogie , this part of my paper demonstrates that discussions on migration in the context of cultural memory could initiate a shift in the perspective of reception from conceptual homogenization to narrative openness. The shift of perspective shows that literature translates the questions of community into the aesthetic perception of the form of culture and civilization in which the community actually articulates and appears itself and shows also that reading of migration as a statement about one nation has lost its explanatory power. The last part of my paper resumes my thoughts and takes position in the current fields of research in literary studies.