Teaching with Text Analysis

Lastweek,ateamofresearchersledbynoted“spacearchaeologist”SarahParcakannounced theyhaveidentified whattheybelieveisasecondNorsesettlementinCanadausinginfrared imagestakenbysatelliteshovering some400milesaboveEarth.

TextAnalysisDistantvs.closereadingToocomputational,soul-suckingJustwordfrequencycountsDoesn’tanswermyquestions

TextAnalysis

Stanford analysis of Moby Dick, https://dhs.stanfor d.edu/visualization/more-networks/

Inthehumanities,wedonotteachtheanswers.Rather,weteachstudentshowtoaskgoodquestions.

How to Not Read a Victorian NovelPaul Fyfe, North Carolina State University

Acynicmightcallthisprofessingignorance.Andthatisexactlyright.

How to Not Read a Victorian NovelPaul Fyfe, North Carolina State University

ModestDH

ModestDH• online,familiar,self-evidentuse• collaborative• avoidhavingtoteachthetool• exhaustthetoolsyou’vegot• proofsofconcept• GTDthroughiterativepractice• scaffoldedresearchwithreal-lifedata

DigitalToolsintheClassroomFromknowledgeabletoknowledge-able

MichaelWesch,KansasStateUniversity

DigitalToolsintheClassroomFromknowledgeabletoknowledge-able

MichaelWesch,KansasStateUniversity

DigitalToolsintheClassroomFromknowledgeabletoknowledge-able

MichaelWesch,KansasStateUniversity

DigitalToolsintheClassroomNotjustcommunicationanddisseminationHypothesizing,testingCreatingCollaborating

TextAnalysis

Search/Indexing

FrequencyCollation/Classification

TextAnalysis

Search/Indexing• Discovery• Diachronic

TextAnalysis

Frequency• Collocation

–Documentcomparison–Plagiarismdetection

• Concordance

TextAnalysisCollation/Classification

• Entityrecognition• POSTagging• Documentclassification

–Searchengines–Unsupervised,supervised/topicmodels

...as a complete novice, I am not endorsing Ngram for serious historical research. I have concluded, however, in a competition between Angry Birds and NGram, the latter is a far more fascinating diversion.

funkthe united states is, the united states are

“one nation under God”,”one nation indivisible”

Roosevelt Island, Welfare IslandCase sensitive!

Wildcard searchUniversity of *

Inflection search"book_INF a hotel" will display results for "book", "booked", "books", and "booking"

Case insensitive searchuse the checkbox next to search field

Part-of-speech Tagsappending _VERB or _NOUN (example would be the word tackle)

https://books.google.com/ngrams

InclassAnotherexample

English professor at Central Connecticut State University, in New Britain, CT.

ENG 385: Children’s LiteraturePut 100 “tags” into the ABC Books Archive

Feel free to do more than simply name items. You can tag for style or mood. You can tag a concept or an idea. You can be general or specific. In brief, you can tag whatever you see that you think deserves tagging.

ENG 385: Children’s LiteraturePut 100 “tags” into the ABC Books Archive

Feel free to do more than simply name items. You can tag for style or mood. You can tag a concept or an idea. You can be general or specific. In brief, you can tag whatever you see that you think deserves tagging.

ENG 385: Children’s LiteratureOption 2a: Single text analysisUse Voyant-Tools 2.0 to help develop your response to one of the paper topics in Option 1 or to develop your own topic. For example, Voyant’s text analysis tools (Bubblelines, Cirrus, Corpus Grid, etc.) can help you track the frequencies of words or images, look for patterns of language use, or provide other statistical information that might help you build or defend an argument about your chosen literary text. In other words, you’ll be using the computer’s analytical power to help you uncover crucial details to use in your paper.

Option 2b: Comparative analysis.Using Voyant-Tools 2.0 (http://beta.voyant- tools.org) or a pre-approved* text analysis program of your choice, identify four words that are distinctive to each of the major texts we have read so far. Then use those distinctive words to build an argument about three of the texts.

Paul Fyfe, How to Not Read a Victorian NovelRuminate. What insights, if any, do these tools provide? What kinds of words appear inclouds? Are there patterns or in/consistencies? How might you ‘read’ groups of words?With the text analysis software, what keywords or patterns did you pursue and why? Whathave you learned (and not learned) about your book? What do you think are the values /limitations of ‘not reading’ this way? Upon what logics are these tools premised, and whatmight that suggest about ‘close’ reading’? Where might it be useful in future researchprojects or in analysing other kinds of texts?

Solitude from Henry David Thoreau's Walden

AntConc

Stanford NER

MALLET