It is common knowledge that different authors have defining styles of writing. Hemingway was known for his use of simple and accessible language. Mark Twain was known for his social satire and his use of dialect to create memorable characters. When analyzing great works of literature, critics look to these styles in order to explain larger themes. Throughout my English classes, I have analyzed literature in this way. After reading Svenja Adolphs’s discussion of electronic text analysis and how it can apply to literature analysis, I realized that linguistic choices and patterns within an author’s language hold extreme importance to the context and understanding of a work as a whole.
Context plays an important role in the understanding of language patterns.
If you asked me to connect literature and electronic textual analysis a few days ago, I would have been at a loss for words. Just the very sounds of these two different terms seem to represent two polar opposites. However, according to Adolphs, this sort of analysis can reveal much more about a textual work than can be deciphered through a sequential analysis of the language. For example, Adolphs points out that by analyzing a word in relation to another word within the same context, we are able to learn more about the word’s importance and meaning: “”Adding a context word to a concordance search allows us to study patterns that are not restricted to a continuous sequence”(115).
Looking beyond literature or even the written word, electronic textual analysis proves the importance of context by looking into the way that our brain understands and processes language. Often phrases or cliches that we use are stored in our brain as a single item. Adolphs emphasizes the important role that concordance analysis has within the study of language patterns:
“Concordance analysis has a key place in language description and lexicography, especially because such an analysis can reveal patters of co-occurrence and association that not only challenge some traditional beliefs about language as a slot and filler system, but also lead to insights that are not easily generated on the basis of intuition alone”(127)
Contextual analysis is now expanding beyond the larger and more general spectrum of written themes and styles. By looking at the context of specific word pairings and associations, we are now able to further understand and interpret the meaning and importance of individual linguistic styles. Adolphs uses the example of the character Anna from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. We are able to assess her character merely by the words that precede and follow her name within the text. This is a simple example that demonstrates the potential of using context in electronic textual analysis.
Language patterns, frequencies, and word clusters all have an important role to play in both an analysis of a work and the way we use spoken words. Looking at semantic prosodies can “be useful in uncovering the speaker’s real attitude even where he is at pains to conceal it”(142). In addition, we need to understand that we learn and use “multi-word”(122) units everyday With the electronic text analysis, it is easier than before to understand context within individual words, proving useful not only in literature, but in also in our use of spoken language.
I think that this is very interesting especially in applying it to speech and the frequencies of words and phrases we use every day. This is especially interesting because in a way by using this tool we can identify the time of the literature by the phrases and words used by the writer. There are definite patterns that are time specific. I appreciated your article and how you applied it to your studies.
I like how you mentioned the way in which Adolphs uses the example of characters in novels such as Anna to prove that electronic text analysis has a wide array of applications in further understanding how language is used. I think it is an interesting concept that we are now able to search for character names or people mentioned in certain literature and that we are able to come to a conclusion about what type of individual they are based on the association of words surrounding their name in sentences. I think that this tool is very beneficial because it allows for people interested in discovering hidden meanings in literature to find out information that may have gone unnoticed through general text analysis. So much information in today’s world is currently undiscovered and I believe that we can tap into this knowledge through pattern recognition and analysis of texts through electronic means.