Again this week, I have had difficulty grasping the technical aspects of Svenja Adolph’s book Introducting Electronic Text Analysis. To be honest, last week’s reading was so difficult for me that I was unable to post about it.

I think I understand the basic premise of Chapters 4, 5 and 6. In chapter 4, Adolph discusses the need for us to use concordance analysis in corpus studies due to issues of co-occurance and association that can complicate language. In the end-of-chapter activity, the word stuff is used in a concordance output. In the output, the node is almost always prefaced by the word and. This co-occurance of the word and in accompaniment of stuff gives an interesting insight as to the context in which the word stuff is used–often as a generally ambiguous filler usually found at the end of a sentence. In chapter 5, Adolph discusses using corpus stylistics to analyze literary material. I enjoyed this chapter more, as I personally prefer literary material over web-based information. In referencing Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, Adolph struck a note in me that helped me comprehend the chapter’s topic more thoroughly. I have read Conrad’s novel and realize the underlying motif of uncertainty, and so the fact that a concordance search of terms such as “something” turned up such results reinforces that theme. I think its fascinating that author’s can set a tone or convey a feeling so strongly, purely by diction. When I think of other novels I have read, I wonder how often I may find that is the case. Does Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin contain in its words the tones of frustration and secrecy? How does the word choice in The Awakening by Kate Chopin express the overall themes of complacent oppression and inevitable freedom? Finally, chapter 6 discusses  the role key words, grammatical structure and ideology can play in analyzing electronic texts. My group for the upcoming project hopes to analyze the blog HelloGiggles, which is moderated by twenty-something young professional women with an interest in maintaining a youthful, exciting and fashionable lifestyle. I am curious  what keywords will be helpful to us in our report, as well as how the grammatical style of the individual writers will affect our findings.

Overall, while I tried my best to understand the reading, I feel a little lost on the idea of electronic text analysis and anticipate clarification in class.