Blog #2: “On Distant Reading” Due: 9/20/18 11 pm
- Context: From this point forward in the course you will engage in critical analysis as we experiment with each Digital Humanities approach. Critical analysis in this case involves articulating a research question, examining that research question using the DH approach that you have experimented with, and synthesizing from that experimentation two things:
- Does this particular approach help you to answer your research question?
If it does (or if it leads you to unexpected and compelling new questions), what conclusions can you draw that you might not with more traditional humanistic means? - If the approach does not help you to address your research question, why not?
This week you have experimented with several text analysis and visualization tools within the Voyant tool suite. Each tool “reveals” different things about a text – relationships between types of words, frequencies, etc. - In this blog post, you are going to use the full compiled transcription of your memoir(s). First, summarize your document(s). Then, use the metrics available to you in Voyant, such as total word count, total unique words, sentence length etc., most frequent words, to describe the text from a lexical point of view. Again, what are the keywords and what are their collocates? What patterns emerge across all the texts? Perform searches of five of the key terms. What patterns emerge in at least 3 different tools?
- In your post include 3 visualizations of your own and refer to three points in the Whitley reading. Post with the category “Blog #2” and add three tags.
