Follow Changes in Language Use by a Particular Writer
This recipe uses the Googlizer, frequency lists, concordances and collocation to explore how a writer’s use of language changes over a lifetime.
Ingredients
- A collection of electronic texts by a writer whose changing use of language you wish to explore
- A Thesaurus Tool such as Eva at POETS
- An Aggregation Tool such as TAPoR Googlizer
- A Collocation tool such as the TAPoR Find Collocates Tool
- A Concordance tool such as the TAPoR Find Words - Concordance Tool
- A List Words tool such as the TAPoR List Words Tool
This recipe needs a good exercise to demonstrate how to Follow Changes in Language Use by a Particular WriterSteps
- Log in to the TAPoR portal;
;
- Build a collection of works representing the partiular writer's oeuvre, either by obtaining electronic versions from a sources such as Electronic Text Center at UVA or by using the TAPoR Googlizer
;
- Generate a frequency list from the aggregated text using TAPoR List Words Tool to appreciate the nature of the writer's vocabulary;
- Save the resulting list to your workbench with a distinct label;
- Choose select vocabulary to explore from the word list;
- Apply a Collocation tool such as TAPoR Find Collocates Tool to each of the keywords to select related vocabulary;
- Explore the results of your collocation for other fixed phrases of interest that don’t involve your keywords;
- Use a concordance tool such as TAPoR Find Words - Concordance Tool to locate other instances of those or related phrases;
- Repeat this process for each text you are interested in;
- Compare the individual frequncy lists that you saved to your workbench considering apparent similarities and differences.
Discussion
Why Login
When using an aggregation tool such as the Googlizer, you must be able to save text to the Databench as part of the process. To make this possible you must be logged into the system to maintain your own personal workspace. If you require access to TAPoR please visit the TAPoR signup page.Why Use the Thesaurus
After finding the list of words from the writers work, it is useful to use the thesaurus tool to find related words that you can use to explore further nuances of the writers’ changing use of language. The key words that you identify as points of exploration themselves mat have evolved themselves and the subtle changes in word choice can be identified through contrasting synonyms.Glossary
- Googlizer
- The Googlizer queries the Google search engine using a word or phrase you provide and returns the results of the Google search.
Next Steps/Further Information
- List of All Recipes
- Exercise to Follow Changes in Language Use by a Particular Writer
- Help with Particular Tools
- Background on Text Analysis
- Information about the TAPoR Collocation Tool
- Information about the TAPoR Concordance Tool
- Information about the TAPoR Googlizer Tool
- Information about the TAPoR List Words Tool