Addie - Data mining & quantifying literature
I think the most interesting part of using quantitative data with literature is that it can point out things we might not notice while reading normally. In “Quantifying Literature”, Jesse Rosenthal talks about using computers to add to traditional close reading, not replace it. One example that stood out to me was his analysis of Dickens’s use of words like “that” and “which.” There was enough of a pattern that he could roughly tell when a novel was written. I thought that was interesting because those are such ordinary words that I would never think twice about them while reading. Using Voyant made me understand this idea a bit better. It can show repeated words, connections between terms, and where certain words appear throughout a text. But I also think you have to be careful with what you take away from those results. Just because a word appears a lot does not necessarily mean it is important. A word cloud or graph can show you that something is happening, but you still have to go ...