Theory and Practise in Literary Textual Analysis Tools

Panel Description
Through discussion of several exemplary literary textual
analysis tools, participants on this panel explore elements
of the literary studies community's reaction to textual analysis
computer tool development -- and, particularly, how theorists
perceive the development of tools as an activity that supports,
tests, models, and expands upon their work. Panel contributors
challenge the oft-perceived disparity between the 'lower'
criticism (enumerative, bibliographic, re-presentative, &c.) in
which most computing tools that we use have their origins and
the 'higher' criticism often associated with thematically-oriented
literary critical theory.
Geoffrey Rockwell, McMaster U (presenter)
Matt Jockers, Stanford U (presenter)
Susan Schreibman, U Maryland (presenter)
Ray Siemens, U Victoria (chair and respondent)
Interrupting the Machine to Think About It
Geoffrey Rockwell
"A machine may be defined as a system of interruptions or
breaks (coupures). . . Every machine, in the first place, is
related to a continual material flow (hylè) that it cuts into."
(Deleuze and Guattari 36)
Text analysis tools (and for that matter any form of analysis)
perform two types of operations. They interrupt the flow of
continuous analog information in order to break it down into
samples that can be quantified and then they synthesize new
eruptions out of the samples. Even the representation of a text
in digital form is a matter of machined sampling and quantitative representation whether you chose to represent a
printed page as pixels or characters.
This interrupting and breaking down is a process that constrains
what computer-based tools can do and that is the first point of
this paper. The sampling and quantization also makes it possible
to develop synthetic processes that create new hybrid artefacts
like text visualizations or sonoric representations, the second
point of this paper.
Finally, the breaking down (and not the transparent functioning)
is the (error) message of the textual machine. We know the
machine when it fails, when it is in error, and when it delivers
monstrous results. To stand back and look at a machine, as
opposed to looking through it, is to think through ambitious
failure.
Such a thinking through a computer is pragmatic theorizing in
a tradition of thinking while tinkering - a thinking often
provoked by what is at hand. What is proposed is a theory of
computer assisted text analysis that addresses the way such
ruptures stress interpretation. Development happens in rupture,
both the programming development that scripts computers and
the performance of thinking (about machines and texts) called
developing a theory.
In the meantime, The Bug that mocks us and interrupts our
demonstrations is also what provokes reflection and adaptation.
We wouldn't want it any other way, except at the moment of
machined interruption, for which reason a demonstration of
TAPoRware text analysis tools will interrupt this paper.
Bibliography
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia. Trans. Robert Hurley. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1983.
Ullman, Ellen. The Bug. New York: Nan. A. Talese, 2003.
Yan, Lian, and Geoffrey Rockwell. TAPoRware. Accessed
2005-03-22. <http://taporware.mcmaster.ca/>
Visualizing the Hypothetical, Encoding the
Argument
Susan Schreibman
The Versioning Machine (VM) <http://www.mith2.um
d.edu/products/ver-mach> was launched at
ACH/ALLC 2002 as a tool to display multiple witnesses of
deeply encoded text. It was designed as a presentation tool so
that editors could engage with the challenging work of textual
editing, rather than becoming experts in other technologies,
such as XSLT, JavaScript and CSS, all components of the
Versioning Machine. The application allows encoders who
utilize the Text Encoding Initiative’s Parallel Segmentation
method of encoding to view their documents through a
browser-based interface which parses the text into its constituent
documents (at present the VM works best with Internet Explorer
6.0 and higher, but it also works with Firefox for PC and Mac).
The Versioning Machine also provides several features for the
end user to engage with texts, including highlighting a structural
unit (paragraphs, lines, or divs) across the witness set,
synchronized scrolling, and the ability to display a robust
typology of notes.
The TEI’s Critical Apparatus tagset (as outlined in Chapter 19
of the TEI’s Guidelines) provides a method for capturing
variants across a witness set. This highly structured encoding
brings together in one document n number of witnesses which
an editor considers the same work. The encoding enabled by
parallel segmentation provides a typology for indicating what
structural units of text, or parts of structural units, belong to
each witness. In this way, content which appears in more than
one version of the work is encoded once, with attribute values
indicating which witness or witnesses it belongs to. It is an
extremely efficient way of encoding in that the editor is saved
the repetitious work of encoding the content which persists
over multiple witnesses, as one would do if each witness were
encoded as a separate document.
The apparatus element or <app> acts as a container element
binding together the various readings, which are encoded within
a reading <rdg> element. Attribute values indicate which
witness or witnesses a particular structural unit (a paragraph or
line, for example), or subunit, belongs to (See figure 1.).
<lg n="1">
<l n="1">
<app>
<rdg wit="a1 a2 a3 a4 pub">The sun burns
out,</rdg>
</app> </l>
<l n="2">
<app>
<rdg wit="a1">The world withers,</rdg>
<rdg wit="a3 a4">The world
withers,<milestone unit="stanza"/></rdg>
<rdg wit="a2 pub">The world
withers<milestone unit="stanza"/></rdg>
</app> </l>
Figure 1. A fragment of parallel segmentation encoding
When parsed in the Versioning Machine, the aforementioned
fragment, the title of the text, along with the first few lines, is
rendered as follows for the first three versions: Figure 2: The title of ‘Autumn’ rendered in the Versioning Machine
In Lessard and Levison’s 1998 article "Introduction: quo
vadimus", they argue that computational humanities research
has not achieved a level of acceptance because of the differences
in "opposing intellectual paradigms, the scientific and the
humanistic" . The scientific, they argue, is based on formulation
of hypotheses, collection of data and controlled testing and
replication. The humanistic paradigm, they argue is based on
argument from example, "where the goal is to bring the
interlocutor to agreement by coming to see the materials at
hand in the same light" (263).
While the Versioning Machine was designed as a visualization
tool, it is no less importantly an environment within which
editors realize a theory of the text, bringing readers to an
understanding of the work as embodied in its multiple witnesses.
It can thus be seen within Lessard and Levison humanistic
paradigm, as a tool for presenting a reading of the work through
its editing and encoding, itself a primary theoretical event
(McGann 75). Moreover, this primary event can illuminated
and explicated though more traditional scholarly apparatus,
such as annotation, adding an additional layer of textual
analysis.
Thus the Versioning Machine provides a venue not only to
realize contemporary editorial theory, but to challenge it. It
meets the requirement that Stéfan Sinclair outlines in his 2003
article "Computer-Assisted Reading; Reconceiving Text
Analysis" in that it is a tool which is relevant to literary critics’
current approaches to textual criticism (178). The Versioning
Machine is an active editing environment: it has been used by
encoders editing texts as different as Renaissance plays and
Dadaist poetry. The Versioning Machine is a tool which takes
as its premise that the goal of much contemporary editing is
not to create a definitive edition, but rather a "hypothesis" of
the text (Kane-Donaldson as quoted in McGann 77), which can
be read alongside an unedited edition of the text (that is, a
reproduction of an image of the text in documentary form;
McGann 77, Siemens). As such, it makes visible encoding as
criticism, providing an environment to challenge our approaches
to complex texts in terms of theories of encoding, as well as
contemporary editorial theory.
Bibliography
Lessard, G., and M. Levinson. "Introduction: quo vadimus?"
Computers and the Humanities 31.4 (1998): 261-269.
McGann, Jerome. Radiant Textuality: literature after the World
Wide Web. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Schreibman, Susan, Amit Kumar, and Jarom McDonald. "The
Versioning Machine." Literary and Linguistic Computing 18.1
(2003): 101-107.
Siemens, Ray. "‘Unediting and Non-Editions’The Theory (and
Politics) of Editing." Anglia 119.3 (2001): 423-455.
Sinclair, Stéfan. "Computer-Assisted Reading; Reconceiving
Text Analysis." Literary and Linguistic Computing 18.2
(2003): 175-184.
Sperberg-McQueen, C.M., and L. Burnard, eds. TEI P4:
Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange. Text
Encoding Initiative Consortium, 2002. Accessed 2004-10-09.
<http://www.tei-c.org/P4X/>
Vetter, Lara, and Jarom McDonald. "Witnessing Dickinson's
Witnesses." Literary and Linguistic Computing 18.2 (2003):
151-165.
Electronic Text Analysis and a New Methodology
for Canonical Research
Matt Jockers
Using a combination of 'typical' text analysis tools (concordance
and collocation) and other custom tools developed by the author,
this paper demonstrates that conventional 'higher' criticism with
its fashionable and thematically-oriented theoretical approaches
fails as a means of assessing and generalizing about canons and
genres of literature. Drawing on a case-study of the canon of
Irish-American prose, the paper employs a quantitative and,
indeed, scientific methodology to offer a radical reinterpretation
of the canon.
In support of this research the author collected, coded, and
categorized a database collection of prose literature including
over 750 individual works written by some 280 different
authors. The collection spans a period of 300 years and nears
being comprehensive in terms of its scope and coverage of the
prose canon and genre of Irish-American ethnic literature. In
addition to the usual metadata associated with electronic
archives, each work in the collection is tagged with metadata
related to the nature of the work: metadata includes geographic
setting (East or West of the Mississippi), regional setting
(Northeast, Southwest, Mountain, Pacific, and etc), information
about whether the work is set in an urban or rural environment
as well as data specific to the author of each text. Using his
own Corpus Analysis Tools Suite (CATools), a set of analytic tools developed using php and mysql for doing both semantic
and quantitative text-analysis of materials specifically housed
within a relational database structure, the author has mined the
material in order to reveal latent chronological, semantic, and
geographic trends within the overall canon since its beginning
in the late 18th century to the present.
The results of this work not only challenge the best available
scholarship on the subject of Irish-American literature but
further challenge the efficacy of contemporary and fashionable
theoretical approaches to literature that are based on the
'close-readings' of texts. In making the case for a re-evaluation
of the Irish-American canon, the paper challenges the basic and
fundamental methodology of traditional literary study, and
demonstrates in clear and indisputable terms that a quantitative
and, indeed, scientific analysis of the literary data is not only
valuable to the study of a genre or a canon of literature but
essential if we are to ever go beyond the mere 'readings' and
interpretations of texts.
Response
Ray Siemens