https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1jNGQNPrwU-j8oWzP-gU5fKlYIC9CWThhZDruIx29
Google Spreadsheet Info
Cards
map locations of videos
Pie graph
Bar graph
Donut graph
DHM 293
Finding 19th century pieces of literature was a lot more difficult than I thought upon beginning this task. It took me a few days to find something, but then I came across Lady of the Tiger. The first seven pages involve multiple different types of marginalia ranging from underlining, to circling, to defining, and to annotating. For the purpose of the assignment I will be ignoring the marginalia written in ink because it does not date back pre-1923. On the first page there are quite a few notes in the margins and circled words with synonyms or definitions above them. The circled words with definitions beside them make me think that the reader could have been a student like me, or a non-native speaker who is simply trying to get more acquainted with the language. The reader also underlined important character traits and facts about events happening in the story rather than stylistic details. They might have been an amateur reader or perhaps knew exactly the information they needed for whatever the novel was being read for. For a collegiate level paper, a professor would be looking for more than just a summary of a novel, however. They would rather appreciate a paper geared toward how the author writes and how they portray the information underlined. So perhaps, if they were hypothetically a student, they would be at a lower level in their schooling than the college level. One note does however say “choice of language” on page 3 in regards to the first paragraph of that page. So the reader might have a higher set of critical and analytical skills than previously thought. Their thought process is really exposed though towards the middle of the same page when the reader talks of comparing and contrasting love and jealousy. The marginalia in the book I selected really gives us some insight into the mind of one individual of the Victorian Era.
Johanna Turano’s Intro Post
Hi everybody, I’m Johanna Turano aka Jojo! I am a freshman this year and plan to study as a graphic design major and receive a BFA. I am interested in singing, playing lacrosse, and drawing in my spare time. Hope we have a good semester!
Historical Interrelation: Words and War
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle penned all the Sherlock Holmes stories between 1891 and 1927, creating a literary legend that would not soon be forgotten. By using topic modeling techniques and some fancy algorithms, we can investigate the potential relevance of word usage in his stories.
The Great War was a momentous event that almost exactly bisected Doyles’ creations, so I will view my ten topics through this lens. I found an interesting website for historical background on London during this time period, which helped me to identify significant events.
Estate vs Business
In contrasting estate and business, I noticed a spike in the former before 1905 and again before 1910. This could have been because British colonies had large tea estates in India. However, estate crashed back down after 1910 and business led throughout the rest of the time period. It is possible that the industrial growth of London led to this change, and both words are lower during the war and flu pandemic of 1918.
Search vs Case
Regarding search and case, there is a slight rise in each during the war years. Once again, the flu of 1918 and the peak of both words during the 1910-1920 decade may involve correlation rather than causation. The term search may also have increased during the war because soldiers could be missing in action.
Crime vs Reasoning
Reasoning was mentioned more than crime prior to 1915, but the use of crime skyrocketed after this, calming back down in the 1920’s. This fits well with the suffrage movement and trade unions growing, as this disrupted established society. From the 20th century London website:
The suffragettes, the Irish ‘Home Rule’ movement and trade unions all agitated for change, sometimes with violence. In 1918 some political demands were met through the Representation of the People Act, which gave the vote to working men and women over 30.
Appearance vs Expression
Appearance quite possibly became less important than expression after the war, due to the realities it forced upon the people of London. This trend continued through the 20’s, as the growth of jazz may have led to expression becoming more common.
Silent Reflection vs Public
Silent reflection had an interesting spike in 1908, and it dropped precipitously, becoming equal to public by 1914. It is possible that the Alien Act impacted this word usage, as many immigrants tried to come to London during this period. Perhaps many Londoners had thoughts about the impact on their society, but the war decreased their time for such thoughts.
While I am not certain about these linguistic developments, I feel topic modeling could be an important tool to help scholars revisit the past, specifically helpful in distinguishing how history affects word usage.
Topic Modeling
The settings I have used were 100 topics, 5,000 iterations and 30 topic words.
Smoking- chair sat fire pipe rose glanced smoke arm tobacco visitor cigar lit asked laughed silence smoking opposite laid back smoked walk armchair leaning dropped seat comfortable waved cigarette details heartily
Residential Streets- house road side place walked drive miles front led hall high stopped standing building gate windows grounds park trap houses mile yards trees low reached cottage narrow row upper lane
Family/Relationships- woman lady husband wife love young loved beautiful girl marriage daughter married nature women maid fiend de seldom marry blame lovely lover hated mistress loves physical hatred listen merville hilda
Crime (general)- crime murder death night reason police account charge evidence appeared committed proved violence arrest remained motive attempt criminal murdered terrible conduct lucas inquest attention constable probable attempted hideous strong event
Finance- money hundred business pounds thirty thousand large pay milverton worth price fifty sum letters check ten paid firm offer terms named ruin bank work city client advance bag cost market
Transportation- back carriage past drove hurried companion journey round pulled save started reach town reached follow cab drive imagine class early wheels immediately curve van stepped holmes rattled swiftly luggage coachman.
Crime(murder)-back left met father knew death poor sister returned died mother fate witness alive called make swear struck terrible unhappy enemies offered jump faithful reply cry success interview impress absent
Crime Scene- body lay found shot head revolver dead blood weapon wound floor bullet pistol lying handle finally hurt close clothes cried fatal die fired powder wounded brains sight inflicted surgeon horribly
Investigation- case watson effect remarked complete follow conclusion knowledge simple methods form result greatest reasoning work art produced credit observation formed deduction occasionally occur cases working touch step poison drug telegraph
Foreign affairs- english american time von gentleman german bork fancy brother british agents greek london added prisoner occasion england country melas secretary book exclamation living people interpreter car admiration mister worst main
DeFranco_Google Fusion Tables Asignment
Google Fusion Tables Project: Authors
Here is the link to my spreadsheet of the Google Fusions Tables project:
Here are the screenshots of the cards, map of birthplace, and charts 1, 2, and 3:
Word Cloud Project: A Scandal in Bohemia
Word clouds or tag clouds are visual depictions of word occurrence that offer greater importance to words that appear more frequently in a piece of text. Moreover, the larger the word is in the cloud, the more common the word was in the source of text.
For the word cloud project, I chose the Voyant word cloud generator and the Sherlock Holmes story called A Scandal in Bohemia. In the first word cloud that I have created, it shows what was happening at the beginning of the story when Sherlock Holmes receives a letter in the mail from the King of Bohemia who is asking Sherlock Holmes to do him a favor. During this part of the story, the words that show up the most often is paper, german, bohemia, stands, note, and peculiar. These key words help the reader to understand how the story obtained the title it was given because the word “peculiar” describes something unusual like a scandal is going on and the word “bohemia” describes the location that is involved in the peculiarity. Moreover, based on this particular word cloud, I learned that something peculiar is happening and somehow an individual from Bohemia is involved based on a note that Sherlock Holmes has received.
In the second word cloud that I developed, it shows what happened at the end of the story when Sherlock Holmes receives a letter from Irene Adler in regards to the most wanted photograph. During this part of the story, it is evident that some of the words that show up most often are Sherlock Holmes, photograph, know, dear, and really. These fundamental words help the reader understand that Sherlock Holmes did in fact find the photograph but failed to realize how stealthy Irene Adler really is.
Even though using word cloud can be an interesting and creative way to portray information, there are also some negative aspects of this tool. According to the Better Evaluation website, one of the pros of this tool is that there are various word and tag cloud generators that are freely available on the internet and creating them is really straightforward. However, based on the Nieman Lab article word clouds can be considered a negative tool because word clouds support only the crudest sorts of textual analysis. In addition, word clouds focus on only the occurrence of specific words instead of concepts and ideas that are important and will help you understand what is going on. Lastly, Word clouds leave the readers to figure out the context of the data by themselves because they have to translate what the jumble of words are trying to depict and explain.
Novels and Tales by Maria Edgeworth : A Christmas Gift
After searching in the library for at least an hour in addition to when I had searched during class on Tuesday, I finally found some writing in a 19th century book! It seems like I probably went through 50 before I could find one that actually had writing in it outside of just underlining marks. Going through this many old, dusty, mildew-y books sure did spark my allergies up, but at least I can say that it was worth it because I found what I was looking for!
My Find
Book Name: Novels and Tales, Vol. 10
Author: Maria Edgeworth
Publisher: New York Harper & Brothers, 1846
To be honest, I picked this book up because it looked really worn and torn. My inner detective had a feeling it had to be old – and it was! It was published back in 1846, making it a 169-year-old book. The outside of this book looked nothing special. There was only an inscription on the spine and neither on the front nor back covers. Due to its worn nature and the state that the binding of this book was in, I can make an inference and say that it probably still has its original cover and binding from 1846. Opening up the book, there is a stamp mark that says “STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LIBRARY NEW PALTZ, N.Y.” On the opposite side, was writing dating back to 1849.
The apparent guess to make here is that M.R. Fisher received this book on December 25, 1849 (or at least a few days around there) as a gift for the holiday. I believe that this was written with a fountain pen.
I have to say that this lab was a super interesting and informative experience! Looking at my finding as well as the cool marginalia that my classmates have found in our very own STL showed me how much we really do overlook how much history is hiding here at SUNY New Paltz. I had never in a million years imagined that we would have these old treasures in such a public place like our general stacks collection, but I am so glad that we did.
Lauren Gao’s Extra Credit: Victorian London: A bit of ee-nif ‘cant’,
Now the two Victorian London accents I, most likely, just insensitively appropriated and horribly butchered were of the Costermongers and London’s Cadgers (beggars). While reading around Lee Jackson’s Victorian London Dictionary, in the Words & Expressions tab, I stumbled into a short piece about the different English accents just within the city of London itself. Everything from the metropolitan elite, to the poor, or to the (actual) meat butchers themselves have surprisingly distinguished manners of pronunciation, granted, just within the radius of a city.
