Hermeneuti.ca – The Rhetoric of Text Analysis

We discussed the London workshop. We will add the following:

• A section on Skins where we talk about the three skins. We would have one cheat sheet for each skin that is an annotated view of the skin followed by a few paragraphs of text.
• A section on panels that is linked to from the panelWeb frameworks like the TAPoR Portal organize information into panels (sometimes called portlets or coplets.) These can me minimized, maximized and closed using the three buttons in the upper left-hand corner of the panel. With Voyant you can export panels of results and place them into other web sites. Return to Glossary. help.
• One or two introductory recipes tied to a skin.

We will need sample texts for those who don't bring one.

We came up with a cool organizational correspondence between skins and our case studies. We essentially see 3-4 types of text analysis that correspond to different skins (arrangements of tools) for Voyeur.

1. Analyzing one text
2. Comparing two texts
3. Analyzing a small and coherent collection
4. Analyzing lots and lots

Models 1 and 2 correspond to Case 1 (Now Analyze That., Model 3 to Case 2 (Humanist), and Model 4 to Case 3 (Day of DH.)

The introduction needs to be rewritten for this.

It strikes me that an interesting project would recapitulate important text analysis projects. This would try to do the following:

• It would test results of previous projects by recapitulating.
• It would recreate the tools and the research methods - thereby testing them and their representation.
• It might document code in a way that was helpful and lets others use methods/code.

We discussed today whether the word "toy" in the "There's a toy in my essay" conveys the right idea. What are we getting at?

• We want to convey the playfulness of text analysis.
• We want to lead from looking at how graphs work to embedded panels (hermeneuti.ca or toys.)
• We want to argue that embedded panels are more effective because they invite exploration - in other words they are toys. They invite exploration that then leads to discovery of process. The discoveryof process is an alternative to long methodological sections.
• The word "toy" is meant to be provocative. It is meant to confront and provoke a discussion of the place of the exploration and playfulness. I'm hoping that "toy" draws attention to what we think is new - the interactivity of the embedded panels which then invites exploration and engagement.

None the less there are some issues:

• We need to make sure that we return to the "toy" in the essay and explain that at the end. Otherwise we should change the title.
• We need a final section that wraps up the chapter by connecting the problem of rhetoric with our proposed solution.
• Where are we going to discuss the playfulness of interactivity and hermeneutica? Is this the chapter? Do we talk about visualization here?

Reading Smith and Parunak I find myself wondering if we shouldn't try recreating some of their tools. Is there a role for the historical rearticulation (recreation, reanimation, remediation?) of particular tools that were significant. What would it meanIn statistics, the mean is the arithmetic average of a set of values. When used in text analysis, the set of values is the distribution of words in the source text, and the mean value the word with the occurrence rate closest to the average. For more information, see the Wikipedia. Return to Glossary. to try to reperform things like ARRAS or the distribution graphs that Parunak discusses?

Geoffrey R.

Trying to read Smith's essay on "Image and Imagery" in Joyce's Portrait I realized today that there is lovely circularity to Smith and Joyce:

• Smith finds in Joyce an esthetic theory that is based on the affective image; and in turn he is fascinated by the effect of visualization images in interpretation
• Smith plots the intensity of imagery in the Portrait; and presents an image (the graph) at the moment of demonstrative intensity in his essay.
• Smith is interested in imagery and using computer generated imagery - see "Computer Criticism"
• Stephen Daedalus sees himself, by the end of the Portrait as an "artificer" or smith of experience. I wonder if John B. Smith does too?

Now I need to look closely at the esthetical theory of Stephen Daedalus - I think that is, for Smith, a proto hermeneutic that shows the place of computational interpretation.

I need to float this by Stéfan - I wonder if we can recreate his algorithm.

In the phone conference today we discussed help systems now that we are pointing people to Voyeur.

• We need better documentation.
• We need links from Voyeur to hel: When you click "?" at the top of Voyeur (in the collapsed bar) and you get the panelWeb frameworks like the TAPoR Portal organize information into panels (sometimes called portlets or coplets.) These can me minimized, maximized and closed using the three buttons in the upper left-hand corner of the panel. With Voyant you can export panels of results and place them into other web sites. Return to Glossary. with the link to the documentation, that link should open in a new window/tab.
• If you expand the Voyeur Tools: Reveal You Texts bar it should show a button that says "? Help" (which would open the panelWeb frameworks like the TAPoR Portal organize information into panels (sometimes called portlets or coplets.) These can me minimized, maximized and closed using the three buttons in the upper left-hand corner of the panel. With Voyant you can export panels of results and place them into other web sites. Return to Glossary.). It might also have a button "About", "Tutorial" - in other words we can have more verbose stuff up there.
• The help panels you get when you click should be more verbose. They should have at the end (where appropriate) something which says, "For more help see the documentation for this at <link to hermeneuti.ca page>". Ideally this could be a consistent button. It could just say "More" or "More: Go to Documentation".

I've been fascinated by the Canadian zombie movie Pontypool. I went through and transcribed the parts about the infection of language.

---

Dr. Mendez (about the infection of another character): "That's it, he is gone. He is just a crude radio signal, seeking.

... dialogue

Mendez: No ... it can't be, it can't be. It's viral, that much is clear. But not of the blood, not of the air, not on or even in our bodies. It is here.

Grant: Where?

Mendez: It is in words. Not all words, not all speaking, but in some. Some words are infected. And it spreads out when the contaminated word is spoken. Ohhhh. We are witnessing the emergence of a new arrangement for life ... and our language is its host. It could have sprung spontaneously out of a perception. If it found its way into language it could leap into reality itself, changing everything. It may be boundless. It may be a God bug.

Grant: OK, Dr. Mendez. Look, I don't even believe in UFOs, so I ... I've got to stop you there with that God bug thing.

Mendez: Well that is very sensible because UFOs don't exist. But I assure you, there is a monster loose and it is bouncing through our language, frantically trying to keep its host alive.

Grant: Is this transmission itself ... um ...

Mendez: No, no, no, no. If the bug enters us, it does not enter by making contact with our eardrum. It enters us when we hear the word and we understand it. Understand?

It is when the word is understood that the virus takes hold. And it copies itself in our understanding.

Grant: Should we be ... talking about this?

Sydney: What are we talking about?

Grant: Should we be talking at all?

Mendez: Well, to be safe, no, probably not. Talking is risky, and well, talk radio is high risk. And so ... we should stop.

Grant: But, we need to tell people about this. People need to know. We have to get this out.

Mendez: Well it's your call Mr Mazzy. But let's just hope that your getting out there doesn't destroy your world.



======================
Grant: "He (Dr. Mendes) said that understanding copies the virus.

...

How do you not understand something? How do you take a word and make it strange?

...

If not understanding a word disinfects it? ..."

Sydney: "You kill the word that's killing you."



=================
Grant Mazzy on air: "you have to stop understanding what you are saying. Stop understanding what you are saying."

Sydney Briar to Grant: "you're making sense. If you say 'don't understand it' it defeats the purpose"

(Announcement from outside in French which is subtitled in English), "Sydney Briar! Stop the broadcast! Stop the broadcast! The man who is speaking is sick."

Grant Mazzy: "The sky is a person. Laughter is walking ..."

...

(Sound of gunfire outside)

Sydney: "Shit ... they're killing people ..."

Grant on air: "Stop killing people ... Just listen to me. Listen to me."

(Silence)

Sydney: "Everyone's dead."

Grant on air: "You're just killing scared people. It's what you always do. You are killing scared people. You are like dogs. You smell fear and you pounce. Well, what the fuck happened today folks? Someone took a buzzsaw to your middle and they pulled out a wheeling devil and they spilled it right across your anthill. But you know what folks? We were never making sense. We were never making sense.

And today, today, when armageddon leaches out into your good, good mornings, you know what? It's just another day. Another day in Pontypool. The sun came up; you did what you did yesterday, and its exactly what you will do tomorrow.

Today's news folks ... Today's late-breaking, developing, just-across-my-desk news story is this. It's not the end of the world folks. It's just the end of the day. This is Grant Mazzy for CLSY Radio Nowhere. And I'm still here you cock-suckers.

(Announcement from outside in French with English subtitles), "10 ... 9 ... 8 ... "

(Screen goes black then to titles.)

We had a conversation as we were reviewing the Introduction about why this is a hybrid work that includes (as imagined) a printed book of the text. Some of the answers we came up with are:

• Print is easier to read and this would be especially true for the more theoretical chapters.
• Print would let us involve a print designer and take advantage of the medium to do some things that are more difficult on lineA line is the string of text limited by the width of a page. Lines are often used in tokenization, and may contain parts of one or more sentences. For example "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." is a complete sentence and occurs on one line. By contrast, "Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. He had little to bite and to break, and once when great dearth fell on the land, he could no longer procure even daily bread." spans three sentences and four lines. Return to Glossary..
• Print would let us show how text analysis tools can be used to take something through to a print outcome, which is, afterall, one of the theses of the work.
• Print archives better. Who knows what will happen to the site over the long term. It is useful to have an accessible print record. Print is stable and has its own coherence.
• Print can be a way in for some people. It is easy to skim and read away from the screen - it thus can serve as an introduction to the field.
• In print we can gather the reflections that are drawn from the analysis, but don't depend on it to render. The print version should be what is of interest beyond our implementation.

Right now the book title is "The Rhetoric of Text Analysis" - is that the right title? Do we want to emphasize Agile Interpretation?