Hermeneuti.ca – The Rhetoric of Text Analysis

We ran a workshop/retreat with SSRHC funding on developing a Methods Commons using the Recipes idea. See CIRCA Methods Commons page.

The generalization of recipes raises the issue of how we should handle our recipes. Should we keep them in Hermeneuti.ca or link them to recipes in the Methods Commons?

We need to review how tools are cited and think about how they should be quoted in print. For example, here is how Voyeur recommends I cite the Links 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. in the introduction,

Sinclair, Stéfan and Geoffrey Rockwell. “Links.” Voyeur. 6 Sep. 2010 <http://voyeur.hermeneuti.ca/tool/Links/../../tool/Links/>

Sinclair, S. and G. Rockwell (2010). Links. Voyeur. Retrieved September 6, 2010 from http://voyeur.hermeneuti.ca/tool/Links/../../tool/Links/

Some of the things to think about and change:

• Do we want to reference voyeurtools.org rather than voyeur.hermeneuti.ca?
• We should make it clear that it is a tool somehow. We could have "Links Tool." Or we could call Voyeur "Voyeur Tools."
• Do we want an option to be able to quote the tool and text?
• The tool link shouldnt include the final "/../../tool/Links/"

We've updated the current version of Voyeur with a maintenance release that includes a fix to a bug that prevented users from doing phrase searches (actually, the search worked the first time, but not subsequent times).

To do a phrase search, simply type in the phrase into the search box (with no quotes). This will search for the exact sequence of types (currently lower case word forms). No proximity search is currently supported (with words in between), though some simple regular expressions can be used:

• i love (exact sequence)
• i love.* (other characters can follow after love, e.g. "i loved")
• i .*?ve\b (any character can precede "ve" at the end of the word, e.g. "i live")

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".