Hermeneuti.ca – The Rhetoric of Text Analysis

This manual if for novice users, experienced users, writers and developers. This manual works closely with The Rhetoric of Text Analysis where you will find example essays and discussion of text analysis in general.

Novice Users who want to get started with text analysis should:

• Start by reading a recipe like Exploring a Theme Through a Text. Try doing it yourself using Voyeur - the recipe will point you to places to find a text and the tools to try.
• If you are interested in an example essay that used this recipe you can look at Now Analyze That.
• Read Voyeur Tools for Users, the reference guide to the tools for users. That will give you ideas about what you can do.
• Read the Introduction: Thinking Through Technology if you want to understand how we think technology can assist in the interpretation of texts.
• You might also read Tools of Interpretation to understand the types of text analysis tools and how others use them.
• Oh, and ... read the rest of this Introduction.

Writers, web authors and researchers who want to embed Voyeur panels (we call them hermeneuticons) into their essays, online journals, blogs and so on should:

• Read Voyeur Tools for Web Authors to understand how to emebed hermeneuticons.
• Follow our recipe Writing and Interactive Essay and try making one yourself. Or, if you have a blog, try the recipe Putting Tools in your Blog.
• Look at how we do it in an essay like Now Analyze That. Try rewriting the essay or updating it.
• Get an account on the Text Analysis Developers Alliance wiki and use it as a sandbox (or is it soapbox) where you can put your interactive essays.
• Read Tools Across Research if you want to know why think it is important for tools to be embeddable.
• Read Mashing Blogs and the Knowledge Radio to see what we did with Voyeur and blogs.
• Join the hermeneutica discussion list if you want ask questions or be kept informed.

Developers who want to adapt Voyeur tools or develop their own should:

• Read our Creative Commons license so you understand what your responsibilities are and what we think are our responsibilities.
• Look at our recipe Making your own see-through tool for a tutorial on how to adapt a Voyeur tool.
• Read the Voyeur Tools for Tools Developers reference for more information on how to download code and how to use our code in your own projects.
• Join the hermeneutica discussion list if you want ask questions or be kept informed.

How Voyeur connects to Hermeneuti.ca, the book

Voyeur is the toolset that made possible the analysis reported in Hermeneuti.ca, the book and web site you are now looking at. The book reflects on text analysis, gives examples, and discusses the decisions behind Voyeur. The web site hermeneuti.ca (note how we use the lower case when referring to the web site) includes the sections of the book and the manual for Voyeur (which you are reading now.) The two connect like this:

• The manual for Voyeur is on the web site hermeneuti.ca along with the book Hermeneuti.ca. This is a hybrid project, published both online and in print.
• You can use the manual to figure out how to use Voyeur tools in your research, in your online publications and you can adapt our code to make your own tools.
• You can read about text analysis in Hermeneuti.ca the book (or read it online.) You can read example essays that report the results of analysis to see what we did with Voyeur tools. You can read the same essays online with interactive panels that you can experiment with - one of the best ways to get a sense of text analysis.
• You can read recipes that describe how you can use the analytical methods we used on your own texts! These recipes connect the theory, essays, and tools. They are the tutorial for the tools.