QuaDramA at DHd 2018

QuaDramA will be part of the German-speaking DH conference DHd, which takes place in Cologne in Feb/March 2018. Benjamin Krautter’s submission got accepted, and will be presented as a talk in session 4A (digital literary studies) on Thursday, March 1, 9-10:30 a.m. See below for a short summary.

Quantitatve „close reading“? Comparing four microanalytics methods of digital drama analysis

Recent results of computer-aided research suggest that characters in novels – measured by their character speech – can be laid out stylistically distinct from other characters of the same novel. Thus, experienced authors are able to write characters with ‘distinctive voices’. Whether this stylometric thesis holds true as well for dramatic character speeches, shall be tested in using Gotthold Ephraim Lessings Minna von Barnhelm, oder das Soldatenglück as an example. For this purpose, the observations obtained with stylometrics are combined with three additional quantitative methods: by analyzing the semantics and sentiment of character speech and by analyzing the role of co-presence of characters. Thus, stylistic, semantic and structural data contextualize each other. The results of the different analyses show no clear sign of ‘distinctive voices’ in Minna von Barnhelm. They rather suggest that co-presence seems to have an impact not only on style but also on the semantics of the character speech. The absence of a narrator in dramatic texts is one possible starting point to explain these results.