The paper presents a method for corpus-based informational analysis, using an open source platform for lexicometric processing and a spreadsheet application. This type of study may serve in illustrating the factors that influence informational measures such as entropy, energy and informativity, and in detecting certain structural or stylistic particularities of the analysed corpora.
Despite a variety of theoretical and practical undertakings, there is no coherent understanding of the concept of scale in digital history and humanities, and its potential is largely unexplored. A clearer picture of the whole spectrum is needed, from large to small, distant to close, global to local, general to specific, macro to micro, and the in-between levels. The book addresses these issues and sketches out the territory of Zoomland, at scale. Four regions and sixteen chapters are conceptually and symbolically depicted through three perspectives: bird's eye, overhead, and ground view. The variable-scale representation allows for exploratory paths covering areas such as: theoretical and applicative reflections on scale combining a digital dimension with research in history, media studies, cultural heritage, literature, text analysis, and map modelling; creative use of scale in new digital forms of analysis, data organisation, interfaces, and argumentative or artistic expressions. Zoomland provides a systematic discussion on the epistemological dimensions, hermeneutic methods, empirical tools, and aesthetic logic pertaining to scale and its innovative possibilities residing in humanities-based approaches and digital technologies. Enter the Zoomland game here or watch the teaser! ; Despite a variety of theoretical and practical undertakings, there is no coherent understanding of the concept of scale in digital history and humanities, and its potential is largely unexplored. A clearer picture of the whole spectrum is needed, from large to small, distant to close, global to local, general to specific, macro to micro, and the in-between levels. The book addresses these issues and sketches out the territory of Zoomland, at scale. Four regions and sixteen chapters are conceptually and symbolically depicted through three perspectives: bird's eye, overhead, and ground view. The variable-scale representation allows for exploratory paths covering areas such as: theoretical and applicative reflections on scale combining a digital dimension with research in history, media studies, cultural heritage, literature, text analysis, and map modelling; creative use of scale in new digital forms of analysis, data organisation, interfaces, and argumentative or artistic expressions. Zoomland provides a systematic discussion on the epistemological dimensions, hermeneutic methods, empirical tools, and aesthetic logic pertaining to scale and its innovative possibilities residing in humanities-based approaches and digital technologies. Enter the Zoomland game here or watch the teaser!
Starting from Gaston Bachelard's assumption that "all knowledge is an answer to a question", the study proposes the use of comparative textual analysis to formulate research questions. A set of questions were derived via the TXM, Textométrie software, a tool for lexicometry and statistical analysis. Two historical documents on the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) were examined, the Werner report and the Delors report (French versions). The "quest for questions" was based on the comparison of the documents, using the TXM specificities feature that highlights what properties are specific, as overuse or deficit, to a part versus the rest of a corpus. The documents were analysed both as entire units and as fragments (numbered parts and sections). The specificities were computed for the noun-adjective combination and parts of speech, the properties with specificity scores higher and lower than the TXM default positive and negative banality thresholds being selected for further enquiry and subsequently used to formulate research questions. Although further experiments, testing with other corpora and theoretical formalisation are required, the first results show that digital tools may serve not only as hypotheses or conclusions validators but also as means of discovering exploration paths to support interpretation and the construction of new knowledge in digital history.
By combining traditional historical enquiry with TEI XML encoding and decoding in a corpus analysis phase, the project aims at addressing research questions mainly related to the French and British positions on the topics of armament design and production and of armament control within the Western European Union (WEU) from 1954 to 1982. The paper focuses on the annotation of speakers (different countries and institutional representatives) and their discourse in a selection of institutional documents (minutes, notes, studies, memoranda) (encoding phase) and the identification of linguistic patterns on armament issues in their discourse, as well as the interpretation of results (decoding phase). From a larger perspective, the study considers the TEI encoding as adding to the original text a "material" layer that further supports both machine and human interpretation (decoding). In this sense, this study may move closer to the concept of "material hermeneutics," by understanding code, and digital technology in general, as an instrument we can use in hermeneutic ways to produce knowledge.
La première partie de la présentation aborde l'exploitation scientifique des archives de l'Union de l'Europe occidentale (UEO) dans le cadre du projet « Jeux et enjeux diplomatiques franco-britanniques au sein de l'UEO (1954-1982) ». Quelles sont les positions française et britannique poursuivies dans l'enceinte de l'UEO sur des sujets majeurs de la sécurité et de la défense européennes, la France et le Royaume-Uni étant deux acteurs politiques, militaires et économiques majeurs de l'espace européen ? Le deuxième volet porte sur la conversion en format TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) des documents numérisés, leur enrichissement structurel et sémantique, ainsi que sur les moyens mis en oeuvre pour l'analyse statistique du discours des différents représentants institutionnels au sujet de l'armement et pour la publication en ligne de l'édition.