Key words and key phrases in a corpus of travel
writing
From Early modern English literature to contemporary "blooks"
Andrea Grerbig
presentation by Libor Vanˇek
November 23, 2011
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Introduction
Content
1 Introduction
2 Key words: Implications and other studies
3 The corpus
4 Method and Findings
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Introduction
Goal
Goal
Show the changing roles and implications of travelling in society over a
considerable time span.
How?
key words
key-key words
associates
multi-word units
most frequent 5-grams
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Key words: Implications and other studies
Content
1 Introduction
2 Key words: Implications and other studies
3 The corpus
4 Method and Findings
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Key words: Implications and other studies
First studies
J. R. Firth
The technique of semantics, Transactions of the Philological Society
(1935)
Suggested investigating the “distribution of sociologically
important words, what one might call focal or pivotal words in all
their derivatives and compounds in sociologically signicant
contexts”
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Key words: Implications and other studies
Finding Key words
R. Williams
Keywords, 2nd edn. (1983)
keywords =
“significant, binding words in certain activities and their
interpretation”
“significant, indicative words in certain forms of thought”.
stresses individual choice.
M. Scott
PC analysis of key words – and key key words, System (1997)
”statistical method of selecting words according to their relative
frequency”
independent of personal views and preferences
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The corpus
Content
1 Introduction
2 Key words: Implications and other studies
3 The corpus
4 Method and Findings
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The corpus
Corpus
Travel writting from 16th to 21st century
Each century covers about 500.000 words
21st century: texts published on the internet
well-structured and well-edited platform
reports of a coherent format, more like short-stories
platform maintained by a chain of shops providing the travellers with
all necessary equipment
no marketing / advertising objectives
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Method and Findings
Content
1 Introduction
2 Key words: Implications and other studies
3 The corpus
4 Method and Findings
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Method and Findings Key words in the travel corpus
Key words: method
relative frequency of words
comparison with background corpus
Scott & Tribble (2006) suggest a background corpus for comparison
at least five times the size of the investigated text
C21 to C19: a self-compiled three-million word background corpus
of mixed written and spoken sources
C18 to C16: section of the Helsinki Corpus, 551,000 words
100 most frequent key words for each century, further intuitively
grouped into sets of semantically related words
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Method and Findings Key words in the travel corpus
Key words: results, example I.
In the more recent three centuries investigated, references to
countries are more varied and more frequent.
C16: Russia, England, English, Persia, Moscow,Tartars,
Spaniards
C17: Persia/-n/-s
...
C20: Taiwan/ese, Ital/y/ian, Calabria/n, Patagonia, Naples, Rio,
Mandarin, Chinese, Buenos Aires, Ionian, Albanian, Chilean,
Hellenic
C21: Sydney, Australia, Bangkok, Thai/land, Korea/n Belize,
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Method and Findings Key words in the travel corpus
Key words: results, example II.
Decline and disapearance of boat travel.
C16: island/s, river, ship/s, sea, land, wind, captain, voyage,
mariners, sailed, coast, journey, north, east, west, northwest,
southwest, south, southeast, northeast
C18: island/s, board, latitude, longitude, sea, shore, captain, sail,
bay, cape, boat
C19 - C21: almost no key word considering sea travel
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Method and Findings Key words in the travel corpus
Key words: results, example III.
Change of background corpus can brings out characteristic between
the text under investigation and some “norm” where, obviously, today’s
norms are different from 18th century norms.
Comparison C18 with Helsinki Corpus:
island/s, board, latitude, longitude, sea, shore, captain, sail, bay,
cape, boat
Comparison C18 with background corpus of current English:
latitude, longitude, sea, island, shore, W(est), E(ast), captain,
boat, bay, N(orth), voyage, cape, board, isle/s, canoes
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Method and Findings Key words in the travel corpus
Key words: results, example IV.
More spoken style in current century.
C21, pronouns: we, my, I our, us, me (top of list)
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Method and Findings Key-key words, Associates
Key-key words, Associates: definitions
Key-key words
words that are found to be key words in a large number of
individual texts
lexical choices which are typical for the genre
Associates
key words that are found to co-occur significantly with a key-key
word
profile of the contexts of words and by extension also of the texts
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Method and Findings Key-key words, Associates
Key-key words: example I.
The most frequent key-key words in C21:
guy, guys, locals, tourist, tourists, bag, bags, backpackers,
backpack, travelers
tour, trip, road, walk, walking, ride, driver
us, we, my, I, me, our, everyone
water, beach, hotel, village, town, city, center, shops, stay, stayed,
night
up, around, back, off, to, along, after, out, headed, few, day, a next
breakfast, food, chicken, banana, lunch
bus, taxi, boat, guide, hike
hour, hours, minutes, awhile
huge, didn’t, stopped, decided, toilet
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Method and Findings Key-key words, Associates
Key-key words: example II.
The most frequent key-key words in C20:
hills, hill, place, spot, stones, sea, mountain, mountains, valley,
land, landscape, trees, earth, sun, sunshine, earthquake
green, red, black, little, remote, dim, charm
city, village, villages, town
me, my, myself, its, they, their, them, his, some, every
distant, among, amid, hither
beast, creatures, folks
old, a, once, discovered, like, with, into, face, dead, and, ride, was,
fashion, yet, had
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Method and Findings Key-key words, Associates
Key-key words: conclusion
Comparison C21 with C20:
C21: travellers or rather, backpackers, concern with the daily
needs of moving around, staying overnight, eating and meeting
people
C20: more concern with details of the things seen and places
travelled to.
C20: no informal use such as guy/s.
C20: no reference to fellow travellers or tourists
C20: coverage seems to be more varied (higher number of less
frequently occurring key-key words than in C21)
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Method and Findings Key-key words, Associates
Associates: example
Tourists, travellers or backpackers:
ride, road, trip, driver, beach, tour, walking; guy, guys; off, to, next,
up; my; day
Tourists:
beach; around; us
Travellers:
walk; me; out; water
Backpackers:
guide, town; night, hours; everyone; food
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Method and Findings Key words and their contexts – Extended lexical units
Extended lexical units: description
Author picked one intuitively interesting key-key word from C17 abundance
- and looked at its contextual realisation through the
centuries
abundance = "when there is more than enough of something"
(Cambridge Dictionary)
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Method and Findings
Extended lexical units: results, example.
C17: key-key word abundance:
87 occurrences
70: abundance of [optional classification / adjective] (concrete)
noun
14: concrete noun [verb phrase] in [great/er] abundance
3: abundance (without preceding proposition or following of)
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Method and Findings
Extended lexical units: results.
decline of the use of the node abundance from the earlier to the
later centuries
development in distribution from a preference of the structure
abundance of to in abundance
overall more frequent in travel literature than in other text types
(inherently descriptive aspect)
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Method and Findings Key phrases
Key phrases: description
most frequent 5-word phrase-frames over the centuries
phrase-frame looks for recurring structures that vary in one slot.
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Method and Findings Key phrases
Key phrases: example I.
C16:
in the * of the: 65 occurrences, 14 variants
* = (midst 11, name 9, middle 7, time 6, absence 5, spring 4,
bottom 4, presence 4, place 3, middes 3, dominions 3, middest 3,
mouth 3)
at the * of the: 33 occurrences, 8 variants
* = (mouth 7, discretion 5, time 5, end 4, sign 3, beginning 3,
charge 3, request 3)
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Method and Findings Key phrases
Key phrases: example II.
C21:
in the middle of *: 64 occurrences, 4 variants
* = (the 38, nowhere 13, a 10, frikkin 3)
in the * of the: 60 occurrences, 6 variants
* = (middle 38, back 6, shade 5, center 4, centre 4, heart 3)
at the * of the: 48 occurrences, 7 variants
* = (end 16, front 7, top 7, foot 6, side 5, edge 4, base 3)
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Method and Findings Key phrases
Key phrases: example III.
The most frequent phrases in C21 and C20
preposition-article-noun-of-article
the noun slot is mostly filled with fairly general spatial terms.
The most frequent phrases in C19 and C18
preposition-article-noun-of-article
realization of the noun slot changes:
the spatial references are more concrete
temporal references increase
some metaphorical uses
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The end
Any questions?
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The end
Thank you!
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