How do we define “community” across a river and a state line? I use Voyant Tools, to perform a distant reading of two distinct locations in our region: St. Louis, MO and Edwardsville, IL.
By shifting from a close reading to a quantitative view ), we can see the skeletons of how these places are described in historical and modern encyclopedic entries.
The Texts & The Question
For this analysis, I compared two comprehensive overview texts:
- Text A: History of St. Louis
- Text B: Edwardsville, Illinois
My Research Question: Does the language used to describe “community” in a major urban center like St. Louis differ fundamentally from the language used for a smaller, satellite city like Edwardsville?
The Hypothesis
After skimming the texts, I noticed St. Louis is often framed through global spectacle and social friction (the World’s Fair, segregation, industrial power), while Edwardsville is framed through foundational lineage and institutional growth (settlers, the University, local industry).
Hypothesis: When compared in Voyant, the St. Louis corpus will show a higher frequency of words related to power, spectacle, and social division, whereas the Edwardsville corpus will emphasize stability, education, and individual pioneers.
The Results:
I uploaded both texts into Voyant. To test the hypothesis, I primarily used the Summary and Bubblelines tools.
1. Word Cloud (Cirrus)
In the St. Louis text, terms like world, fair, city, and exposition dominated. Interestingly, words like segregation and space appeared with high density, supporting the idea of social friction. In the Edwardsville text, the dominant terms were county, university, settlers, and industry.
2. Comparison
The Bubblelines tool allows us to see where specific terms appear across the timeline of the text.
- Industry vs. Education: In Edwardsville, education and university (SIUE) appear as a massive bubble toward the end of the text, signifying it as a modern community anchor. In St. Louis, industry and spectacle are concentrated in the middle (the Fair era).
- People vs. Names: Edwardsville’s text is heavily populated with specific surnames (Edwards, Stephenson, Kirkpatrick), suggesting a community built on biographical lineage. St. Louis’s text uses more collective or abstract terms like visitors, organizers, or groups.
Conclusions
The data largely supports the hypothesis. Distant reading reveals that the identity of St. Louis in these texts is one of transformation and tension—a city trying to prove itself on a global stage. Conversely, Edwardsville’s identity is portrayed as incremental and institutional, defined by its transition from a settler outpost to a regional educational hub.
Through Voyant, we can see that community isn’t just a feeling; it’s a specific vocabulary. For St. Louis, community is often defined by how it manages (or fails to manage) its masses. For Edwardsville, community is defined by the names on its street signs and the growth of its local institutions.