What I Learned from Distant Reading “Herland”

In using Voyant, I learned about commonly used words in the text and their frequency throughout the text. The most popular word is Terry (used 247 times). Also with the book being named Herland and reading the back of the book I guessed woman or women would be a popular word. Sure enough women is the second most popular word (used 209 times). The next two words were said (170) and like (155). Finally, the fifth highest word was Jeff (used 152 times). Not only did Voyant show the most popular words, it also charted how much they were used throughout the book (relative frequencies).

While there are some variants, the words said and like are the most consistently used words out of the five. Another interesting thing is the names Jeff and Terry have a high frequency at the beginning however this decreases as the story progresses. Then at the end they bounce back up before heading down again. The most interesting to track was the word women. On the chart the frequency increases then decreases consistently. It seems that in some sections the word is used a lot and in others it gets little to no use.

Even though Voyant helped me to gain some knowledge about the book, I still have some gaps in my knowledge. For example, I know of two of the main characters, but there is more. Especially since these are male characters in a book about a civilization of women. Also I know about the actual text, but I have no concept of the historical context when this book was written and published. There is also no context about the author of the book. These aren’t necessary things to read the book, but it would help to analyze the text.

Although there are gaps of knowledge I did find Voyant to be a helpful tool to study the text of Herland. This gives me tactile information about the text that would take much longer for a person to organize. This means that I can learn about the text in a different way which is beneficial. One possible problem is that all of the information is organized without considering the novel’s themes and plot. Because of this two of the five most popular words didn’t really share specific information about this text. Even with this in mind, I thought Voyant was really good at assessing a large amount of information and organizing it in such a short amount of time. Also I appreciated that they included multiple charts and visual aids to represent their information. For me that was helpful in navigating the results.

One thing that I think would be helpful is having more information about the plot and how these terms relate. Admittedly that is more complicated than just looking for popular words in the text. But it could help to gain more insight to the text. I think the information that is provided gives a good introduction to the text, but it could be even better if there was a way to pick out common subjects and themes.

5 Comments

molwils

January 30, 2019 at 11:25 pm

“Even though Voyant helped me to gain some knowledge about the book, I still have some gaps in my knowledge.” I totally agree – I definitely feel like there are major gaps still in my knowledge after using Voyant. I do have a certain appreciation for Voyant, but I am just having a bit of trouble really grinding my teeth into it. With that said, I agree that Voyant would be more helpful if it had a tool assessing the plot a bit more! It’s hard when you don’t quite know how everything connects yet.

wschmid

February 2, 2019 at 2:03 am

I really like the trends graph. While the default view gives a good idea about the important topics and their relative importance throughout the text, I like choosing a single word or name to view its frequency. I use the links to see which words are related and select them to check their trends. It gives me an idea as to what to expect as I’m reading. I agree with your comment about Voyant not considering the novel’s themes and plot. It’s purely statistical in its use. As we become more proficient in Voyant, we may see trends occurring with what Voyant shows us and what we expect or know of a texts theme. This may lead to being able to guesstimate on plots based on what we see from Voyant.

kcookso

February 2, 2019 at 4:01 am

I am also VERY interested to see why Terry, and Jeff almost fall off in the word usage towards the middle of the book. I feel like Voyant really just gave us a more in depth introduction to the story. We were able to make a couple inferences based on the words in Voyant, there is gaps but it gained our interest enough to look forward to the book!

Jessica Despain

February 4, 2019 at 6:21 pm

I wonder what the “phrases” applets might reveal that applets focused merely on vocabulary do not.

cmorone

February 6, 2019 at 4:34 pm

I like the title of your blog, using the term “distant reading”, which we discussed in class. I like considering Voyant as distant reading, although it may not necessarily be accurate reading since we don’t get every little detail. Having gaps in our knowledge about a book can be pretty fun, in my opinion, as we are left to guess what exactly happens, given what knowledge Voyant already gives us. I completely agree that there should be more information on how terms relate – but it should be just enough information to where it wouldn’t spoil the novel.

molwils

January 30, 2019 at 11:25 pm

“Even though Voyant helped me to gain some knowledge about the book, I still have some gaps in my knowledge.” I totally agree – I definitely feel like there are major gaps still in my knowledge after using Voyant. I do have a certain appreciation for Voyant, but I am just having a bit of trouble really grinding my teeth into it. With that said, I agree that Voyant would be more helpful if it had a tool assessing the plot a bit more! It’s hard when you don’t quite know how everything connects yet.
wschmid

February 2, 2019 at 2:03 am

I really like the trends graph. While the default view gives a good idea about the important topics and their relative importance throughout the text, I like choosing a single word or name to view its frequency. I use the links to see which words are related and select them to check their trends. It gives me an idea as to what to expect as I’m reading. I agree with your comment about Voyant not considering the novel’s themes and plot. It’s purely statistical in its use. As we become more proficient in Voyant, we may see trends occurring with what Voyant shows us and what we expect or know of a texts theme. This may lead to being able to guesstimate on plots based on what we see from Voyant.
kcookso

February 2, 2019 at 4:01 am

I am also VERY interested to see why Terry, and Jeff almost fall off in the word usage towards the middle of the book. I feel like Voyant really just gave us a more in depth introduction to the story. We were able to make a couple inferences based on the words in Voyant, there is gaps but it gained our interest enough to look forward to the book!
Jessica Despain

February 4, 2019 at 6:21 pm

I wonder what the “phrases” applets might reveal that applets focused merely on vocabulary do not.
cmorone

February 6, 2019 at 4:34 pm

I like the title of your blog, using the term “distant reading”, which we discussed in class. I like considering Voyant as distant reading, although it may not necessarily be accurate reading since we don’t get every little detail. Having gaps in our knowledge about a book can be pretty fun, in my opinion, as we are left to guess what exactly happens, given what knowledge Voyant already gives us. I completely agree that there should be more information on how terms relate – but it should be just enough information to where it wouldn’t spoil the novel.