Analysing Australian WW1 Diaries through Distant Reading: paper available as pdf

[DavidIsby]

https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.latechclfl-1.11.pdf

 

Life still goes on:

Analysing Australian WW1 Diaries through Distant Reading

Ashley Dennis-Henderson, Matthew Roughan, Lewis Mitchell, Jonathan Tuke

ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS)

School of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Adelaide

{ashley.dennis-henderson,matthew.roughan,lewis.mitchell,simon.tuke}@adelaide.edu.au

 

[Guest]

Had a look at this article and not at all sure it was worth the time and effort.  As an analysis of "Australian WW1 Diaries" it does have the revelation- hold on to your seats on this one:

 

  " Unsurprisingly, the majority of entries were written between August 1914 and December 1919"

Further such revelations abound- that most diaries contain the mundane:

 

We also have two more general topics. Everyday Life is consistently the most prominent topic until December 1919. This topic includes words related to everyday things such as the time of day and meals

 

 This leads to:

One of the top 40 most probable words in the White Christmas topic is “miserable”, suggesting that the cold weather lead to many having a more negative sentiment

 A consequence of  diaries recording everyday life leads to the conclusion:

 

This is most likely because the diarists predominantly wrote about everyday activities, which unlike battles, are not necessarily negative

 

The mathematical and statistical expertise has led to  revelations, for the specialist:

 

 

Not forgetting, of course, to take into account :

 

 

   The authors have helpfully constructed a number of tables of word frequency in various contexts-such as this table of frequency rankings:

 

 

    While the stats. generated and the conclusions reached (Or not reached-"likely" is not science to me), this does not aid the cause of History very much. As the authors have not investigated the backgrounds of the diarists concerned, then further nuances have evaded them- officer v. OR probably being the most obvious. The authors helpfully note that of the 577 diaries  analysed from the collection of the State Library of New South Wales, that 20 of them are,in fact, completely blank- which as the diaries were collected just after the Great War may be a comment by 20 Australians about the war itself. There is plenty of scope for cliometrics to illumine the Great War but this seems to fall short of anything that useful, other than to suggest that the post of Regius Professor of the Blindingly Obvious in the University of Oxford may well become a reality. As there is no consideration at all of major background factors that might statistically slew the results, then this analysis is rather pointless. The diarists do not overlap in time to a statistically certain equivalence. There is no investigation of the background of the diarists- literacy levels being the most obvious factor to me.  A look as "Discovering Anzacs" might suggest that the greatest divergence in diaries may be that of British/British-born v. Australian. All told, there are simply too many important background variables to make this other than a recital of the obviousr wrapped up in pretty meaningless numbers. 

     

 

Edited 7 December , 2020 by Guest