By Student Posts
Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve gave me some pretty significant whiplash. Ben Platt‘s a linguist? Ah, no, the author is Ben Blatt; Are we learning about forensic stylistics? No, he’s changed gears. Is this a vengeance piece against high school English teachers? Nope, nope, he seems to be agreeing with them. I was most interested in result of The Federalist Papers debate. Those poor historians couldn’t figure out who wrote what because they were too entrenched in the content of the essays. It took two disinterested statisticians that took a step back from that content to focus on the numbers. I feel a little late to the game here, but I feel that I’m beginning the secret of humanist analysis. You must first depart from the intended purpose of a work. Temporarily leave behind the narrative, themes, and author’s intent. Strip the form to bare function, and then build it up again (or don’t, if you sympathize with Mark Sample). This made a few things click together in my brain. Blatt’s research, Morretti’s maps, and Ferguson’s Z-projects share something in common. Isolate a single aspect–in this case, adverbs–and use it to interpret larger works. With the aid of a computer, Blatt gathered raw data, absent of meaning on its own, and was able to make interpretations of the original work based on that data. Egad, is this digital humanities? Nobody is going to tell me, and it haunts my dreams.

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I couldn’t not be influenced by this chapter, and several times while writing this post I deleted the beginnings of an -ly adverb. Despite my efforts, one remains. Ten points to your Hogwarts house if you find it. GIF: Uploaded to Know Your Meme by Krazi-Chibi https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-silvia/photos