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A glimpse of battles, trauma and Linn’s sentiments

December 11, 2016 by Tong Tong

For the final project, Matt, Iris and I together have conducted a sentimental analysis based on Linn’s journal, and after combining it with the battles’ dates, we have some very interesting results. Before we started, we have envisioned several plans. For example, I was interested in the relationship between weather and memory/emotion and longed to explore that if weather functioned as an indicator for his emotional states or as a factor contributing to the change in sentiments. Another direction we could go is to analyze the sentiments in the journals as well as those in the letters, and when presenting both emotions from sources in the same visualization, we might find the difference (such as the letter has more positive sentiments and deliberately hides negative sentiments), which is valuable when we think about the audience and the objective of Linn’s writing. I still think that these could be the potential research questions for future plans regarding Linn’s journal. However, due to the limited time available, we finally chose to investigate the change in sentiments in Linn’s letter and its relationship with the battles Linn experienced.

After we determine our research question, we divided the journal into three parts so that everyone can mark up the emotions and share their impressions in the second meeting. I read the first part of the journal which is from the beginning to Feb 18th. However, we didn’t specify how to mark up and have not standardize our markups until the second meeting. For example, I marked up by words instead of ideas; considering that different readers might have different readings towards the same text, I was very cautious in only marking up the vocabularies that are definitely positive or negative. In addition, even though we made sure that we all used <state> and <note>, I marked up the word like “<state type= “emotion”>pleasant</state> <note>positive</note>.” Later, when we talked to Iris, she told us that it was more convenient for her to extract data if we marked up the text like: “pleasant<state type= “emotion”><note>positive</note></state>.” Therefore, I then cleared up my markup and made sure that it consistent with the rest of the text. Below the is screenshot of my markup (on GitHub):

%e5%b1%8f%e5%b9%95%e6%88%aa%e5%9b%be43
Figure 1: The highlighted text is my markup. “” is a previous markup, and I’m using the and tag to mark up the “impatient day” in front of it.

 

Thanks to Iris for making the visualization to illustrate Linn’s changes in sentiments throughout the days. Below is the screenshot of the final visualization:

figure_2
Figure 2: the screenshot of our visualization with indications of the battles (thanks, Iris!)

Here are the dates for the battles:

Battle of Roanoke Island: February 7-8, 1862 (Union victory)

Battle of New Bern: March 14, 1862 (Union victory)

Battle of South Mills: April 19, 1862 (Confederate victory)

 

After the first battle, Linn was deeply frustrated even though Union claimed victory. He had recorded in his journal of all the wounded soldiers and dead corpses, and his negative sentiments were also reflected in our graph. Before that, he was usually happy about the beautiful views of nature, and it seems like that he didn’t realize what war would be like. Therefore, he was extremely disillusioned after the first battle in his life. Linn did not write any journals during the second battle. While he seemed to be peaceful, the text suggested that he paid more attention to the details in life, and probably he did not know how to react to the battle that easily and absurdly destroyed the beauty of life. Finally, Linn seemed to be gave due to the loss of the Battle of South Mills. However, based on the journals, we don’t have many details about what happened after April 19th.

For the future projects, it would be interesting to see if there is any difference in what Linn valued before and after Linn’s experience of battles. Nonetheless, it is clear that he was most disillusioned after participating the first battle, and he did not really know how to cope with the latter battles and the violence he witnessed.

This is an interesting project and it is only a start. I am so happy that I learnt about TEI in this class, which I think is a powerful way to enhance “close reading” as well as to provide data for “distant reading.” I also learnt that standardization is especially important in group projects, and in the end I want to thank my wonderful teammates, Matt and Iris! I hope to see further developments of Linn’s project!

Filed Under: Reflections Tagged With: final, Linn, markup, TEI

“Marking up Linn” experience

November 18, 2016 by Tong Tong

Transcription is the most painful part when I was working on this module.  I am very aware how one’s handwriting may include important clues about his/her identity and the situation in which he/she writes. For example, since I haven’t written much English by hand and have not deliberately practiced my calligraphy, it’s easy to tell that I’m a non-native speaking (or writing) person. Therefore, personally I would always prefer to type English and to read printed English articles in order to “conceal my identity” to some extent.

tong_markup
This is a screenshot of my mark-up. You can see that there are many “[?]” and “[…]” which really shows my frustration
tong_pic1
This is the letter that I transcribed

Since I haven’t read many hand-written manuscripts, I struggled for a long time with the possible spellings and even in the final version, I still have many words unrecognized. When doing transcription, I at first recorded all the letters I could recognize and based on the length of the word, I could have several guesses on what the word might be. The next step would be looking for similar patterns and to decode the letters I didn’t recognize. I would also ask classmates for help; in fact, it would not be roughly finished without Sarah’s help. It is a very frustrating experience and makes me really grateful for the efforts people invest in transforming the manuscripts to the typed paragraph online. If they have not been digitized at all, people like me will have no access to the text because 1) the manuscripts are preserved in certain archives that may not be publicly available and 2) even we can see the picture, we can’t really read it. Therefore, my struggle with transcription also indicates the significance of digital archives and digitized texts.

 

I work in the special collection/university archive after class, so I’m already familiar with the environment there. Taking a close look to the manuscripts is an important experience, and as Yash suggested in class, the actual paper would give the reader a better overview of the content, while pictures online usually compromised the fluidity of the text as a whole. In some cases, there are some scratches that are only manifest in paper, and the paper’s material is usually absent in pictures as well. For example, I didn’t expect the letters to be so thin and fragile. Though I don’t know what’s the importance of the materiality of the letters yet, but it is possible that the material also carries certain traits of the environment and even of the history.

One thing I noticed by comparing the journal and the letter is that, James Merill Linn is definitely (encouraged to) take the readers’ reaction into account. His brother’s letter on April 2nd is almost solely about people’s reaction to JML’s writing. I assume that readers’ response is important in directing how he should render his life in the writing, and what the readers expect to read and are enthusiastic about. JML mostly talked bout New Berne from March 12th to 24th, and it’s interesting that on April 17th he again mentioned New Berne. One possible guess is that after knowing audience’ response to New Berne, JML feels the necessity to talk more about it.

Filed Under: Reflection #3 Tagged With: Linn, markup, TEI, transcription

TEI post

November 1, 2016 by Tong Tong

I enjoyed marking up texts with TEI, and I think the two assignments we had (the Poe text and the Declaration of Independence exercise) indeed demonstrated how TEI can help us with texts in different but equally strong ways.

For the Poe assignment we focused mainly in semantic mark-up, which I think is a powerful way to analyze and deconstruct the text. Since I’m an English and CH major student, I do a lot with close reading. Usually when I read a text or write an analytical paper, I will at first look for patterns and motifs that appear multiple times. My Poe text is not a conventional murder/detective/crime story, and at least in my part, there are not many exciting plots. However, it is still a classical Poe text for its dark, mysterious atmosphere. Therefore, it occurred to me that it will be great if I can find out patterns that make the text Gothic, and this is exactly something TEI can do. So, I mainly focused on the colors in the text (black, white, blood-red etc.), the emotional feelings (such as fear, aghast, agony etc.) and physical feelings (trembling, thrill, slumber etc). They are important not only due to their repeated appearances but also because that according to the narrator, there are two categories of feelings: emotional and physical. Therefore, the markup of emotions and sensations in the text echoes how Poe manipulates feelings to depict terror. In addition, there are also many words associated with death, and even the word “death” has appeared in the text for several times. I don’t know which tag should I put death into, so I temporarily left death alone. However, I marked up places like “tomb” and “grave,” and also marked up the mythological place such as “Hades.” The associations and significations around these patterns are definitely worth investigating.

The most frequent tag/label I used for Poe text is “state” and “trait” because I didn’t see many places nor characters. This particular text seems to be focused on the individual emotions and sensations, and the paragraphs are mostly descriptions of the state of the narrator. Therefore, I didn’t employ many name tags or place tags in this assignment.

On the other hand, the Declaration of Independence assignment provides a window of how TEI can contribute to (meta)data management. When I read the assignment for the first time, I immediately thought how it could be used to manage the data for my research project. For this assignment, I basically elaborated the biography and paid particular attention to his network. It will be interesting to see how he was connected to different people and how his network, potentially, affected his political stand etc. Since Edward Rutledge did not move around that often, so I didn’t pay much attention to the place, or it will be really interesting to investigate his path and events. Therefore, the tag I used/liked most in this assignment is <listRelation> which can identify different types of relations and can include different people in the relations. One thing I don’t know how to manage is to add more detailed description of the related people. For example, Edward Rutledge’s father is a colonist of Scots-Irish descents which may have direct influence over Edward Rutledge. However, I don’t know how to indicate it in my TEI code.

 

Filed Under: Reflection #2, Reflections

Reflection post, Group 3

September 25, 2016 by Tong Tong

The project we are working on is a room escape game. The protagonist is trapped in a cabin in the woods and he/she will wake up in a coffin with his/her hands chained by a hand cuff. There will be five chances to obtain hints. Before the game starts, the player will be required to enter 5 names of his/her friends, and there will be a timer when the game begins. After 10 minutes, if the player can’t find all the hints to escape, he/she will see or hear that their friends are dying. After 25 minutes, if the player is still in the cabin, a fierce dragon will come in and eat the player. So, better to escape the mysterious room quickly!

The similarity between this text-based game and traditional fiction is that the author/designers decide the main plot of the text. Unlike the interactive or collective fiction that participants can make up their own stories, the players can’t change the clues. For example, the player can’t rewrite the plot and add meanings to a vase in the room – which is not part of the keys. However, like Rettburg suggests in his essay, this room escape game is similar to other MOOs in that it “is only a potential story until readers respond to and perform within the text” (Rettburg, 192). It will only be a list of descriptions and remain static if there is no interaction between the text and players. The player also has the freedom to decide how long it takes to get out of the room (and darkly, how many the player’s friends will die). Though some of the puzzles have to be solved in certain order, the player can decide the sequence of obtaining certain tools.

It is great to have a team of three so that we can corporate together and with each other’s strength, we can build the game collectively. Yash is a computer science engineering major student, and he is more familiar with programming. Therefore, he is helpful to evaluate the plausibility of our ideas and help to improve the design of the game with CS logical ways of thinking. As a student majoring in English and Comparative Humanities, I’m interested in writing plot and setting up puzzles for players. In addition, Julia is important in the way that she will review the pros and cons of our idea from the perspective of the players. In other words, if we compare our team to the forum of fan-fiction, Yash is the website that makes it possible, I’m the “author” who writes the story, and Julia provides reviews and gives suggestions on how to update the game. All of us are indispensable in this project.

The inspiration of this game comes from many similar games online and on smart phones. There are also many horror and suspension movies about the idea of “escaping.” The plot of having people dying one by one is inspired by the great novel And There Were None (and there is a new BBC adaption, watch the trailer here). Another movie that has similar themes is The Exam. If possible, we want to insert background music in this game, and we find some instrumental music play like this.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Reflection #1, Reflections

HUMN 271

Bertrand 012
TR 9:30-11:20am
Dr. Diane Jakacki

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