Quantitative stylistics

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The Quantitative Stilistik (also: stylometry , style statistics ; engl. Stylo-Statistics ) is a race on which both the Quantitative linguistics and the Quantitative literature have their share.

It examines the style of literary and other texts using statistics. The aim is always to develop style properties as objectively as possible. Above all, it is a matter of recording the properties of texts numerically, since it is often not enough to simply determine whether a stylistic characteristic is present or not. Instead, it must be determined to what extent one or more stylistic characteristics shape a text. Every style characteristic that can be counted can be taken into account, depending on the research interest. These include, to name just a few examples: word frequencies, sentence length , use of parts of speech , word length , vocabulary richness, word repetition ( type-token relation ), the action quotient and many others.

Linguistics or literary studies

Whether an investigation into quantitative stylistics should be assigned to linguistics or literary studies depends only on the question and the subject: is it a literary work or an investigation of other text classes? Does the investigation focus more on aesthetic and literary questions or does it serve more general linguistic goals? The research strategy can then even coincide, for example when it comes to identifying an anonymous author more closely or excluding a conceivable author, a task that is common to both unknown literary authors and anonymous authors, e.g. B. of threatening letters plays a role. The question of whether an author / writer tends to use a verbal or nominal style and why, can also be of interest in both sciences.

Possibilities of quantitative stylistics

Apart from the question of unknown authors or the investigation of individual stylistic features, quantitative stylistics can deal with the analysis of individual texts or text groups. Altmann & Altmann (2008) analyze Goethe's ballad Erlkönig with regard to quantitative properties of the rhythm, the sound structures, the vocabulary, the meanings and some grammatical properties and thus arrive at a comprehensive, but by no means complete statistical picture of the text. The focus is on the question of which regularities the properties of the text are subject to. Overbeck (2011) pursues a different goal, using selected texts as an example to attempt to demonstrate a specific style of Italian opera libretti using quantitative and qualitative means.

literature

  • Norbert Bolz: Obtaining and evaluating quantitative characteristics in statistical style research. In: Bernd Spillner (Ed.): Methods of style analysis. Narr, Tübingen 1984, ISBN 3-87808-255-X , pp. 193-222. Contains a plea and instructions for “quantitative style analysis”.
  • Stylistic identity and literature. In: David Crystal: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Campus, Frankfurt / New York 1993, ISBN 3-593-34824-1 , pp. 66ff.
  • Alexander Mehler: Properties of the textual units and systems. In: Reinhard Köhler, Gabriel Altmann, Gabriel, Rajmund G. Piotrowski (eds.): Quantitative Linguistics - Quantitative Linguistics. An international manual . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015578-8 , pp. 325-348. (Quantitative stylistics: pp. 325–348, esp. 339–340)
  • Ursula Pieper: Possibilities and limits of a quantitative style. In: Wolfgang Kühlwein, Albert Raasch (Ed.): Style: Components - Effects. Volume I. Narr, Tübingen 1982, ISBN 3-87808-911-2 , pp. 100-105.
  • Statistical and mathematical methods of style analysis. In: Bernd Spillner: Linguistics and literary studies. Style research, rhetoric, text linguistics. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart a. a. 1974, ISBN 3-17-001734-9 , pp. 82ff.
  • Ioan-Iovitz Popescu, Mihaiela Lupea, Doina Tatar, Gabriel Altmann: Quantitative Analysis of Poetic Texts . de Gruyter / Mouton, Berlin / Boston 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-033605-4 .
  • Juhan Tuldava: Stylistics, author identification. In: Reinhard Köhler, Gabriel Altmann, Gabriel, Rajmund G. Piotrowski (eds.): Quantitative Linguistics - Quantitative Linguistics. An international manual . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015578-8 , pp. 368-387.
  • Stephen Ullmann: New approaches in style. In: Stephen Ullmann: Language and Style. Essays on semantics and style. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1972, pp. 111-148. (esp .: p. 133ff .: The statistical approach.)
  • Andrei V. Zenkov: A Method of Text Attribution Based on the Statistics of Numerals . Journal of Quantitative Linguistics. 2018, Volume 25, No. 3, pp. 256-270. DOI: 10.1080 / 09296174.2017.1371915 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Wickmann: Unknown authorship - statistically seen. In: Joachim-Hermann Scharf , Wilhelm Kämmerer (Ed.): Leopoldina Symposium on Natural Scientific Linguistics. German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina Halle 1981, pp. 227–281.
  2. ↑ Vivien Altmann, Gabriel Altmann : Instructions for quantitative text analysis. Methods and Applications. RAM-Verlag, Lüdenscheid 2008, ISBN 978-3-9802659-5-9 , p. 75f.
  3. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated February 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uni-goettingen.de
  4. ^ Anja Overbeck: Italian in the opera libretto. Quantitative and qualitative studies of lexicon, syntax and style. De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-025832-5 . (= Habilitation thesis, Göttingen 2010.)

See also

Functional stylistics
Quantitative text analysis
Verse length