Comments on: A Friday night with Hammett http://serenae.com/2007/02/09/patterns/ Freelance Creativity Sun, 06 May 2012 23:43:19 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 By: Chris L http://serenae.com/2007/02/09/patterns/comment-page-1/#comment-120 Chris L Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:15:27 +0000 http://serena.umwblogs.org/2007/02/09/patterns/#comment-120 This is interesting-- I think the question of semantic unit is really critical here, particularly with an author like Hammett who, like Carver and Hemingway, wielded the paragraph like a poetic epee. With all the dialogue, simple paragraph analysis will be inconsistent. One approach would be to analyze dialogue and exposition separately... another might be to define your own unit and use that to "chunk" the story. Back in the day when I was writing about the evolution of Raymond Carver's writing from so-called minimalism to the style of his final years I dreamed of doing some real statistical analysis to see if the math backed up my gut feeling. Some of the analyses I was interested in comparing were: length of sentences, word repetitions, number of adjectives and adjectival phrases, length of paragraph, and proportion of dialogue to exposition... This is interesting– I think the question of semantic unit is really critical here, particularly with an author like Hammett who, like Carver and Hemingway, wielded the paragraph like a poetic epee. With all the dialogue, simple paragraph analysis will be inconsistent. One approach would be to analyze dialogue and exposition separately… another might be to define your own unit and use that to “chunk” the story.

Back in the day when I was writing about the evolution of Raymond Carver’s writing from so-called minimalism to the style of his final years I dreamed of doing some real statistical analysis to see if the math backed up my gut feeling. Some of the analyses I was interested in comparing were: length of sentences, word repetitions, number of adjectives and adjectival phrases, length of paragraph, and proportion of dialogue to exposition…

]]> By: Dr. C. http://serenae.com/2007/02/09/patterns/comment-page-1/#comment-119 Dr. C. Sun, 11 Feb 2007 14:41:56 +0000 http://serena.umwblogs.org/2007/02/09/patterns/#comment-119 First, it's fun to look at these graphs; it does something interesting (in *my* mind, anyway) to think of style and emotional/cognitive experience this way. So thanks for the cool stuff, as always. Second, I wonder if <em>page</em> is going to work as a unit of analysis here. For my paradigm (or analytical perspective) to work, the unit one graphs has to have been a meaningful unit of composition for the writer/filmmaker themselves. So, for example, for a writer a paragraph or sentence would be meaningful, but a page would in all likelihood be at the mercy of the edition. (Which raises another interesting question about whether writers would like to specify page breaks--I suspect they would--but I digress.) For a filmmaker, the unit of meaning would be the scene or episode. Chapter divisions in DVDs, though not commonly specified by the filmmaker, are nevertheless an indication of this unity; the very word "chapter" makes sense as a metaphor in this respect. Dialogue does make it difficult to say what's a "paragraph" in Hammett, which is why the example I used in class came from a paragraph of exposition/introduction at the beginning of a chapter. Perhaps it would be interesting to graph the paragraph at the beginning of each chapter, and look at whether a) there were patterns in each case and b) there was an overall pattern as the book progressed. The "so what?" question now looms. For me, this stuff is meaningful because it gives us a basic way to think and talk about style and experience with some precision. Duration and length are straightforward measures, and those time dimensions have immediate significance for experience, given the importance of the temporal in experience generally. Thanks for carrying this work forward. I think there are some interesting stylometric possibilities here. First, it’s fun to look at these graphs; it does something interesting (in *my* mind, anyway) to think of style and emotional/cognitive experience this way. So thanks for the cool stuff, as always.

Second, I wonder if page is going to work as a unit of analysis here. For my paradigm (or analytical perspective) to work, the unit one graphs has to have been a meaningful unit of composition for the writer/filmmaker themselves. So, for example, for a writer a paragraph or sentence would be meaningful, but a page would in all likelihood be at the mercy of the edition. (Which raises another interesting question about whether writers would like to specify page breaks–I suspect they would–but I digress.) For a filmmaker, the unit of meaning would be the scene or episode. Chapter divisions in DVDs, though not commonly specified by the filmmaker, are nevertheless an indication of this unity; the very word “chapter” makes sense as a metaphor in this respect.

Dialogue does make it difficult to say what’s a “paragraph” in Hammett, which is why the example I used in class came from a paragraph of exposition/introduction at the beginning of a chapter. Perhaps it would be interesting to graph the paragraph at the beginning of each chapter, and look at whether a) there were patterns in each case and b) there was an overall pattern as the book progressed.

The “so what?” question now looms. For me, this stuff is meaningful because it gives us a basic way to think and talk about style and experience with some precision. Duration and length are straightforward measures, and those time dimensions have immediate significance for experience, given the importance of the temporal in experience generally.

Thanks for carrying this work forward. I think there are some interesting stylometric possibilities here.

]]>