Text Analysis

"ABSTRACT:
    This study assumes the subject's pursuit of meaning is generally incapacitating and should be suspended. It aims to demonstrate how such a suspension is theoretically accomplished by utilizing Lacan's formulae of sexuation integrated with his work in discourse theory and topology.
    Part I places this study into context by examining scholarship from the established fields of hermeneutics, phenomenology, (post)structuralism, aesthetic theory and psychoanalysis in order to extract out their respective theory of meaning. These theories reveal that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation and reaches near crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand this crisis is mollified by the rise of Heideggerian-Gadamerian hermeneutical phenomenology which questions traditional epistemological approaches to the text using a new ontological conceptualization of meaning and a conscious rejection of methodology. On the other hand this crisis is exacerbated when the ubiquitous nature of meaning is itself challenged by (post)structuralism's discovery of the signifier which inscribes a limit to meaning, and by the domains of sense and nonsense newly opened up by aesthetic theory. These historical developments culminate in the field of psychoanalysis which most consequentially delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity.
    Part II extends these findings by rigorously constructing out of the Lacanian sexuated formulae a decidedly non-hermeneutical phenomenological approach useful in demonstrating the sexual nature of meaning. Explicated in their static state by way of an account of their original derivation from the Aristotelian logical square, it is argued that these four formulae are relevant to basic concerns of textual theory inclusive of the hermeneutical circle of meaning. These formulae are then set into motion by integrating them with Lacan's four discourses to demonstrate the breakdown of meaning. Finally, the cuts and sutures of two-dimensional space that is topology as set down in L'étourdit are performed to confirm how the very field of meaning is ultimately suspended from a nonsensical singular point known in Lacanian psychoanalysis as objet a. The contention is that by occupying this point the subject frees himself from the debilitating grip of meaning."

Televisi berformat berita atau berorientasi pada kegiatan jurnalistik  di Indonesia  salah satunya adalah Kompas TV. Persaingan antar televisi berformat berita di Indonesia terkait pemberitaan “media event”  yang dikemas kedalam jurnalistik terikat (embedded-journalism) memiliki potensi yang tinggi untuk adanya kesalahan terkait pemberitaan yang dilakukan oleh media, salah satunya terkait etika. Selain itu, “media event” seringkali hanya mengutamakan satu unsur nilai berita, artinya pemilihan peristiwa tersebut mungkin saja tidak berdampak. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah mengetahui adakah nilai berita dalam pemberitaan kasus perampokan dan penyanderaan di Pondok Indah Jakarta dan mendeskripsikan etika media dalam pemberitaan kasus perampokan dan penyanderaan di Pondok Indah Jakarta. Kajian pustaka dari penelitian ini ada tiga artikel. pertama, penekanan atas berita sebagai karya jurnalistik. Kedua, persamaan tujuan televisi sebagai media komunikasi massa dengan jurnalistik televisi sebagai bagian konten didalamnya. Ketiga, cara media mengekspos berita kriminal sesuai dengan kriteria jurnalistik yang baik. Kajian teori yang digunakan adalah teori ekonomi dan politik media yang melihat bagaimana cara pengambilan keputusan media dalam ruang pemberitaan.
Dengan menggunakan metode penelitian analisis teks kuantitatif deskriptif, terkait nilai berita dan etika media dalam pemberitaan kasus perampokan dan penyanderaan di Pondok Indah Jakarta dihasilkan data penelitian yakni terdapat nilai berita aktualitas sebanyak 5 kali, nilai kedekatan muncul sebanyak 15 kali, nilai dampak positif muncul sebanyak 7 kali, nilai berita dampak negatif muncul sebanyak 0 kali, nilai berita Human interst muncul sebanyak 83 kali dengan rincian kategori ketegangan (seuspense) sebanyak 28 kali, kategori ketidaklaziman (unusualness) sebanyak 18 kali, kategori minat (personal interst) muncul sebanyak 7 kali, kategori Konflik (conflict) sebanyak 13 kali,  kategori Simpati (sympathy) sebanyak 11 kali, kategori Kemanusian muncul sebanyak 8 kali, kategori Seks (sex) sebanyak 0 kali. Dan Pencatatan berdasarkan kategori usia (age)  muncul sebanyak 0 kali. Ini berarti pemberitaan memiliki nilai berita yang banyak dan variatif. Dengan kepuasan sesegera dan terasuk kedalam jenis berita yang menarik. Terkait  etika media, Kompas TV tidak melanggar 1 pun etika media, dengan indikator objektifitas, memiliki tingkat pemberitaan mengenai tersangka sebanyak 196 kali. Pemberitaan mengenai korban sebanyak 183 kali. Pemberitaan mengenai polisi sebanyak 165 kali dalam artian pembagian pemberitaan pihak yang terlibat merata. Berdasarkan kejujuran, Kompas TV tidak melakukan pelanggaran fakta, hampir keseluruhan merupakan pendapat narasumber yang diulas lagi. Tidak ada satu pemberitaanpun yang memenuhi unsur pelanggaran pemberitaan yang sensasional. Selain itu, Kompas TV juga menghargai adanya privacy serta tidak melakukan propaganda.

Populism is a concept employed to qualify the political behavior of a large number of actors at a worldwide scale, with scientists classifying the latter into populists and non-populists according to dimensions such as ideology, strategy, discourse, economic policy, and even style. This article analyzes existing schools of thought on the nature of populism and argues that conceptualizing populism as a specific type of anti-elite discourse in the name of the People is both conceptually and methodologically the most coherent and useful way to understand the phenomenon. Additionally, it suggests discarding crude, dichotomous classification in favor of a gradated view of populist mobilization by means of quantifying populist discourse and observing its spatial and temporal variation. It adds value to current methods of measurement by demonstrating why and how clause-based semantic text analysis can provide optimal quantitative results while retaining qualitative elements for mixed-methods analysis. Aiming, moreover, at expanding the scope of populism studies by overcoming a narrow view that focuses exclusively at party system developments, it applies semantic text analysis to the study of grassroots mobilization during the Great Recession. Results point to the wide use of populist discourse on the part of movement activists seeking an inclusive language when framing disparate social grievances in a given constituency, a finding with important implications with regards to how populism can facilitate straddling the divide that purportedly distinguishes institutionalized party system behavior from the social movement milieu.

"Introduction
"The element of beauty [in the prophecy of Malachi] is almost wholly lacking, there being but slight attempt at ornamentation of any kind. The figurative element is very limited… Neither in spirit, thought, nor form has it the characteristics of poetry" (Smith 1961:4-5).

"Unlike Zechariah, Malachi does not employ any particular literary structure in order to convey his meaning. The subjects with which he deals follow one another apparently haphazardly." (Baldwin 1972:214).

In this chapter I will adduce various types of evidence, based on a literary-structural analysis of the Hebrew text, which would contradict the two scholarly opinions stated above. In the first place, the style of Malachi is as beautiful as it is forceful, manifesting a rich diversity of rhetorical ornamentation, including figurative language, which has much in common with the poetic forms to be found in other prophetic literature. Secondly, the discourse structure of Malachi is in fact quite elaborate, for it features two distinct, yet overlapping types of formal organization, linear as well as concentric in nature. These textual arrangements complement one another in expert fashion, both to demarcate meaningful units within the prophecy as a whole and hence also to persuasively convey the burden of Yahweh’s urgent message to his errant people of Judah.
"

This paper introduces key principles behind a five-year research project into analyzing competent academic discourse at the Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, a specialized university for Petroleum Engineers. After briefly introducing a holistic approach to ESP that combines research, assessment and learning, one component of the research that involves the analysis of competent student-written texts across genres is illustrated by sample analyses of laboratory experiment reports. The ultimate aim of the analysis is to determine in a holistic manner what constitutes a 'competent' performance in written deliverables, both within particular genres and more
ambitiously across genres. In other words, an attempt is made to identify some general features of competent text above and beyond what has been identified in particular text types. The text analysis is designed to correspond to four assessment components used to evaluate competence in course rubrics, Task, Organization, Content and Language. These move from the most holistic categories of task and organization (related to holistic genre considerations) to the more detailed atomistic analysis of detailed content and the language used to express it. Given the holistic nature of the model, the focus in this paper is on just a few of the categories from the model.
From the more holistic components of the model (Task and Organization), the focus is on generic structure. In relation to the more atomistic analysis of content and language, the focus is on transitivity. Experimental laboratory reports are selected here as one of the simplest of 20 academic report genres. I argue, with an example from the data, that the most competent
students can transcend genre requirements even in this relatively restricted genre.

La critica letteraria è una materia in cui “parole e cose” sono strettamente intrecciate le une alle altre, e in cui tra i componenti materiali dei testi e le categorie che li classificano esiste un intricato rapporto di individuazione reciproca: non c’è termine, nel lessico della teoria letteraria, che non sia nato da un dato testuale, un caso particolare che ne ha influenzato natura e confini con le proprie caratteristiche specifiche, e allo stesso tempo non si dà dato testuale che possa essere identificato come tale in mancanza di una categoria che gli preesiste, di uno spazio teorico che lo fa esistere in quanto oggetto e ne garantisce la riconoscibilità. Partendo da questo doppio presupposto, questo libro si offre come strumento di partenza per lo studio della narrativa, occasione per riepilogare i concetti fondamentali della critica riportandoli – per quanto possibile – ai loro contesti di origine, così da coniugare nozione ed evoluzione, significato e storia.

Every research work implies reading articles, books, etc. Thus, a researcher should know the techniques that would enable him / her to identify the most relevant quality information in a text while reading; i.e. a good researcher must necessarily be a good reader. A three-stage process is suggested here.

Cervantes' novel Don Quixote (1605) has been an inspiration for the works of many artists, and Henry Fielding himself on the title page of his novel accepts that Joseph Andrews (1742) was written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote. Moving from this point, the ideas developed in this paper are an attempt to study the thematic and formal similarities between Don Quixote and Joseph Andrews with an intertextual approach. In this respect, this article explores such literary elements as satire, parody, picaresque novel, and the Quixotic character employed both in Don Quixote and Joseph Andrews comparatively and this study, hence, argues that reading Joseph Andrews through Don Quixote and a comparison between them will provide the reader with a possibility of new insights about the text.

The United Kingdom is the first country to withdraw its membership from the European Union (EU). Immigration featured high on the Brexit news agenda and EU citizens' rights to work and live in the United Kingdom are likely to be affected by the country's exit from the EU. This study analyzes how salient EU citizens were in Brexit news, and investigates whether there was a relationship between the negative portrayal of EU citizens and the type of news outlet. The analysis is based on 19,367 news stories published between June 1, 2015, and June 23, 2016. Automated content analysis was used to determine whether EU citizens were mentioned. The results do not reveal a divide between tabloids and broadsheets, but between national and regional papers. It is only in regional papers from England and Wales that EU citizens were more likely to be mentioned if the tone of a news story was more negative. The findings also suggest that the news media presented the Brexit referendum as a vote about migration in general rather than about intra-EU migration.

This dissertation examines the nearly complete German, English and French secondary literature on, and the composers’ commentary on, three renowned works of the European postwar avant-garde. With the aid of the software MAXQDA, I undertook a meta-analysis combining qualitative and quantitative methods to discover what the texts address and in which amounts, which terms play important roles in them, and what they say about subjects like perception and meaning. I analyse individual terms and topics and interpret their significance based on how often or how seldom each of them arises in the texts in relation to specific works over time. For example, terms or semantic fields such as complexity, extremes, violence and power continuously play a prominent role, while others like world or beauty are rarely used or not used at all during some decades. I discuss the discourses and their arguments - including several so far unknown sources -, which extend over sixty years now, based on analysis producing some surprising results – both for the single works and ultimately across works.

Il saggio si propone di attraversare l'ipertestuale volume di Italo Calvino, Il castello dei destini incrociati, con una prospettiva che focalizzi l'attenzione sul ruolo del bosco, della foresta e della natura come luogo di evoluzione, poiché luogo dell'ignoto, della radice che disegna il labirinto e dunque della logica. Tramite il bosco si compie un procedimento diverso da quello della scoperta: è in atto un processo di evoluzione. Infatti, si entra in un territorio sconosciuto ma al contempo fruttuoso, in cui perde valore la favella, mentre acquista significato la riproducibilità tecnica, data dalle immagini, ed il gioco combinatorio ad esse legato. Procedendo ad un confronto a distanza con la recente fiaba pubblicata da Mondadori (La foresta-radice-labirinto Mondadori, 2011), si legge l'opera che ha per centro il castello dall'ombra delle sue mura, da una prospettiva esterna, come dall'alto dell'elce abitato dal Barone Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò. In tal modo, è possibile riconoscere il potere generativo della selva che trasforma la capacità di parlare, la favella, in attitudine alla narrazione.

The autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is increasingly being recognized as a major public health issue which affects approximately 0.5-0.6% of the population. Promoting the general awareness of the disorder, increasing the engagement with the affected individuals and their carers, and understanding the success of penetration of the current clinical recommendations in the target communities, is crucial in driving research as well as policy. The aim of the present work is to investigate if Twitter, as a highly popular platform for information exchange, can be used as a data-mining source which could aid in the aforementioned challenges. Specifically, using a large data set of harvested tweets, we present a series of experiments which examine a range of linguistic and semantic aspects of messages posted by individuals interested in ASD. Our findings, the first of their nature in the published scientific literature, strongly motivate additional research on this topic and present a methodological basis for further work.

Online communities generate massive volumes of natural language data and the social sciences continue to learn how to best make use of this new information and the technology available for analyzing it. Text Mining brings together a broad range of contemporary qualitative and quantitative methods to provide strategic and practical guidance on analyzing large text collections. This accessible book, written by a sociologist and a computer scientist, surveys the fast-changing landscape of data sources, programming languages, software packages, and methods of analysis available today. Suitable for novice and experienced researchers alike, the book will help readers use text mining techniques more efficiently and productively.

Network Text Analysis (NTA) involves the creation of networks of words and/or concepts from linguistic data. Its key insight is that the position of words and concepts in a text network  provides vital clues to the central and underlying themes of the text as a whole. Recent research has used an inductive approach to the question of theme extraction. In this paper we take a deductive approach in that we first establish prior expectations as to the key themes to be found in the text. We then compare and contrast the results of our network analysis with the results of  literary and cultural analyses of the film Fight Club as reported in over four dozen other peer-reviewed publications. While our results are remarkably consistent with and complementary to results in those studies, our analysis permits something the others do not—an analytical framework for relating those underlying and central themes to one another.

Introduction

Who ever reads—or preaches from—the book of Obadiah anyway? What's the point when there are so many alternatives that are more familiar and seemingly more "reader-friendly"? It cannot be denied that this, the smallest book in the Hebrew Scriptures, suffers from a rather serious identity crisis, situated as it is on a single page (in most English Bibles) between Amos and Jonah in the corpus of the so-called "Minor" Prophets. But is it correct to view Obadiah as only a short and somewhat insignificant prophecy of doom pronounced against the largely unknown ancient kingdom of Edom? Did this prophecy find its way into the biblical canon simply because a number of its constituent verses happen to resemble those of Jeremiah chapter 49?

On the contrary, as I hope to show in this essay, there is considerable literary as well as theological evidence which would support the conclusion that "the vision of Obadiah" (chazon ‘ovadidah) is actually a model prophetic text—a microcosm as it were of such literature dealing with the forthcoming momentous "day of the LORD" (yom YHWH). Despite its brevity (only about 70 poetic lines in the Hebrew), Obadiah is a masterfully constructed discourse in terms of its artistic style of writing. It is also one that is rhetorically motivated from start to finish, conveying a powerful message of weal as well as woe from the LORD that has just as much relevance to believers today as it did to its original receptors over 25 centuries ago. The purpose of the present study is to demonstrate this claim by means of a careful examination of the form and function of this strongly hortatory, yet beautifully poetic composition. In the process we will illustrate, at least in part, a holistic, discourse oriented approach to the analysis and interpretation of biblical texts, Hebrew prophecy in particular.

After an overview of the intricate formal organization of Obadiah, we will consider how the book's overall structure and style relate to its preeminent function as an instance of rhetorically motivated speech. In other words, we will propose a hypothesis concerning the prophecy's operation on four distinct planes of interpersonal message transmission, namely: the "surface" (explicit textual) level 1 which includes the possibility of participant "embedded" speech2, and the "deep" (implicit, addressee-oriented) level3—all three of which apply to the original setting of composition and communication—then also the "transferred" stratum4 of subsequent application to contextually diverse sociocultural and historical situations. The latter focus on the level4 of “canonical rhetoric” (cf. Vanhoozer 2002:188-199) leads to a number of concluding remarks on the enduring (if oft unrecognized) theological significance of Obadiah to contemporary Bible readers of every persuasion and degree of proficiency, in particular, all those "delivered" (p-l-t) members of "the house of Jacob" (beth ya‘aqov, v. 17).

Kniha se zabývá metodologií textových analýz v kontextu sociální věd. Tematicky pokrývá tři typy textových analýz, které se v sociálních vědách nejčastěji používají: obsahovou, diskurzní a narativní analýzu. Uspořádávající osou celé knihy je otázka čtenáře, protože žádný text nelze v sociálních vědách analyzovat bez toho, aby byl nějakým způsobem čten. V perspektivě této čtenářské dvojakosti autor vysvětluje tři výše zmíněné textově analytické přístupy a ilustruje je na konkrétních výzkumných příkladech. Kniha navzdory svému systematickému členění není zamýšlena jako příručka – zaměřuje se na vybrané metody, se kterými má autor výzkumné zkušenosti. Užitečná bude všem vysokoškolsky vzdělaným odborníkům v sociálněvědním výzkumu, kteří se zabývají nebo by se chtěli zabývat sociálněvědní analýzou textů. Jaké jsou rozdíly mezi lidským a strojovým čtením? Lze vyprávění a příběhy o lidech a společnosti analyzovat s pomocí počítačů? Jak zkoumat čtení autobiografií jako sémiotickou aktivitu se vztahem ke kolektivní paměti? Jak vizualizovat diskurzivní pole (ne)spravedlnosti? Co je obsahem textu a jak tento obsah analyzovat?

This thesis proposes a blue-print of a methodology for the linguistic analysis of Biblical Law from the perspective of discourse analysis. Since the discipline of discourse analysis as applied to Biblical literature is still in the early stages of development, the first chapter focuses on the definition and general theoretical orientation of discourse analysis for Biblical Hebrew, comparing it with other language-oriented approaches such as semantics, syntax, pragmatics, literary analysis, rhetorical analysis, and text-linguistics. I conclude with the proposal that discourse analysis includes aspects of all of these disciplines, but seeks first and foremost to understand the linguistic structure and content of texts.

The second chapter examines parameters needed to facilitate both classification strategies and analysis. First level classification is based on the parameter of communicative purpose, which leads to the defining of the ‘directive’ text type. Directive texts, of which legal texts form a part, consist of discourse where the speaker speaks his/her will that a specific act be done by another person. This can include anything from prayer to requests, to advice, exhortation, decrees, and laws. Parameters are then examined with the goal of distinguishing legal texts from other types of directives. Finally, it is demonstrated how a variety of classification strategies based on differing parameters can be a useful tool for the analysis of legal texts.

The succeeding chapters then detail the steps required for a comprehensive discourse analysis of Biblical law. The corpus consists of the legal texts of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Chapter Three begins with an introduction to the basic aspects that need to be investigated – theme and topic, cohesion, continuity, discontinuity, progression, prominence, semantic roles and relations, and structural organisation. It then presents a procedural outline, techniques for the visual layout of the text, as well as a reminder that the analysis must take into account the textual context. Chapter Four provides guidelines for the identification of units, boundaries, and the cognitive structuring of a text, as well as for the analysis of the semantic relations between clauses and units. Chapter Five focuses on structural matters: linear and parallel structural arrangements, and patterns of regularity and prominence. Chapter Six discusses how to analyse thematic development in a text, specifically the matter of tracking participant reference, and the role and distribution of repetition, and lack thereof, in thematic continuity and progression. The proposed analysis addresses the challenge that word order in legal texts and other types of directives differs significantly from word order in narrative texts. Chapter Seven concludes the methodological outline with a reminder that it is important to be aware of the extra-linguistic factors that can influence analysis. It also provides a procedure for the analysis of the functions of specific linguistic structures found in legal texts, by way of comparative analysis of similar and different text types.

The final conclusion to this thesis offers some general reflections on how this analytic approach can contribute to the current research on Biblical Hebrew. While much work has been done on narrative texts, the discourse analysis of directive texts is still largely unexplored territory. It is my hope that this work may spur others to discover yet other aspects of this fascinating topic, giving them tools with which they can begin, and later build on, improve, and offer further fruitful insights.

On a hot day in July 2016, four policemen walked onto a beach in Nice, France, ordered a Muslim woman to take off part of her hijab dress, in full view of dozens of other tourists, and fined her for violations of the local decency regulations. The incident was captured by a photographer (which makes the public undressing even more disconcerting) and the images went viral. They triggered a fierce international debate on the why and how of such interventions, in which Muslim female dress is seen as a direct index of a deeper threat – that of jihadism. How could these four policemen see their intervention as " normal " ? After all, one can question, on grounds of common sense, quite a few aspects of a situation in which four armed men order a woman to publicly undress, and sanction her " over-dressedness " on a beach as an act of indecency. The answer can be found elsewhere, in a feature of public debate which has become pervasive whenever Islam and its (real or imagined) characteristics are the theme. There is a highly peculiar use of identity in such arguments, and I shall attempt to sketch it in what follows.

Simple exploratory text mining and document clustering of journal articles from JSTOR’s Data for Research service. Go to http://dfr.jstor.org/, make a request for data (specify CSV as outout format and Word Counts as data type), then once you get a zip file, unzip it and start with one of the unpack functions and then you’re ready to go with any of the other functions. For more details on installation and usage, see https://github.com/benmarwick/JSTORr or send me an email.

A comparison of the results of the computational analysis of the Taʾrīkh al-islām, al-Dhahabī's 50-volume biographical collection, with brief statements that describe the rise and decline of cities and provinces of the Islamic world with the al-Amṣār dhawāt al-āthār, al-Dhahabī's 4-folio epistle, suggests that al-Dha-habī had a solid grasp of the tremendous amount of biographical and historical data that he collected, and that his short epistle may be regarded as a missing analytical summary of the most ambitious historical project in the pre-modern Islamic world. In light of these results, we perhaps may think of al-Dhahabī as one of the earliest quantitative historians. Although we do not have conclusive evidence about how exactly al-Dhahabī worked with his data, the paper argues that all necessary mathematical, visual and 'mechanical' techniques that would facilitate data analysis already existed, and that al-Dhahabī and other premodern Islamic historians could have used them. Technical Notes Note on data and visualizations: All data, graphs and cartograms used in this article were produced by the author. The data was extracted with Python (www. python.org) scripts from the electronic text of a medieval Arabic biographical collection available online in open access. Graphs and cartograms are based on the extracted data and produced in R (www.r-project.org), a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics, and D3 (d3js.org), a JavaScript library for building interactive data-driven documents.