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Ngram Limitations

In this post, I’d like you to double back and reflect on what your particular tool obscures about your content. Your post should address the following questions: What can’t the tool help you to see? What are its limitations? Does it convey a bias with regard to analysis? Does it, intentionally or not, have an ideology? What tools would you need in order to overcome or situate this bias?

This tool is able to show you a timeline based on specific context in a book or content. For example I imputed "romanticism, literature" and a few other terms and the response I got back did not show me much on the graph itself. The graph was hard to decipher but if you scroll down you are able to click on specific time periods and it will bring you to a google page related to the terms you imputed and the time you selected. A problem with this is lat you are only allowed up to 7 words so the google search is not very condensed. There are hundreds of pages you could go trough that shows literature and writing based on your terms, but it is hard to navigate and choose which ones are best suited to what you are looking for. I do not think that this application shows any bias because it compiles any resource based on the terms and date you chose. The only bias that may come our when using this resource is the user own personal biases based on the terms used and dates chosen.

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This tool(Ngram Viewer) is hard to use when looking up specific books, but when looking up words relating to concepts that we have covered so far this year you can see some diversity in the graph. You can also go to the bottom of the page and see how the words manifested in literary works over a certain time period. You can then compare the literary works over a different time period and how they have changed as well as compare the different input words over the same time period. This allows you to look at the progression of literary works in relation to the words that you input and can help the user to get a different of better perspective on the progression of literature over time.

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My given source was the Google Books Ngram Viewer. You are able enter up to seven phrases in the search bar and the graph will show you how these phrases have occurred in a variety of books and collections of texts. This can aid in literary criticism because it shows the evolution of a variety of texts over a length of time. This can give you background information of certain texts and present to the viewer how phrases and texts are classified and organized over a period of time.

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An unpainted spot on the lamp.

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Chapter 2, pg.6

What is the point of describing the relationships that so many in the household have with Maggie?

What do words like “attachment”, “tie”, “affection” reflect about the many relationships that Maggie has with people within the household?

What is so surprising about a maid/slave having a close relationship with so many people in the household?

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b) Ishmael chose to associate whaling with royalty rather than making a different comparison. He could have shown resentment towards being in a line of work that served the wealthy like so many do but he instead illustrates pride in his work. He says there is a “dignity of whaling” showing that he feels that his job in itself is worthy of honor just like the people who the whale oil is for are of high honor. Ishmael could have compared whaling to being a part of the lower class who lived to serve the high society but he instead made a comparison that illustrates he sees himself and the buyers of whale oil the be on the same playing field.

Moby Dick Chapter 25

a) Why would the narrator go into such detail of how royalty or high status people live?

b)Why are you choosing to associate whaling and royalty instead of another medium?

c)What is the creative goal in presenting the narrator as a person who shows pride for his work and sees it as “digni[fied] ?

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Moby Dick Chapter 25

a) Why would the narrator go into such detail of how royalty or high status people live?

b)Why are you choosing to associate whaling and royalty instead of another medium?

c)What is the creative goal in presenting the narrator as a person who shows pride for his work and sees it as “digni[fied] ?

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Hapzibah is shown to have melancholic view towards a happy, youthful moment. The beautiful garden brings back sad memories of her past many years when she lived alone in the dreary home that had no beauty. This also reflect that when she is surrounded by other people the beauty has been brought back into her life. Phoebe is the one who has come to the home and is living in a naive light that in turn brings light and cheer back into the dreary home. The word “babyhood” is used in this passage that present a childlike feeling of happiness that has been brought back to the home when it is filled with family and young/new life. It relates to the whole story because it presents the idea that being stuck in the past can turn you and your life into a miserable and despairing thing while looking towards the future and what can be changed allows you to get back to a childlike happiness that you could have had before if you were not stuck in your past.

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In all of these readings people were sharing the experiences of different social groups and the hardships that they faced. Glissant shared the experience Africans being torn away from there everyday life and deported and “confronting the unknown” through the use of poetry and intense metaphors. Hayes highlighted the Indigenous peoples use of story telling to pass on history and testaments for future generations. Mather used accounts from court cases on the witch trials that told a story in themselves through the facts that were presented. Common themes exposed themselves when reading the different cases that illustrated the true, conflicting “facts” that were presented by the public to convict these “witches”. Rowlandson wrote a personal account of her experiences with capture and suffering by the Indians. Bradstreet wrote poems that speak on being a woman in the colonial period and the adversity that women faced with there limited power to be separate from a man or just separate from the constraints of there gender. All of these authors presented different social groups hardships faced through a creative outlet. The use of storytelling allows the social groups history to be presented and remembered centuries later. All these groups share a common feeling of the unknown and not having an idea of what is to come in there future. The Africans did not know what was going to greet them when they got off the boat. Indigenous people were preparing future generations with accounts and stories of lessons learned in order to prepare for what they might face. Women did not know when or if they would ever escape the constraints of womanhood and the oppression of gender. While they all faced different unknowns and struggles; these reading bring together the idea that storytelling is an account of this unknown to look back on when the future catches up with them.