Text mining of primary resources is one of the most valuable assets available to Digital Humanists in the modern world, but the question remains; how do we utilize this technology in a way that allows for new ways of thinking about the past, fundamentally changes our understanding of history, or leads to the possibility for new discoveries? The answer lies within software that enables visualization for that mined text data in a way researchers can make sense of.
Working with Voyant to visualize aspects of former slave interviews has opened up a new world of possibilities for understanding text mined data, from new perspectives on the interconnectedness of terminology across groups of people, to the regional differences of language that make each population unique. I found the Collocates graph tool to be the most interesting because it presents the direct correlation between distinct terms that would otherwise be impossible to grasp with traditional research methods.
By entering descriptive terms which former slaves often used in relation to their masters such as good, mean, or cruel, we are able to see what other terminology is associated with that language. This provides a unique snapshot into the broader scope of how former slaves thought about their old masters, not just individual descriptions or certain passages.
iframe src=”https://voyant.lincsproject.ca/?corpus=187af3db33167f277f88fa1bcd4e1adc&query=cruel&query=good&query=mean&view=CollocatesGraph“width=”100%” height=”500″
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