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Inquiring into the corpus of empire

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posted on 2024-06-05, 14:56 authored by Stephen Doherty, Lisa Ford, Kirsten McKenzie, Naomi Parkinson, David A Roberts, Paul Halliday, Zoe Laidlaw, Alan LesterAlan Lester, Philip Stern
This article tests the value of corpus linguistics in analyzing nineteenth-century commissions of inquiry into British colonies. It examines and improves the capacity of a computerized text analysis tool called the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to identify word meaning, sentiment, and psycholinguistic constructs in nineteenth-century sources. By augmenting its dictionary with nineteenth-century language and cross-checking meaning, we show that the software can code with 97% accuracy. We then demonstrate the tool’s potential to explore genres of colonial writing, and to locate emotive language and language relating to power differentials in commission reports, a function we argue may provide a “way in” to assessing how commissioners treated different kinds of British subjects and their testimony in the reports.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Journal of World History

ISSN

1045-6007

Publisher

Project MUSE

Issue

2

Volume

32

Page range

219-240

Department affiliated with

  • Geography Publications

Institution

University of Sussex

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes