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TACTweb Online Workbook

4. What can the computer show us?

To use a text analysis environment you need to understand the types of displays that it produces. You need to understand the way it shows you the results of a search. There are four types of display in this system:

4.1 Keyword in Context (KWIC)

A Keyword in Context display shows you all the occurrences of the word or words that you searched with one line of context. Here is an example that shows the occurrences of the word "dream" in A Midsummer Night's Dream: 
  I.1/577.1        | Four nights will quickly dream away the time; | And
  I.1/578.2   Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; | Brief as the
  II.2/585.1        | Ay me, for pity! what a dream was here! | Lysander,
  III.2/591.1    this derision | Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision, |
  IV.1/593.1      as the fierce vexation of a dream. | But first I will
  IV.1/594.2    to me | That yet we sleep, we dream. Do not you think | The
  IV.1/594.2      rare | vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to 
  IV.1/594.2     the wit of man to | say what dream it was: man is but an
  IV.1/594.2    he go | about to expound this dream. Methought I was--there 
  IV.1/594.2     his heart to report, what my dream | was. I will get Peter
  IV.1/594.2      to write a ballad of | this dream: it shall be called
  IV.1/594.2      it shall be called Bottom's dream, | because it hath no
  V.1/599.1       | Following darkness like a dream, | Now are frolic: not a
  V.1/599.2   theme, | No more yielding but a dream, | Gentles, do not
The numbers at the front of each line give the act and scene number, and then the page and column number where the text can be found in the edition the pagination was based on: The Complete Oxford Shakespeare, edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford University Press: Oxford 1978). The target word will usually appear in the middle of the line.

Such a display allows you to browse a large number of occurrences quickly to get an overview of how the word is used or to quickly find an occurrence you are searching for when there are many occurrences. In the TACTweb environment clicking on the target word will take you to the full text so that you can study the occurrence in greater detail.

4.2 Variable Context Display

A Keyword in Context display only shows you one line. Sometimes you want to see a couple of lines so that you don't have to go to the full text to understand the use of the word. In that case you can choose a Variable Context Display where you control how much of the text is displayed.

Here is an excerpt from the complete display based on the occurrences of the word "dream" in the Dream, with three lines of context on either side of the line with the target word: 

  dream (14)
  
  [HIPPOLYTA]     Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
                  Four nights will quickly dream away the time;
                  And then the moon, like to a silver bow
                  New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night
----------------------------------------------------------- (I.1, HIPPOLYTA)
                  War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
                  Making it momentany as a sound,
                  Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
                  Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
                  That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
------------------------------------------------------------ (I.1, LYSANDER)
  [HERMIA]        [Awaking]  Help me, Lysander, help me! do thy best
                  To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast!
                  Ay me, for pity! what a dream was here!
                  Lysander, look how I do quake with fear:
                  Methought a serpent eat my heart away,
------------------------------------------------------------- (II.2, HERMIA)
                  And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight.
                  When they next wake, all this derision
                  Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision,
                  And back to Athens shall the lovers wend,
                  With league whose date till death shall never end.
------------------------------------------------------------ (III.2, OBERON)
Now there is a line separating each occurrence and slightly more information about each occurrence. The numbers and words in parentheses (I.1, HIPPOLYTA) refer to the position of the occurrence in the text (Act I, Scene 1), and the character who uses the word. In the TACTweb environment clicking on the target word will take you to the full text so that you can study the occurrence in greater detail.

Controlling the Context

In the TACTweb environment you can control the amount of text you want to display on either side of the found occurrence. This is why this display is called a variable context display. You do this in two steps.
  1. First you specify the type of unit you will work with. In this implementation you can choose whether you want the unit to be lines, page columns, act and scenes, speakers, or words. This being a play, choosing "speaker" allows you to see an entire speech surrounding each selected words.

    Note. It is unwise to choose large units like speakers and parts as it will take longer to prepare the display.

  2. Then you specify how many of this unit you want before and how many after the found occurrence.

4.3 Distribution Graph

A Variable Context display shows you the textual context of the occurrences found, but not where in the text they occur. (It gives you the location, but it doesn't show the occurrences is a way that you can easily see where they fall.) A Distribution Graph can give you a bird's eye view of where in the text the word you searched for shows up.

Here is an example that shows the occurrences of "dream" in the Dream: 

0-10%     |    3|***
10-20%    |    0|
20-30%    |    0|
30-40%    |    1|*
40-50%    |    0|
50-60%    |    0|
60-70%    |    1|*
70-80%    |    9|*********
80-90%    |    0|
90-100%   |    2|**

Total: 16.
This display shows you that in the first 10% of the text there were 3 occurrences of the target words out of a total of 16. It also creates a simple graph of the distribution of the pattern.

Notice how "dream" uttered at the beginning, but mainly in the portion of the text between 70 and 80%. Does that relate to the action in the play?

4.4 Word List

The last type of display available in TACTweb is the Word List display which will give you a list of words that match the pattern you ask for. For example, in the Hume text, if you ask for all the words that begin with "moon" you get the following list: 

  moon (29)
  moonbeams (1)
  moonlight (6)
  moon's (1)
  moonshine (8)
This display shows you the words which match the pattern you asked for and how many occurrences there are for each word. To use this type of display you need to learn how to ask the system to search not for a single word, but patterns in the letters that make up words. That will be covered in the next section, under Truncation Searching.
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GR May 9, 1995