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Unpacking the Semantic Dimensions of 'Revolution'

Investigating 'Revolution' through Corpus Linguistics - tracing its diverse meanings from historical astronomy to modern socio-political contexts. Analyzing literary usage and contemporary significance.

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Unpacking the Semantic Dimensions of 'Revolution'

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  1. Investigating Semantics using Corpus Linguistics:A Case Study of 'Revolution' • Dominic Smith • December 2004 dominicsmith

  2. Earliest attestations of 'Revolution' • Rotation about an axis, especially in astronomy(1390 in astronomy, 1664 for general rotation) • Recurrance of an event, especially of time(1430) • Consideration of a set of ideas(1586, now obsolete) • A great changeIt is I, that am come down Thurgh change & revolucioun!c1400 Rom. Rose 4366Heere's fine Reuolution, if wee had the tricke to see't.1602 SHAKES. Ham. V. i. 98 dominicsmith

  3. Earliest attestations of 'Revolution' • The political meaningAssuring those quarters from all reuolutions that might be feared. 1600 E. BLOUNT tr. Conestaggio 175 [Conestaggio's (J. F. de) Historie of the uniting of the kingdom of Portugall to the crowne of Castill tr. 1600]Hee was very jealous of the intended revolucion of governmt to his Maties advantage.1655 Clarke Papers (Camden) IV. 303 Source: OED, 2nd Edition dominicsmith

  4. What 'Revolution' means today • In the Bank of English:21341 attestations of 'Revolution' of the the NODE in the the the of a NODE and a in to a industrial NODE the in of in s french NODE of to and a and cultural NODE is was a and after of NODE was is to during in american NODE that not was after to russian NODE <p> it is that before s NODE but of that since for islamic NODE which and it for an sexual NODE has s s by since and NODE to be by <p> that counter NODE he by <p> s during bolshevik NODE it has be before new green NODE had been as as <p> social NODE as its on with this quiet NODE a on for from is technologi NODE by that have is from this NODE will he not last about velvet NODE with <p> has was with iranian NODE they as with about called digital NODE for had he on was informatio NODE or have its dominicsmith

  5. What 'Revolution' means today • In the FLOB:87 attestations of 'Revolu*':20 Change, 30 Political, 2 Rotation, 1 Other dominicsmith

  6. What 'Revolution' means today • More cases of revolution in British Books (104.9 / million) than in British Newspapers (average 86.0 / million) • Random sample suggests usage much as in FLOB • BUT: British Books sub-corpus contains non-fiction news from Algeria. `A humorous revolution" was how one of the newspapers had come to help safeguard their Revolution? <p> The Snail seemed to read his of clichéd images of quasi-revolution. Only the scale is interesting. invasion. But during the Cultural Revolution all display of colour was a protracted social and political revolution. However, it should be noted that in the fundamental vision that revolution could succeed anywhere, given the were transformed by the Glorious Revolution from a subversive faction into a in proportion as the industrial revolution seized upon one branch of of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. London, Cape. Firestone, S., dramatically. With the Industrial Revolution people began to move to the about. That won't move `the Revolution" forward. <p> <f> I believe dominicsmith

  7. Why look at the early 19th century? • French Revolution had just happened (1789)(The first 'revolution' to be called such at the time?) • Marx and Engels published A Communist Manifesto (1848) • Mass publication well underway, starting for the working classes • Government concerns over subversive political pamphlets and newspapers led to censorship and taxation Picture – Detail from The Storming of the Bastille dominicsmith

  8. Problems With Using Fiction • A given author might not be representative of language use at the time • Only the texts that are popular now tend to be available electronically • Working-class literacy poor. Stories were published for them but cheaply and not much has survived • So we are limited to middle/upper-class works, thereby limiting the politics Picture - Martineau: The Last Chapter dominicsmith

  9. My Corpus • 3 885 929 words at present • 24 texts • Authors:Austen, Blake. Brontë, Buckstone, Byron, Dickens, Hardy, Rymer, Shelley, Thackeray, Wordsworth • Spans whole of 19th century (Blake starts in 1790) • Texts from OTA, Project Gutenberg and LION all cleaned to plain text. dominicsmith

  10. The Results in Brief • In the Bank of English British Books sub-corpus, 'Revolution' occurs 104.9 times / million words • Overall in the BoE, it occurs 51.42 times per million • In the 19th century fiction corpus, it occurs only 4.89 times / million • Only in the US Spoken sub-corpus of the BoE does it occur less frequently (2.0 times/million) • Because of this, the study used 'Revol*' dominicsmith

  11. The Results: Revolution • Different authors have different uses of 'Revolution' dominicsmith

  12. The Results: Revol* by author • Decided to look at 'Revol*' • Again, clear that different authors use words differently • Picture more complicated here because of revolt (disgusting, rise up) too dominicsmith

  13. The Results: Revol* by time • To chart evolution would ideally require the same amount of text from each decade. Haven't got this. • Notice how political meanings peak in 1840s and mental meaning, popular at the same time, seems to die out later in the century • Especially need more works from 1830s dominicsmith

  14. Is This Corpus Linguistics? • 'Corpus linguistics looks at language from a social perspective. • 'Each discourse has, by necessity, a diachronic dimension. What is said today is a reaction to what has been said before ... Unless we find the intertextual clues that link this text segment to previous texts, and to relevant contemporaneous texts, we do not know what makes it unique. • 'Each lexical item refers to other lexical items. Whenever a new lexical item (and each lexical item once has been a new item) is introduced into the discourse it has to be explained in terms of lexical items which are already available.' My version of corpus linguistics – Wolfgang Teubert (Draft, to appear in International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 1/2005)http://www.english.bham.ac.uk/who/myversion.htm dominicsmith

  15. Where do we go from here? • With more different authors, we could plot usage over time more accurately • Inclusion of other genres, such as political and newspapers? • Investigation of other, similar political words • Paraphrase and metaphor • How do we look for what is not in the corpus? Picture – Detail from Fildes: The Village Wedding dominicsmith

  16. This presentation is available online to download: • www.domsmith.co.uk/revolution dominicsmith

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