On the Thread of Discourse: Homogeneity, Trends, and Rhythms in Texts

Abstract

The rich variety of literary material can usefully be described by quantitative content analysis. Usually, such a description proceeds by segmenting the text into large aggregates that take no account of original word order. A more fine-grained analysis can be obtained by taking word order into account. The latter analysis is closer to the linear nature of the text as narrative and also closer to the true nature of language itself. PROTAN, a computer-aided content analysis system, takes care of all the operations that result in the tagging of text words into an appropriate category (here called a dictionary); meanwhile, the original sequential order of the tagged words is kept unchanged within the text. Trend analyses and time-series analyses can then be performed on the condition that pertinent categories can be shown to be non-randomly distributed throughout the text (non-homogeneity). The corpus reported upon in this article is made up of two sets of texts. The first set consists of seven reference texts—mostly short stories—to serve as foil for a second set of eighteen texts written and distributed by a Belgian terrorist group during 1984 and 1985. The results point first to the psychological significance of whether texts are homogeneous or not on a given dictionary. They point secondly to the pertinence of content rhythms for describing texts. Compared to the reference texts, the eighteen target texts are more orderly in more ways. This is in opposition to the opinion generally held by public authorities.