RELI/ENGL 39, Fall 2015, University of the Pacific

The Uses of Voyant

During Tuesday’s class session we were all introduced to a new tool known as Voyant. Voyant can be accessed online or can be downloaded to your computer, desk top, etc. At first I did not completely understand how Voyant worked or what it was used for but after the class was instructed on what to do it became more clear to me that voyant is used for multiple things but mainly for word count and comparing different words. Once you download a document onto your computer and upload it onto voyant, it will reveal how many times a certain word is used. This can be helpful since it will give you an idea of what to expect and whether or not the document is useful. For example, the documents Dr. S gave us to upload onto voyant showed the word “God” many times which can give the reader the clues that the document could have a lot to do with the subject of religion.

Voyant is basically used for digital texts for analysis and to study texts. At first Voyant did not seem to be that helpful to me just because I myself am not familiar at all with digital texts but I am sure if I were to use digital texts it would most definitely come in handy for analysis and studying. I am sure we will be using many digital texts in this class so it will help more once we start to actually get the hang of it as we go. Other than that, I find voyant to be a really cool tool that all of us in the class will utilize.

 

3 Comments

  1. Ash

    I definitely agree with you that revealing the texts’ most frequently used word(s) is one of the best tools found on Voyant.
    I can also relate to you in a sense that I’m not familiar with a wide breadth of digital texts, but maybe in the future, as an English major, I’ll be able to use Voyant for further analysis and studying.

  2. s_nuuhiwa

    Similar to you I struggled (and still do) with Voyant. However, I particularly found it interest how the program is able to compare documents for commonly used words and similarities with different text. As noted in class, this is a wonderful program for us to use when deciphering an author’s pseudonym. However, I want to challenged you with your analysis. You state that the program is generally helpful since is provides a brief analysis – I would love to hear more of your analysis for the text you uploaded into Voyant.

  3. Danielle

    I agree, it is a bit difficult in trying to get used to Voyant since most of us are first time users. In the end, our class will be able to utilize this software more easily as it analyzes different texts. I would also like to hear more about your text analysis when you used Voyant.

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