Using the datasets from our Voyant homework (early Christian martyr texts, sermons about Lincoln’s death, and Shakespeare), use AntConc to study one or more of these corpora.

TIP:  There are video tutorials on the antconc website:  scroll down the page to the section titled Video Tutorials. http://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/

I’ll post mine here as soon as it uploads (it is a big file).  [added 5:55 pm, the screen capture is here https://youtu.be/OXX31b-k37E

NOTE:  you may need to unzip the zip files to load them into AntConc.

  1.  Use the collocation feature to see what words are used around m?n and wom?n in the Shakespeare or martyr corpus.  What does this tell us about what these texts associate with men vs women?  What does this tell us about how men and women are depicted in the corpus?  (Experiment with the From… To… settings in the lower right to give yourself a small window around m?n and wom?n and then a larger window to catch more words.)
  2. Use the collocation feature to see how Shakespeare talks about love and death (something we did in Voyant, also).  Do you need to use wildcards (such as love* or death*|die*|dead|dying)?  Do you get more information than you did in Voyant?  Less?  Or a different kind?  What does it tell you about how Shakespeare talks about love and death?  [If love and death don’t interest you, play around with any other key words of interest to you.]

Note:  you can click the CLONE RESULTS button to have your results appear in a separate window.  You can take screenshots of anything you think is important, also, and print the screenshots.  [Don’t worry if you don’t know how to take a screen shot.]

TIP:  If you want to look at different corpora and use different tools within AntConc, it might be useful to clear your data out before uploading a new corpus.  The “File” menu up on the top menu bar has an option for Clear Tool, Clear All Tools, and Clear All Tools and Files.  I often “Clear All Tools and Files” before doing something new.

FOR CLASS THURSDAY:  Bring a typed response to these questions.  We will discuss them further in class, and in small groups will post to the class blog.  You will turn in your typed response in class.  

You do not need to spend hours playing around with AntConc.  Load the corpora, use the collocation feature, see what you learn and don’t learn.

OPTIONAL [don’t worry if you don’t do this]

  1. Using the martyr corpus, set one text or set of texts as a target in the key words tool and the rest of your corpus as the reference corpus.  See the screen capture of the tutorial for more details and see the tutorial online, linked on the syllabus.  (For example:  load the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas.  Then in Settings > Tool Preferences > Key Word List load the whole martyr corpus as the Reference corpus.  Then click Apply, and in the Key Word List part of AntConc click “Start.”  You should get a list of words that are more unique to Perpetua and Felicitas compared to the whole corpus.  What do these Key Words tell you about the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas compared to the other martyr texts.