wounded – Digging into the Digital

The two words that I picked to look at were wounded and battle. I wanted to pick words that would reflect his feelings during battle and would show if the way that he talked about the battles changed overtime. Instead of picking random words, i wanted to find words that had some sort of connection, and i found that wounded and battle seemed like they could possibly have some beneficial links. When i continued to look closer, it was obvious that a link was present.

The graph above shows the number of appearances of both of my words in the progression of his writings. The second half of his writings had dramatically more appearances of both of the words. Actually, wounded does not show up once in the entire first half of the writing, but shows up thirty four times in the second half. Battle is also used drastically more often in the second half than in the first. For me the connections between the appearance of these words could show a change in Linn. Both of the words that i picked are connected to pain, war, and conflict so i would assume they would led to a change in the way that Linn sees that. His time spent in the war made him hard, resulting in the loss of innocence which in turn led to the change in the way that he writes and what he chooses to write about.

I also found it interesting to look at the words that were connected to battle and wounded in the Links tool. They were both connected to the word company, which comments that he was often talking about his solider companions when discussing battles and the wounded. The words left, exhausted, and killed were also all in this cluster. These words all have some connotations that could play a part in Linn’s transformation. Although i would say a deeper look might be required to make a strong conclusion about his change, my dive into these two words seemed to fit that conclusion.

Screen Shot 2014-09-24 at 1.36.51 PM — Links: Connections between my words

In this blog post I will present my hypothesis in response to the question being asked.

I think Linn does have a loss of innocence because he’s becoming more complacent and less sensitive to the terrible things happening to his fellow soldiers around him. I believe he had to adapt in this way, so he could emotionally survive this horrible war experience. When you’re exposed to bad things over and over again, you usually become less sensitive and hardened to them. This is a common survival and coping mechanism.

I can demonstrate Linn’s loss of innocence with the word “saw” in the word trends. In the first battle he uses the word “saw” frequently, but less often in subsequent battles. He uses this word to describe things he is looking at with his innocent eyes. For instance, when he “saw” a friend. He’s using this word in a friendly and warm context. It seems apparent that as he got further into the war, he used the word “saw” less often because it was too painful for him to see what has happening around him. He was changing his focus and looked at things differently. He was less naïve and less sensitive and he “saw” less

When I used the word “wounded” in the word trends tool, I didn’t believe it was helpful or insightful. This is because the frequency pattern of the word “wounded” did not correlate with my thesis that Linn became less sensitive and had a loss of innocence. The word “wounded” speaks to empathy and sensitivity and I would expect its use to decline as Linn became more hardened. There is a frequency spike toward the end of Linn’s diary, which may be related to the battles becoming more frequent and more intense. This certainly would have resulted in many more people getting wounded. The word pattern seems more related to the intensification of the war rather than his loss of innocence.

Below is a screenshot of the word trends graph. The first thing I did was type in the word “saw” into the “search” bar. Shortly after typing the word, a graph appeared showing the relative frequencies of the word.Then I typed in the word “wounded” into the search bar. I then saw the relative frequencies of the word “wounded” and the word “saw”.

Screen shot 2014-09-23 at 4.12.48 PM — Word Trends Graph showing frequency of “saw’ and “wounded”

Below is a screenshot of the keywords in context tool. After I typed in the word “saw” into the “search” bar all of the ways the word “saw” was used in the diary show up. This tool was extremely helpful with helping me to see the context of the word “saw”.

Screen shot 2014-09-24 at 1.30.49 PM — The key word “saw” in context

The value of distant reading is that is that it gives you a different perspective on text, which provides a quantitative and qualitative approach to language. This helps to highlight word usage, frequencies and patterns. Distant reading is quantitative because it computes word frequency and its qualitative because it shows you how he’s using a word and in what context. While this approach is helpful it doesn’t tell the whole story; it misses subtleties and messages that can only be grasped when reading the entire passage in a fluid way.

For example, as the war gets worse and more people are getting wounded, he uses the word “wounded” more frequently. This doesn’t mean he’s more or less sensitive. The circumstances of war can be so strong that it practically forces the frequency of a particular word without regard to values and attitudes.