Inquiring into the Corpus of Empire
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2021-06
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Journal of World History
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University of Hawaii Press
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School of Historical and Philosophical Studies
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Journal Article
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Doherty, S., Ford, L., Mckenzie, K., Parkinson, N., Roberts, D., Halliday, P., Laidlaw, Z., Lester, A. & Stern, P. (2021). Inquiring into the Corpus of Empire. Journal of World History: official journal of the World History Association, 32 (2), pp.219-240. https://doi.org/10.1353/jwh.2021.0022.
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Abstract
This article tests the value of corpus linguistics in analyzing nineteenth-century commissions of inquiry into British colonies. It examines and improves the capacity of a computerized text analysis tool called the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to identify word meaning, sentiment, and psycholinguistic constructs in nineteenth-century sources. By augmenting its dictionary with nineteenth-century language and cross-checking meaning, we show that the software can code with 97% accuracy. We then demonstrate the tool's potential to explore genres of colonial writing, and to locate emotive language and language relating to power differentials in commission reports, a function we argue may provide a "way in" to assessing how commissioners treated different kinds of British subjects and their testimony in the reports.