Martin Gliserman | Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (original) (raw)

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Papers by Martin Gliserman

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Jun 23, 2014

This presentation has a broad focus on unconscious cultural transmission, and demonstrates it by ... more This presentation has a broad focus on unconscious cultural transmission, and demonstrates it by looking at lexical representations in general and at AFFECT in particular in a corpus of one hundred "classic" Anglophone novels written between 1719 and 1997. Research into the lexical inventories of these texts reveals rules of semantic distribution, i.e., rules about what proportion of what kinds of words are found in any given novel. The rules emerge from the study of semantic networks in this corpus; the rules are seen as regularities across time among key semantic patterns. The patterns point to Whorf's observation about the locus of language: "This [linguistic] organization is imposed from outside the narrow circle of the personal consciousness. .. as if the personal mind…were in the grip of a higher, far more intellectual mind which…can systematize and mathematize on a scale and scope that no mathematician of the schools ever remotely approached" (Whorf, 257). As with other linguistic rules we follow without knowing that we are following-e.g., rules of syntax, of phonemes-this presentation suggests that writers follow rules of semantic distribution. These rules are transmitted and utilized unconsciously-to wit, they go through the brain without the mind's consciousness-hence the idea of "cultural neurology." The individual mind of the writer shapes the linguistic material even while keeping the semantic proportions that the brain deems necessary for the genre. The literary novels of this corpus embody and propagate a code, a semantic code, which in turn can inform us as to how the brain functions, not at the level of neurons, but at the level of how and how much information needs to be packaged in a text to be successfully delivered to a reader's brain. Novels are comprised of words, and among the words are family connections, that is, semanticconceptual groups-e.g., words that name parts of the body or actions of the body, or parts of a machine, or feelings, etc. The Historical Thesaurus of the OED (2009) defines the universe of words as falling into three superordinate areas: the external world; the mental world; and the social world. From these emerge twenty-six major semantic frames that in turn open up a half dozen times more. The schema developed in this project (teXtRays: ReadingSquared) is less complexly deep because the word world of the novel is far more constrained than the whole universe of discourse that the OED taps into. The major difference in the organization of words here is that the OED's "external world" is divided at outset into the "raw universe" and the "built world" as a way to more easily see the distinction between two areas of representation important to how writers frame the characters and their interactions in the social realm, and equally important for analyzing the texts for environmental observations or traces of labor, etc. For the purposes of examining the novels, the following large frame was used to separate words: 1) BODY-The Individual Human Body/Being; 2) CONSTRUCTED-The Socially Constructed Domain; 3) BUILT-The Materially Built World; 4) RAW UNIVERSE-The Natural World. These overriding categories open up into a constellation of fifteen subcategories, and these can be opened up into fifty-five sub-subcategories. [see graphic 1] Using the framework of four overarching categories, a dictionary was gradually developed by examining the novels for words that went into each of these semantic groups, which in turn went through several other siftings downward. The first dictionary of the project was derived in the opposite directionfrom individual mentions to categorical rubrics. That first dictionary was for the names (nouns) used for the body and all its parts. Reading novels and searching for body parts, I discerned about one hundred twenty names that were then chunked into five conceptual rubrics (e.g., HEAD, TORSO, etc.), and these categories opened up into nineteen subcategories. Having developed the dictionary-a word-net, a hierarchical conceptual array-it could be used with text mining software to search new texts which could be tabulated and charted-visualized. The four overarching constructs as they are charted out [see graphic 2] show us a very strong pattern of agreement over time: the Raw Universe (bottom band) and the Built World (top band) together occupy about 15% of the references. The largest roles are divided between the Human Body/Being (at about 45%) and the Constructed Social World (at about 40%). The proportions hold steadily in spite of individual differences. Even at this level of zoom, the visual data allows us to make some useful observations and generalizations about the nature of the novel, semantically and from the perspective of cultural neurology-more of which in a few paragraphs.

Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Colby College theses are protected by copyrig... more Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Colby College theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed or downloaded from this site for the purposes of research and scholarship. Reproduction or distribution for commercial purposes is prohibited without written permission of the author.

American imago, 1986

... For example, at the beginning of the novel, John's present life as a history professor i... more ... For example, at the beginning of the novel, John's present life as a history professor is interrupted when he is asked to return to his rural place of birth to take care of his dying mentor and long time friend of his father, Jack Crawley. ...

Modern Psychoanalysis, 1993

... The recent work on trauma has crystallized the information on and from the Jewish Holo-caust,... more ... The recent work on trauma has crystallized the information on and from the Jewish Holo-caust, particularly now that the stories of so many individuals have been told in, for example, films of Claude Lanzmann or the videos made at the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. ...

American Imago, 2002

... Kochhar-Lindgren, Gray. “The Cocked Eye: Robbe-Grillet, Lacan, and the Desire to See It All.”... more ... Kochhar-Lindgren, Gray. “The Cocked Eye: Robbe-Grillet, Lacan, and the Desire to See It All.” 49.4 (1992), 467–479. VOLUME 50, 1993 Alford, C. Fred. ... VOLUME 57, 2000 Jacobs,Marilyn S. “Introduction.” 57.1 (2000), 1-3. Vasilyeva, Nina. ...

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Jun 23, 2014

This presentation has a broad focus on unconscious cultural transmission, and demonstrates it by ... more This presentation has a broad focus on unconscious cultural transmission, and demonstrates it by looking at lexical representations in general and at AFFECT in particular in a corpus of one hundred "classic" Anglophone novels written between 1719 and 1997. Research into the lexical inventories of these texts reveals rules of semantic distribution, i.e., rules about what proportion of what kinds of words are found in any given novel. The rules emerge from the study of semantic networks in this corpus; the rules are seen as regularities across time among key semantic patterns. The patterns point to Whorf's observation about the locus of language: "This [linguistic] organization is imposed from outside the narrow circle of the personal consciousness. .. as if the personal mind…were in the grip of a higher, far more intellectual mind which…can systematize and mathematize on a scale and scope that no mathematician of the schools ever remotely approached" (Whorf, 257). As with other linguistic rules we follow without knowing that we are following-e.g., rules of syntax, of phonemes-this presentation suggests that writers follow rules of semantic distribution. These rules are transmitted and utilized unconsciously-to wit, they go through the brain without the mind's consciousness-hence the idea of "cultural neurology." The individual mind of the writer shapes the linguistic material even while keeping the semantic proportions that the brain deems necessary for the genre. The literary novels of this corpus embody and propagate a code, a semantic code, which in turn can inform us as to how the brain functions, not at the level of neurons, but at the level of how and how much information needs to be packaged in a text to be successfully delivered to a reader's brain. Novels are comprised of words, and among the words are family connections, that is, semanticconceptual groups-e.g., words that name parts of the body or actions of the body, or parts of a machine, or feelings, etc. The Historical Thesaurus of the OED (2009) defines the universe of words as falling into three superordinate areas: the external world; the mental world; and the social world. From these emerge twenty-six major semantic frames that in turn open up a half dozen times more. The schema developed in this project (teXtRays: ReadingSquared) is less complexly deep because the word world of the novel is far more constrained than the whole universe of discourse that the OED taps into. The major difference in the organization of words here is that the OED's "external world" is divided at outset into the "raw universe" and the "built world" as a way to more easily see the distinction between two areas of representation important to how writers frame the characters and their interactions in the social realm, and equally important for analyzing the texts for environmental observations or traces of labor, etc. For the purposes of examining the novels, the following large frame was used to separate words: 1) BODY-The Individual Human Body/Being; 2) CONSTRUCTED-The Socially Constructed Domain; 3) BUILT-The Materially Built World; 4) RAW UNIVERSE-The Natural World. These overriding categories open up into a constellation of fifteen subcategories, and these can be opened up into fifty-five sub-subcategories. [see graphic 1] Using the framework of four overarching categories, a dictionary was gradually developed by examining the novels for words that went into each of these semantic groups, which in turn went through several other siftings downward. The first dictionary of the project was derived in the opposite directionfrom individual mentions to categorical rubrics. That first dictionary was for the names (nouns) used for the body and all its parts. Reading novels and searching for body parts, I discerned about one hundred twenty names that were then chunked into five conceptual rubrics (e.g., HEAD, TORSO, etc.), and these categories opened up into nineteen subcategories. Having developed the dictionary-a word-net, a hierarchical conceptual array-it could be used with text mining software to search new texts which could be tabulated and charted-visualized. The four overarching constructs as they are charted out [see graphic 2] show us a very strong pattern of agreement over time: the Raw Universe (bottom band) and the Built World (top band) together occupy about 15% of the references. The largest roles are divided between the Human Body/Being (at about 45%) and the Constructed Social World (at about 40%). The proportions hold steadily in spite of individual differences. Even at this level of zoom, the visual data allows us to make some useful observations and generalizations about the nature of the novel, semantically and from the perspective of cultural neurology-more of which in a few paragraphs.

Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Colby College theses are protected by copyrig... more Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Colby College theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed or downloaded from this site for the purposes of research and scholarship. Reproduction or distribution for commercial purposes is prohibited without written permission of the author.

American imago, 1986

... For example, at the beginning of the novel, John's present life as a history professor i... more ... For example, at the beginning of the novel, John's present life as a history professor is interrupted when he is asked to return to his rural place of birth to take care of his dying mentor and long time friend of his father, Jack Crawley. ...

Modern Psychoanalysis, 1993

... The recent work on trauma has crystallized the information on and from the Jewish Holo-caust,... more ... The recent work on trauma has crystallized the information on and from the Jewish Holo-caust, particularly now that the stories of so many individuals have been told in, for example, films of Claude Lanzmann or the videos made at the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. ...

American Imago, 2002

... Kochhar-Lindgren, Gray. “The Cocked Eye: Robbe-Grillet, Lacan, and the Desire to See It All.”... more ... Kochhar-Lindgren, Gray. “The Cocked Eye: Robbe-Grillet, Lacan, and the Desire to See It All.” 49.4 (1992), 467–479. VOLUME 50, 1993 Alford, C. Fred. ... VOLUME 57, 2000 Jacobs,Marilyn S. “Introduction.” 57.1 (2000), 1-3. Vasilyeva, Nina. ...