Comparative Analysis of Preference in Contemporary and Earlier Texts Using Entropy Measures.

ABSTRACT: Research in computational textual aesthetics has shown that there are textual correlates of preference in prose texts. The present study investigates whether textual correlates of preference vary across different time periods (contemporary texts versus texts from the 19th and early 20th centuries). Preference is operationalized in different ways for the two periods, in terms of canonization for the earlier texts, and through sales figures for the contemporary texts. As potential textual correlates of preference, we measure degrees of (un)predictability in the distributions of two types of low-level observables, parts of speech and sentence length. Specifically, we calculate two entropy measures, Shannon Entropy as a global measure of unpredictability, and Approximate Entropy as a local mea

SUBMITTER: Mohseni M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10048171 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature