TEI2022 Conference_Text as data
Published September 24, 2022 | Version v1
Poster Open

Feature structures for character social variable annotation and an application to Alsatian theater

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Université de Strasbourg
  • 2. Université de Neuchâtel

Description

Several works address the computational treatment of dramatic characters. Zöllner-Weber (2008, 2011) presents a character analysis ontology. Galleron (2017) developed a characteriseme (characterization unit) taxonomy based on character lists in French theater between 1630 and 1810, formalized as a TEI feature structure (FS) library (see Romary, 2015). Following Phelan (1989), the taxonomy includes mimetic features, which give characters traits assimilating them to humans, and synthetic ones, describing their role in the plot.

We believe that characteriseme analysis using a common annotation schema can help comparative drama analysis. We successfully adapted Galleron’s FS approach to model characters in a different language (Alsatian) and period (1870-1940). This can help compare the Alsatian tradition to the hegemonic literatures surrounding it (German and French), one of the goals towards which our ongoing MeThAL project contributes (Ruiz et al., 2022).

The poster’s contributions:

  • A character feature (characteriseme) taxonomy using feature structures, inspired by Galleron (2017) but providing an improved, more modular implementation, and enabling the description of more recent drama
  • A TEI personography where each of our corpus’ 2386 characters is described according to the feature structure
  • First characterization analyses in the corpus based on it

Intermediate levels were added in our FS to better group mimetic features into basic traits (age, gender, origin, language), socioeconomic traits (profession, class) and relation-position traits (where a character stands in personal or professional relations, e.g. spouse or manager). Controlled vocabularies were added, including a list of ca. 350 professions and a taxonomy of socioprofessional groups. Personography compliance was ensured with a schema automatically derived from the FS System Declaration (Bermúdez, 2019). The annotations have yielded insight into how female characters are characterized differently by female authors (increased reference to character’s profession) vs. male ones. An interface to navigate the corpus based on the annotations was created.

Notes

This research was supported by University of Strasbourg's IdEx program. We thank Barbara Hoff and Carole Werner for performing part of the character annotations.

Files

virtual_poster_fs_characters_tei_2022_ruiz_bermudez.pdf

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Additional details

Related works

References
Dataset: 10.34847/nkl.62e9z6e5 (DOI)

References

  • Bermúdez Sabel, H. (2019). Encoding of Variant Taxonomies in TEI. Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative, Issue 11, Article Issue 11. https://doi.org/10.4000/jtei.2676
  • Galleron, I. (2017). Conceptualisation of Theatrical Characters in the Digital Paradigm: Needs, Problems and Foreseen Solutions. Human and Social Studies, 6(1), 88–108. https://doi.org/10.1515/hssr-2017-0007
  • Phelan, J. (1989). Reading people, reading plots: Character, progression, and the interpretation of narrative. University of Chicago Press.
  • Romary, L. (2015). Standards for language resources in ISO – Looking back at 13 fruitful years. Edition - Die Fachzeitschrift Für Terminologie, 11(2), 13–19. https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01220925
  • Ruiz Fabo, P., Bernhard, D., & Werner, C. (2022). The benefits of increasing the digital availability of Alsatian theater. Digital Humanities 2022, 567–560. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7014965
  • Zöllner-Weber, A. (2008). Noctua literaria: A computer-aided approach for the formal description of literary characters using an ontology [Universität Bielefeld]. https://core.ac.uk/reader/15958020
  • Zöllner-Weber, A. (2011). Text encoding and ontology—Enlarging an ontology by semi-automatic generated instances. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 26(3), 365–370. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqr021