Hansard Is Rather Different When You Look At It All At Once

Presented at Making Constitutions, Building Parliaments: Constructing representative institutions, 1000-2000 (the 66th conference of the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions)

Transcript

1. M A K I N G C O N S T I T U T I O N S , B U I L D I N G PA R L I A M E N T S R O U N D TA B L E I : D I G I T I S A T I O N M A R C A L E X A N D E R marc.alexander@glasgow.ac.uk @marcgalexander
2. A N N O TAT I O N A N D T H E PA R T I C U L A R P R O B L E M O F T E X T
3. “a magnificent achievement of quite extraordinary value. It is perhaps the single most significant tool ever devised for investigating semantic, social, and intellectual history” Randolph Quirk
4. 62% of English word forms
 refer to more than one meaning Of the 793,742 entries in the Historical Thesaurus
 of English there are 370,011 non-Old-English
 word forms, of which: 67 have more than 100 possible meanings 464 have more than 50 possible meanings 2,580 have more than 20 possible meanings 7,554 have more than 10 possible meanings 111,127 have more than 1 possible meaning 258,883 have just 1 possible meaning
9. www.glasgow.ac.uk/samuels
10. H A N S A R D L O O K S R AT H E R D I F F E R E N T W H E N Y O U L O O K AT I T A L L AT O N C E
11. 6 . W H Y : C R O S S - R E F E R E N C E M E A N I N G S M A R C A L E X A N D E R @ M A R C G A L E X A N D E R U N I V E R S I T Y O F G L A S G O W , U K Data Deluge, Brett Ryder, The Economist, Feb. 2010
12. 1 PUNC 119,865,689 2 the 89,560,810 3 be 53,492,824 4 of 42,983,961 5 to 38,311,327 6 that 27,980,426 7 and 24,679,171 8 in 23,971,989 9 a 19,304,476 10 have 18,869,968 11 I 16,217,076 12 it 13,418,042 13 for 12,025,906 14 will 11,704,818 15 not 11,383,761 16 he 9,417,702 17 we 8,373,025 18 which 8,245,279 19 on 8,027,677 20 this 7,909,482
13. abstemiously blusher drunkardness guard-falange hansardistas helio-zincography liege-gazette pseudo-charitable stookie streethawk utmost-thrift war-spinster wholesome-drink yellow-green youth-hostelled One occurrence of each of
 the words at positions
 384,337–866,465 of the 
 Commons frequency table (=482,128 hapax legomena)
16. K E Y W O R D S ‣ Commons: ‣ Hon, Mr, gentleman, Member, Right, Sir, Mr, members, he, Secretary, Speaker, the, constituency, house, Prime, Exchequer, gentlemen, Tax ‣ Lords: ‣ Noble, Lord, Lords, Lordships, Earl, Baroness, your, Viscount, I, my, Amendment, Marquess, honourable, amendments, reverend, think, is, Duke, believe, perhaps
17. ‣ Names most distinctively Commons: ‣ Cunningham, MacNamara, Dilke, Ebbw, Heffer, Northampton, Woolwich, Strachey, Biffen, Hogg, Nicholas, Emrys, Walsall, Winnick, Bennett, Butler, Moore, Morgan, Mitchell, Edward, Burghs, Walter, Gilmour ‣ Names Most Distinctively Lords: ‣ McIntosh, Ferrers, Lucas, Colville, Chorley, Kinsman, Donoughue, Hanworth, Marlesford, Amos, McNally, Coslany, Bonham-Carter, Kilbracken, Guildford, Avon, Henley, Borrie, Ewart-Biggs, Gainford, Granville, Mowbray, Bessborough