Visualising Metaphor in English

Presented at the Digital Humanities Congress 2014

Authors:
Marc Alexander, University of Glasgow
Ellen Bramwell, University of Glasgow

Transcript

1. Visualising Metaphor in English Marc Alexander and Ellen Bramwell marc.alexander@glasgow.ac.uk | @marcgalexander ellen.bramwell@glasgow.ac.uk | @ellenbramwell
2. Funded by the AHRC, Jan 2012–Mar 2015 Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus
8. Intelligence is Light reflection, vivid, enlightened, light, luminary, shine, lustre, glaring, clear, gleam 1688 Bunyan Jerus. Sinner Saved (1886) 17 The text is as clear as the sun; for it saith, ‘Begin at Jerusalem’. 1690 Locke Hum. Und. ii. i. §4 By Reflection then,‥I would be understood to mean, that notice which the Mind takes of its own Operations, and the manner of them. 1732 Berkeley Alciphr. i. §9 The select spirits of this enlightened age. 1854 H. Rogers Ess. II. i. 2 Like the other great luminaries of philosophy and science, Locke has shone on with tolerably uniform lustre. (Quotations from OED2)
10. Big Data c. 4 million rows of data to analyse Tens of thousands of metaphorical links Sample words, dates, etc. for each link Visualisation Comprehensive enough to represent the whole of English over time Detailed enough to be useful to researchers Clear enough to be usable and interesting!
12. Gephi.org
13. Light
14. Light and Darkness
16. Large-Scale Show all the data, in a “bird’s eye” large-scale view Large amounts of information Highlight relationships Cope with hierarchical data Hierarchical Edge Bundling Nodes arranged around the edge of a circle Lines connect the nodes, showing relationships
17. Hierarchical Edge Bundling
18. D3.js Javascript library for manipulating documents based on data Runs in the browser, pulls data from the server based on user selections Uses standard web technologies (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, SVG) Runs in all modern browsers Fast, varied, and visually appealing
19. D3.js
20. The Metaphor Map
27. Timeline created using www.tiki-toki.com
29. Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus www.glasgow.ac.uk/metaphor http://blogs.arts.gla.ac.uk/metaphor/ @mappingmetaphor www.glasgow.ac.uk/thesaurus Image from Thomas Wright: An original theory or new hypothesis of the universe. London, 1750. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections.