‘WordValue’ Turns Texts into Rainbows
Linguist from Chemnitz University of Technology and computer science graduate from LMU Munich have developed a free web application that enables colourful, intuitive text analyses for research, for teaching or just for fun
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Example of a text analysis: Female names/pronouns (red), male names/pronouns (blue) and neutral pronouns (green) in ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Graphic: Prof. Dr. Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer
Prof. Dr. Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer, Chair of English and Digital Linguistics at Chemnitz University of Technology, and Johannes Tochtermann (computer science graduate from LMU Munich) have developed a free web application that provides a completely new perspective on texts according to its developers. WordValue (www.wordvalue.gwi.uni-muenchen.de) counts how often the search words from a list occur in texts, and it colours texts based on the characteristics of the words they contain.
‘With the usual software for text analyses, you have to enter each search word individually, but WordValue provides the frequencies for hundreds of words in one go. This is incredibly practical,’ says Sanchez-Stockhammer.
‘We have made the software user-friendly and added a number of features in recent months, as well as creating several video tutorials, so that anyone interested can use it easily,’ adds Tochtermann. ‘All you need to get started is a text to analyse and an Excel spreadsheet with search terms.’ If properties are assigned to the search words in additional columns, the so-called ‘rainbow’ function can be used to colour positive adjectives like ‘beautiful’ in green and negative adjectives like ‘broken’ in red.
‘What makes our software special is its great flexibility,’ emphasises Sanchez-Stockhammer enthusiastically. ‘That's why WordValue is not only suitable for linguistic research, but can also be used in many other areas.’ In language classes, for example, teachers can use a table with vocabulary and its level of difficulty (e.g. based on the lesson number from the textbook) to see at one glance from the colour of the words whether a text is suitable for a school assignment and which words their learners do not know yet. The tool can also be used in a journalistic context – for example, to check texts for undesirable words from a blacklist with a single search.
‘The possible applications are so diverse that we cannot even think of them all,’ summarise Sanchez-Stockhammer and Tochtermann. ‘That's why we're leaving it up to the imagination of our users and look forward to hearing from them.‘
For any questions, please get in touch with Prof. Dr. Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer, telephone +49 (0)371 531-32444, email christina.sanchez@phil.tu-chemnitz.de.
WordValue: www.wordvalue.gwi.uni-muenchen.de
Video tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyZrVu6rirdpMqHhKxxj3zcWB_U6NsyQb
Mario Steinebach
25.07.2024
