Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Hiatt, "The Feminine Style"

Hiatt, Mary P. "The Feminine Style: Theory and Fact." 1978. On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa Ede. New York: Bedford St. Martin's, 1999. 77-83.

Hiatt's 1979 Braddock essay begins with a question about pattern and style in large batches of text: Is mass style observable? Hiatt pursues this question using empirical and computational methods (involving punch cards) to analyze one hundred books; fifty by women and fifty by men. A 200-word sample was pulled, at random, from each book in an effort to analyze "common characteristics in the writing of certain groups" (77). Given that language about style is problematic (often ambiguous, grounded by the lifespan of terms), Hiatt sought a more reliable set of measures for isolating data from which she might ascertain gendered stylistic differences in the sampled prose.

Hiatt proceeds with a report on the findings from her statistically-based discourse analysis of the samples. This is an early example of computer-based discourse analysis, and despite its literary leanings, the project demonstrates an impressive range of analytics in light of the available processes. Conclusion: " There is, in other words, clear evidence of a feminine style and sound justification for the theory of group style" (82).

"If one is attempting to discern stylistic differences between two sets of 100,000 words each, one can, of course, try to read all these words and note the occurrence of such stylistic matters as sentence-length and complexity, inserts, types of modifications, and so on. One can try to do this, but no one should. The human mind is often an inaccurate perceiver, and errors inevitably occur. A mechanical mind is not accurate. Hence, the only objective and accurate way to deal with such a vast amount of text is to use a computer" (78).

Posted by Derek Mueller at August 23, 2006 4:45 PM to Writing Technologies