Introduction to text analysis tools


Date
Apr 17, 2024 8:30 AM — 1:00 PM
Event
DH-IGNITE Northern Region

WHAT TO EXPECT

A hands-on workshop where you’ll gain experience with text analysis tools that can be used in your own research.

AIM OF WORKSHOP

The workshop aims to introduce TATs namely AntConc, Voyant tools, and ParaConc. It intends to demonstrate their potential functions as enablers of text analysis. The presentation begins with an explanation and justification for using Text Analysis tools. Then practical demonstrations of how to analyse data with these tools are conducted.

WORKSHOP FORMAT

The workshop will be a hands-on workshop during which you will be able to follow along and try out various tools.

PREREQUISITES

No prerequisites.

PARTICIPANTS WHO WOULD BE INTERESTED IN EVENT

Humanities scholars and Social Scientists who are interested in a basic introduction to text analysis tools.

REQUIREMENTS

  • A laptop
  • Internet connectivity (check that Eduroam wifi works)
  • A web browser like Google Chrome installed

TOPICS THAT WILL BE INCLUDED

AntConc

Voyant tools

ParaConc

  • Free demo software will be used in the workshop.
  • Description of the tool, its interface, and practical usage of the tool
  • Hands-on usage of the tool

MORE ABOUT TEXT ANALYSIS TOOLS

Text Analysis Tools (TATs) are software programs that extract useful information and insights from textual data. The fundamental goal of text analysis tools is to automate the analysis of large amounts of text, find patterns, and relationships within the data, and generate important insights for research, or other purposes. With the emergence of large corpora from a variety of disciplines, there has been a need to analyse them. Therefore, it is imperative to know which tool can be used to automatically analyse text data for various purposes and to answer different research questions.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTORS

Dr Muzi Matfunjwa is a senior lecturer (researcher) at SADiLaR who is interested in Digital Humanities, particularly the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies to facilitate research for low-resource languages. He has also used several text analysis tools in his publications.

Respect Mlambo is a language researcher who possesses a strong enthusiasm for text analysis tools. Drawing from his expertise in linguistics and natural language processing, he has devoted his professional endeavours to delving into the convergence of language and technology.