Multilingualism in Contemporary Czech : Poetry. A Few Introductory Observations from a Corpus Perspective
Abstract
The paper is an attempt at a quantitative corpus related approach to the subject of multilingualism in contemporary Czech poetry (published both in books and on literary servers). The authors of the paper examine the frequency and distribution of foreign (i.e., non-Czech) lexical units, raising questions about the forms and functions of individual lexemes.
Three selected poets (T. Kafka, M. Šanda, M.
Torčík) are then analyzed more in-depth. The paper is also a report about a currently developed database - The Corpus of Contemporary Czech Poetry - and possibilities of using it.
It suggests how beneficial the quantitative data analysis in the first phase of linguistically oriented literary research can be, pointing to the necessity of interconnecting the quantitative and qualitative approaches. It is only the researcher's interpretative competence that can define the boundaries of the research field and the significance of its elements.
When conducting text-centered analyses, language corpora should begin to play a role similar to other scientific infrastructure tools, such as bibliographic databases. The paper is an attempt at a quantitative corpus related approach to the subject of multilingualism in contemporary Czech poetry (published both in books and on literary servers).
The authors of the paper examine the frequency and distribution of foreign (i.e., non-Czech) lexical units, raising questions about the forms and functions of individual lexemes. Three selected poets (T.
Kafka, M. Šanda, M. Torčík) are then analyzed more in-depth.
The paper is also a report about a currently developed database - The Corpus of Contemporary Czech Poetry - and possibilities of using it. It suggests how beneficial the quantitative data analysis in the first phase of linguistically oriented literary research can be, pointing to the necessity of interconnecting the quantitative and qualitative approaches.
It is only the researcher's interpretative competence that can define the boundaries of the research field and the significance of its elements. When conducting text-centered analyses, language corpora should begin to play a role similar to other scientific infrastructure tools, such as bibliographic databases.