Emotions Amongst Strangers
At the center of this project lies the development of methods for the quantitative analysis of emotions in texts, be it travel literature or the output of field research. This development will take place in dialogue between the disciplines literature, social or cultural anthropology and evolutionary psychology.
Dr. Jörg Lehmann
With the help of computer-based methods answers to the following questions will be sought: Whose feelings can be examined on the basis of the texts in question? Can these emotions be typologised? Can sequences be determined? Do affects correlate to certain persons or places? To what extent can different genres (travel literature, ethnography, primatological texts) be compared with respect to the representation of emotions? Is it possible to identify patterns of typology or sequences across these genres? To what extent are these patterns bound to the conditions and structures of the texts (f.ex. notes on a daily basis of what has been experienced vs. ex-post retrospectives)? Which relationship do the affects which have been identified in the texts to the narrative positions and paratexts?
