The Hermeneutic Profit of Annotation: On Preventing and Fostering Disagreement in Literary Analysis. Issue 2 (October 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gius, Evelyn; Jacke, Janina
• Is Part Of: International journal of humanities and arts computing. Volume 11:Issue 2(2017)
• Page Start: 233
• Page End: 254
• Publication Date: 2017-10
• Subjects: annotation -- collaborative annotation -- hermeneutic annotation -- polyvalence -- ambiguity -- disagreement -- interpretation -- text analysis -- hermeneutics -- narrative theory -- narratology -- time -- order -- duration -- heuristics -- best practice -- CATMA; Humanities -- Data processing -- Periodicals; Arts -- Data processing -- Periodicals; 001.30285
• DOI: 10.3366/ijhac.2017.0194
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1753-8548

Abstract

Abstract : Interpretation is widely regarded as the core activity of literary studies. Still, the appropriate balance between the plurality and the limitation of possible interpretations is a non-trivial issue. Whereas it is sensible to accept that literary texts can generally have various meanings, it should not be possible to attribute any kind of meaning to a text. Therefore, while interpreters must be allowed to disagree in their analyses, it must at the same time be possible to review whether a disagreement is actually based on adequate reasons like, for example, textual ambiguity or polyvalence. In this paper, we propose a best practice model as one effective means to review disagreement in accordance with literary studies principles. The model has been developed during the collaborative, computer-assisted annotation of literary texts in a project in which short stories have been analyzed narratologically. The examination of inconsistently annotated text passages revealed four types of reasons for disagreement: misinterpretations, deficient definitions of the categories of analysis, dependencies of the relevant categories on preliminary analyses, and textual ambiguity/polyvalence. We argue that only disagreements based on textual ambiguity are considered legitimate or valuable cases of disagreement, whereas the other three types of disagreement can be resolved in a systematic way.