PCA Online

CSF Walk-through C

Aim: to explore larger characters’ use of the various forms of the second person pronoun.

1. Select and copy the following list using the Edit menu of your browser:

you
your
yours
thou
thee
thy
thine
ye

2. Click on “Start the CSF applet”.

3. From opening screen, select “By Character”. Click on “Select Plays”.

4. From the “Play Selection” screen, choose “Select All”. Click on “Select Characters”.

5. From the “Character Selection” screen, choose “Select by Criteria”, and then “Words Spoken” “More than” and “3000". Click on “Add” and “Done” and then “Select Words”.

6. On “Word Variable Selection” screen, click on the “Word List” space and paste in the copied list of seven pronouns. (This may be done by right-clicking on your mouse, or by clicking on the empty list and pressing CTRL-V. You can also simply type them in here.) Click on “Display Results”.

7. On the “Word Frequencies by Character” screen click on “PCA Plot”.

8. On the “Principal Component Analysis by Characters” screen, click on the graph to toggle labels on and off. Note the way the characters arrange themselves along the First Component, from Prospero to Menenius. Click on “Component Scores”.

9. On the “Principal Component Scores by Character” screen, click on “PCA Word Plot”.

10. On the “Principal Component Analysis by Word” screen, note that the First Component is an opposition between your and you and the “thou” forms. Go “Back” (twice) to the “Principal Component Analysis Plot by Character” screen. Toggle the characters’ names off by clicking on the graph area and try colouring the symbols by “Genre” and then by “Gender”.

11. Go “Back” to the “Word Frequencies by Character” screen. Go to “Select Play” and select The Tempest from the list. Click on “Show Percentages”. Note that thou is just over 2% of Prospero’s dialogue, and you just over 0.9%.

12. On the same screen go to “Select Play” again and choose Coriolanus from the list. Note that thou is just over 0.1% of Menenius’ dialogue, and you 3.7%.