For this assignment, I analyzed 16 txt files in the radioplays folder named suspense 1-16 using AntConc and Voyant. I also analyzed the files in the radioplays folder labeled "SUS" and comapered the two sets of files with one another.
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According to Voyant, the five most used words in this collection of texts were: sound, oh, music, david, and yes. "Sound" and "music" are most likely used so frequently because they are cues for when a music track or sound effect is supposed to play. Another interesting takeaway is that "david", the fourth most used word, appears to only be used in one or two of the plays. These plays are "suspense11" and "suspense12". "david" is the most used word in both of these plays, but the second and third most used words in these two texts are also the same. These words are "dorothy" and "woman". My guess is that these two plays are sequential, and one takes place after the other.This screenshot of AntConc shows the n-grams of the suspense files that are a minimum of three words and a max of five. Some of the most common n-grams are basic phrases like "I don't" and "I can't" (but without capitalization or apostrophes). The second most frequent 3 word n-gram is "Edward G Robinson". This must be the name of an important character in one of the radio plays. Other frequent n-grams include "then in bg", "music an accent", and "man in black". The first two are likely cues that are present because these are radio play scripts, with bg being short for background. The "man in black" must be a major character in at least one of the plays.This screenshot confirms that the word "sound" is the most common word used throughout all of these texts because whenever it appears in one of the scripts, it is meant to be a cue that a sound effect is supposed to play. This also shows that it is not the same sound effect every time.This is a screenshot of the 22 SUS files put through Voyant. The top five most frequent words list is similar to the one for the suspense files. The most frequent words were: sound, oh, music, I'm, and yes. "I'm" and "yes" are fairly common words, and "sound" and "music" are of course script cues, since these are radio plays. The one that I thought stuck out the most was "oh". Why are they saying "oh" so frequently? It was one of the top five words among the suspense files as well. I also noticed that "sound" is said significantly more often in two specific files. These files are "SUSsleepisforchildren" and "SUSstandinformurder". Despite having so many sound cues, "SUSstandinformurder" is the fifth shortest file in this collection, with 4,341 words.I searched for "oh" in the concordance view in AntConc to see if I could find context as to why it is said so much in the SUS files. It tends to be said before a character's name a lot (Oh Amanda, Oh Ben, etc). It is also said frequently when a character sounds curious or confused. I guess the actors were just trying to be expressive and display a lot of emotion.This screenshot of AntConc shows the n-grams of the SUS files that are a minimum of three words and a max of five. Just like in the suspense files, some of the most common n-grams are basic phrases like "don't you" and "I didn't". There are also phrases that are script cues, such as "continues in bg". The two n-grams that I am most curious about are "music knife chord", which appears 34 times, and "no no no", which appears 33 times. Perhaps a "knife chord" is a sound effect? One other thing that I noticed is that the word "don't" is in quite a few of these n-grams. You would think that "don't" would show up as one of the most common words in voyant, but that is not the case.I searched for "no no no" in the concordance view in AntConc, and they do say the word "no" unusually often in the SUS files. There are even a few times where they say it four or five times in a row! However, they are not all in the same sentence each time like I expected they were (I thought all of them were "no, no, no"). Many instances have the no's separated by a period or exclamation point instead of a comma.This is a screenshot of the 16 suspense files and the 22 SUS files, both put through Voyant at the same time. The five most frequent words were: sound, oh, music, yes, and I'm. These happen to be the same five words that were the most frequent among just the SUS files. four of the five words are also the same for just the suspense files. I guess this makes sense, since both collections of texts are made up of radio plays. It also makes sense that the word "suspense" is significantly large in the word cloud, since both collections are suspense plays. Another word in the word cloud that is about the same size is "David". This shows just how frequently "David" is said in "suspense11" and "suspense12" even compared to other words present in both collections. The word that appears the most frequently in all of the suspense plays is "sound". Interestingly, it is used the most often in "suspense11", which happens to be the second shortest of all the texts at only 3,875 words. Does "suspense11" just consist of David making sounds? There is one file, "suspense3", that does not use the word "sound" at all, as well as one file, "suspense5", that only uses it once. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
