Abstract
The dramatic text features dialogue as communication among characters for the benefit of the reader or audience. Computer analysis of selected parameters in the clearly defined rhetorical unit that is dialogue can test hypotheses, confirm intuitive criticism, and help discover structural, thematic, and discursive patterns that even close reading may not detect. This study describes approaches to the dialogue of a well known contemporary Spanish play that are neither time-consuming nor labor-intensive. Ready-made software can produce data and graphs for dialogal structuring, repeat rates of semantic fields, distribution and density of theme words and imagery, interaction of characters, and idiolects.
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Irizarry, E. Some approaches to computer analysis of dialogue in theater: Buero Vallejo's En la ardiente oscuridad . Comput Hum 25, 15–25 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00054286
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00054286