Abstract
This study reports on computer-aided investigation of salient differences in the essay idiolects of the Mexican writers Octavio Paz and Rosario Castellanos and suggests that some of them may be linked to gender. It describes use of ready-made software and computational strategies requiring no tagging and minimal ocular scan. It suggests some parameters that can be searched and in most cases quantified to explore characteristics posited by linguistic and literary scholars, taking into consideration the particular language and culture of the authors.
Similar content being viewed by others
Works Cited
Arenal, Conceptión. “La mujer de su casa.” La emancipatión de la mujer en España. Ed. Mauro Armiño. Madrid: Júcar, 1974.
Beck, Kay. “Sex differentiated speech codes.” International Journal of Women's Studies, 1, 6(1978), 566–72.
Bradac, James J., Michael R. Hemphill, and Charles H. Tardy. “Language Style on Trial: Effects of ‘Powerful’ and ‘Powerless’ Speech Upon Judgments of Victims and Villains.” Western Journal of Speech Communication, 45(1981), 327–41.
Brown, Penelope. “How and Why Are Women More Polite: Some Evidence from a Mayan Community.” In Women and Language in Literature and Society. Ed. Sally McConnell-Ginet, et al. NY: Praeger, 1980, pp. 111–36.
Burrows, J. F. Computation into Criticism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987.
Castellanos, Rosario. Mujer que sabe latin. México, D. F.: Secretaría de Educación Pública (SepSetentas), 1973, 7–41.
Caws, Mary Ann. “Two Modest Verbal Studies.” In Gender and Literary Voice. Ed. Janet Todd. NY: Holmes & Meier, 1980, pp. 26–36.
Cixous, Helene. In Writing Differences: Reading from the Seminar of Hélène Cixous. Ed. Susan Sellers. Stony Stratford: Open University, 1988.
Diccionario de la Lengua Española. 2 vols. Madrid: Real Academia Española, 1984.
Eagleton, Mary, ed. Feminist Literary Theory. A Reader.NY: Basil Blackwell, 1989.
Ellegård, Alvar. A Statistical Method for Determining Authorship. The Junius Letters, 1769–1772. Gothenberg: Gothenburg Studies in English, 13, University of Gothenberg, 1962.
Erickson, Bonnie, E. Allan Lind, Bruce C. Johnson, and William O'Barr. “Speech Style and Impression Formation in a Court Setting.” Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, 14(1978), 266–79.
Farrell, Thomas J. “The Female and Male Modes of Rhetoric.” College English, 40, 8(1979), 909–21.
Fishman, Pamela. “Interaction: The Work Women Do.” In Language, Gender, and Society. Ed. Barrie Thorne et al. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1983, pp. 89–101.
Gómez Parham, Mary. “Telling It Like a Woman.” Paper presented at American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, San Antonio, 1989.
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness. “Directive-Response Speech Sequences in Girls' and Boys' Task Activities.” In Women and Language in Literature and Society. Ed. Sally McConnell-Ginet, et al. NY: Praeger, 1980, pp. 157–73.
Harrison MacDonald Regina. “Rosario Castellanos: On Language.” In Homenaje a Rosario Castellanos. Ed. Maureen Ahern and Mary Seale Vásquez. Valencia: Albatros, 1980.
Hiatt, Mary P. Artful Balance: The Parallel Structures of Style. NY: Teachers College, 1975.
Hiatt, Mary P. The Way Women Write. NY: Teachers College Press, 1977.
Humm, Maggie, “Feminist Literary Criticism in America and English.” In Women's Writing. Ed. Moira Monteith. NY: St. Martin's Press, 1986, pp. 20–116.
Ide, Nancy. “Meaning and Method: Computer-Assisted Analysis of Blake.” In Literary Computing and Literary Criticism. Ed. Rosanne G. Potter. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania, 1989, pp. 123–41.
Irizarry, Estelle. “Stylistic Analysis of a Corpus of Twentieth Century Spanish Narrative.” Computers and the Humanities, 24, 4(1990), 265–74.
Jones, Ann Rosalind. “Writing the Body: Toward un Understanding of l'Écriture féminine.” The New Feminist Criticism. Ed. Elaine Showalter. NY: Pantheon, 1985, pp. 361–77.
Juillard, M. “Proper Nouns as Proper Style-Markers of Poetry and Prose.” Literary and Linguistic Computing, 5, 1(1990), 1–8.
Keniston, Hayward. Spanish Syntax List. A Statistical Study of Grammatical Usage in Contemporary Spanish Prose on the Basis of Range and Frequency. NY: Holt, 1937.
Kenny, Anthony. The Computation of Style. Oxford: Pergamon, 1982.
Kolodny, Annette. “Dancing Through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism.” In The New Feminist Criticism. Ed. Elaine Showalter. NY: Pantheon, 1985, pp. 144–67.
Kramarae, Cheris. Women and Men Speaking. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1981.
Lakoff, Robin. Language and Woman's Place. NY: Harper & Row, 1975.
Lozano, Anthony G. “The Spanish Imperative and Deontic Utterances in Literary Passages.” Hispania, 73, 4(1991), 1118–23.
Marías, Julián. Méthoo histórico de has generaciones, 4th ed. Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1967.
Megged, Nahum. Rosario Castellanos. Un largo camino a la ironía. Mexico, D. F.: El Colegio de México, 1984.
Merideth, Eunice. “Gender Patterns in Henry James: A Stylistic Approach to Dialogue in Daisy Miller, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Bostonians.” In Literary Computing and Literary Criticism: Theoretical and Practical Essays on Theme and Rhetoric. Ed. Rosanne G. Potter. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania, 1989, pp. 189–206.
Milic, Louis. Stylists on Style. NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969.
Miller, Beth. “Introduction: Some Theoretical Considerations.” Women in Hispanic Literature: Icons and Fallen Idols. Berkeley: U California, 1983a, 1–25.
Miller, Beth. Rosario Castellanos. Una conciencia feminista en México. Chiapas: UNACH, 1983b.
Moliner, María. Diccionario de use del español. Zeols. Madrid: Gredos, 1973.
Morton, Andrew Q. Literary Detection. NY: Scribner, 1978.
Oakman, Robert L. Computer Methods for Literary Research. Athens: U Georgia Press, 1984.
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Is There a Female Voice? Joyce Carol Oates Replies.” In Gender and Literary Voice. Ed. Janet Todd. NY: Holmes & Meier, 1980, pp. 10–11.
O'Barr, William M., and Bowman K. Atkins. “‘Women's Language’ or ‘Powerless Language’?” In Women and Language in Literature and Society. Ed. McConnell-Ginet, Sally, et al. NY: Praeger, 1980, pp. 92–110.
Ortega y Gusset, José. En torno a Galileo (Esquema de las crisis). Madrid: Revista de Occidente en Alianza Editorial, 1982.
Paz, Octavio. El laberinto de la soledad. Mexico, D. F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1959, pp. 59–80, 175–191.
Penelope (Stanley), Julia and Susan J. Wolfe. “Consciousness as Style; Style as Aesthetic.” In Women and Men Speaking. Ed. Cheris Kramarae. Rowley: Newbury House, 1981, pp. 125–39.
Potter, Rosanne G. “Character Definition Through Syntax: Significant Within-Play Variability in 21 Modern Englishlanguage Plays.” Style, 15, 4(1981), 415–34.
Potter, Rosanne G. “Toward a Syntactic Differentiation of Period Style in Modern Drama: Significant Between-play Variability in 21 English-Language Plays.” Computers and the Humanities, 14(1980), 187–96.
Sainz de Robles, Federico Carlos. Ensayo de un diccionario español de sinónimos y antónimos. Madrid: Aguilar, 1971.
Shakespeare, William. The Merry Wives of Windsor. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974, p. 291.
Showalter, Elaine, “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness.” In The New Feminist Criticism. Ed. Elaine Showalter. NY: Pantheon, 1985, pp. 243–70.
Tannen, Deborah. You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. NY: Wm. Morrow, 1990.
Thorne, Barrie, et. al. Language, Gender and Society. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1983.
Todd, Janet. Gender and Literary Voice. NY: Holmes & Meier, 1980.
Webster's Third New International Dictionary. Springfield: Merriam, 1976.
Software Sources
DYNAKWIC, CONSTAT, MCVO. Louis and Robert Ule, 27 Mustang Road, Rolling Hills, CA 90274.
LitStats. Stephen R. Reimer, Department of English, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AL T6G 2E5.
Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus Development Corporation, P.O. Box 9195, 55 Cambridge Parkway, Cambridge, MA 02139-9635.
MTAS. Ian Lancashire and Lidio Presutti, Centre for Computing in the Humanities, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1.
Minitab, Student Edition. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA 01867.
WordCruncher. Johnston & Co., P.O. Box 446, American Fork, UT 84003-0446.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Estelle Irizarry, professor of Spanish at Georgetown University, is the author of twenty books on Hispanic literature.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Irizarry, E. A computer-assisted investigation of gender-related idiolect in Octavio Paz and Rosario Castellanos. Comput Hum 26, 103–117 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00116347
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00116347