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Sociology, narrative, and the quality versus quantity debate (Goethe versus Newton): Can computer-assisted story grammars help us understand the rise of Italian fascism (1919–1922)?

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Abstract

At the heart of this article is a structural approach to narrative, based on the work of Propp, Labov, van Dijk, Halliday, and others. The article highlights the structural features of narrative—basically, the organization of the genre around the semantic template actor-action-actor (syntactically rendered as subject-verb-object but where, in narrative, the subject is typically a social actor and the verb a social action) and the modifiers of each element of this triplet, such as time and space of action—and shows how to implement this structure in a computer environment and how to use this methodological tool in socio-historical research (namely, the rise of Italian fascism, 1919–22). But, taking a cue from Halliday’s cover jacket of his An Introduction to Functional Grammar, with its representation of a color circle, the paper takes the reader on an intellectual journey from Newton to Goethe—and the quality versus quantity debate—to Goethe and Propp, to end, back home, with Simmel and Weber.

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Notes

  1. For a discussion of the frontispiece of the Leviathan, see Corbett and Lightbown (1979, pp. 219–230).

  2. The iconographic representation of some frontispieces became, with time, so complex, as to require an accompanying explanatory text (Corbett and Lightbown 1979, p. 46–47).

  3. Linear had indeed been the representations of colors until the late seventeenth century, in a tradition dating back to Aristotle. But spherical representations were not absent, particularly in modern times (e.g., the 1611 color sphere of the Swedish mathematician Sigfrid Forsius or Runge’s later color sphere of 1810 (see Gage 1993, pp. 166–167, 194).

  4. Halliday (1994, p. 150). On circumstances and their historical development in rhetoric, see Franzosi (2004a,b, pp. 124, 217, 255, 382 n. 67).

  5. On semantic roles, see Franzosi (2004a,b, pp. 123 − 124, 253, 361 n. 44, 48, 49); see, also Chafe (1970) and Palmer (1994).

  6. Abell’s work contains precious insights. I do not share Skvoretz’s assessment (1993, 140) that “Abell’s narrative method appears to have limited utility ... [that] the narrative method holds little promise as a means to examine the routinized activity that composes a social institution.” In my view, it is unfortunate that the combination of a mathematical approach and symbols typically unfamiliar to sociologists, lack of substantive applications (see Heise’s critique on this point, 1993), not to mention the lack of software that would allow scholars to implement such complex approach, may have prevented Abell’s work to gain a wider audience.

  7. Interesting work by Gibson (2000, 2003, 2005a,b), although not necessarily dealing with narrative, but with conversations and turn taking in conversation, is also similarly highly formalized and based on sequences and networks.

  8. An example of a fully specified grammar, developed to capture narratives of historical protest events, can be found in www.pc-ace.com.

  9. The same, can be done for a semantic triplet to allow for an alternative sentence construction (e.g., “fascists attack socialists,” according to Avanti! and “socialists attack fascists,” according to Il Popolo d’Italia).

  10. Inaudite mostruosità fasciste nel pavese (Pavia 18/07/1921). A Bissone di S. Cristina i repubblicani piombarono verso le 22 del 5 c.m. nell’osteria Prati. Un tale—che si faceva chiamare capitano–sfoderò una lista di nomi e fece la chiama. Cinque fra i lavoratori presenti, il cui Name era scritto sulla nota, furono sequestrati e portati fuori dal paese. Gli altri furono fatti uscire dall’osteria fra due ali di fascisti, e, uno alla volta, percossi selvaggiamente con un nervo di bue piombato. Fu sequestrato anche il compagno Fiorenzo Scala, nella cui abitazione i fascisti avevano compiuto una minuta perquisizione. Grazie al sopraggiungere dei carabinieri, i prigionieri poterono darsela a gambe. Ma anche i repubblicani se ne andarono liberamente. ...

  11. See Franzosi (1990a,b, 1995). The current Windows release of PC-ACE–available in the public domain for free download at www.pc-ace.com –has been partly developed with a grant from the Nuffield Foundation.

  12. PC-ACE, unfortunately, does not do the hard work of coding the text for you. You have to do it. Artificial Intelligence has yet to deliver on early promises of finding a solution to the problem of computer understanding of natural languages (and it may be a while yet before it happens). All PC-ACE does (or any other currently available software of textual analysis, for that matter, except for basic word counts) is provide a computerized tool that will make the coding task easier and more reliable.

  13. Most items found in the database for any coding category occur with a frequency of 1 or, in any case, less than 3 (for similar findings, see Franzosi 2004a, p. 293).

  14. Thirty-six provinces were excluded from the analyses, because of missing measurements on two of the variables in the model (nineteen missing on fascist violence; twenty-nine missing on protest from below). The fifty-seven provinces on which the regression model was run are: Alessandria, Ancona, Arezzo, Bari, Benevento, Bergamo, Bologna, Brescia, Cagliari, Caltanissetta, Catanzaro, Cremona, Cuneo, Ferrara, Firenze, Foggia, Forlì, Frosinone, Genova, Grosseto, Imperia, L’Aquila, La Spezia, Lecce, Livorno, Lucca, Mantova, Massa Carrara, Milano, Modena, Napoli, Novara, Padova, Palermo, Parma, Pavia, Perugia, Piacenza, Pisa, Pistoia, Pordenone, Potenza, Roma, Rovigo, Savona, Siena, Siracusa, Taranto, Terni, Torino, Treviso, Trieste, Udine, Varese, Venezia, Verona, Vicenza.

  15. For a critique of this sociological approach based on theory verification rather than theory generation, see Glaser and Straus (1967, pp. 10, 40, 185–186).

  16. On replication in science, see Collins (1985), King (1995), Herrnson (1995), McCullough and Vinod (1999, 2003a,b).

  17. See, for instance, Baldassini’s work on fascists’ diaries (2002).

  18. Lévi-Strauss (1984a, pp. 175–176; see also 179, 184).

  19. For these quotes, see Lévi-Strauss (1984a, pp. 177, 178, 178, 178–179).

  20. For these quotes, see Lévi-Strauss (1984a, pp. 179, 179, 180, 181, 186, and 188).

  21. For these quotes, see Propp (1984, pp. 68, 68) and Lévi-Strauss (1984b, p. 189).

  22. For Propp’s quotes in these paragraphs, see Propp (1984, pp. 68, 68, 68–69).

  23. On Goethe’s influence on Propp and the formalists, more generally, see Steiner and Davydov (1977), Steiner (1980–81; 1986).

  24. Indeed, Propp’s Morphology has epigraphs taken from Goethe in the Preface and in Chapters 1, 2, 8, and 9.

  25. This is particularly true in the feminsit critique of quantitative methodologies (see the introduction to the debate in Franzosi 2004a, pp. 266–269).

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Acknowledgments

Data collection for the data presented in this article was made possible by grants from the National Science Foundation, Reading University, University of Trento, Provincia Autonoma di Trento, and Emory University. Development of PC-ACE was made possible by grants from the Nuffield Foundation, University of Reading, University of Trento, Provincia Autonoma di Trento, and Emory University. I am grateful to Peter Bing for suggesting the link between Propp and Goethe, to Roger Friedland, Frank Lechner, Richard Rubinson, and two Theory and Society anonymous reviewers for their comments on a previous draft, and to Gianluca De Fazio for help with data analysis.

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  1. Department of Sociology/ Program in Linguistics, Emory University, 1555 Dickey Dr., Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Roberto P. Franzosi

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  1. Roberto P. Franzosi
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Correspondence to Roberto P. Franzosi.

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Franzosi, R.P. Sociology, narrative, and the quality versus quantity debate (Goethe versus Newton): Can computer-assisted story grammars help us understand the rise of Italian fascism (1919–1922)?. Theor Soc 39, 593–629 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-010-9131-3

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