Second Assignment
Choose one of the options below and write an essay in response. Your essay should be at least two and a half pages in length and should not
exceed four pages. Use double-space lineation, a 12-point serif font, and one-inch margins on all sides. Your writing is expected to be
error-free and up to university standards.
For the first two options, your essay is expected to have a thesis: a main point that the whole essay attempts to support or prove. The essay
component for the third option can be more of a research report. The third option requires, in addition to the paper submission of the report,
submission of one or more digital files. These can be emailed to the instructor or delivered in person.
A large portion of the grade will be an assessment of the written component of this assignment. The hands-on approach to text analysis here
is important and should be done well, but I will be mainly looking for intelligent reflections on what you have done with the more technical
aspects of the assignment and the problems with them and opportunities for further work.
The assignment is due on November 19th. Consult the course outline for further information about late assignments.
A. Google Trends
Select three to five terms that people “google” frequently. Examine the data from Google Trends (www.google.com/trends) for
the terms you have selected. What conclusions can you come to about people’s frequency in “googling” these terms? You may focus
on a temporal perspective and/or a regional perspective, if you wish (and you are free to focus exclusively on, say, the United
States or Canada). In choosing your terms, select them from one of two broad categories: marketing or education. For marketing
terms, you can choose trademark names or “buzz words” (or other marketing-related terms). For education terms, you can choose
discipline names, subjects/topics, institution names, etc. Your essay should include a discussion of the limits of the usefulness
of the data from Google Trends.
B. Google Books Ngram Viewer
Select two to four terms or phrases that might be interesting to examine in printed books. Examine the data from Google Books Ngram Viewer
(books.google.com/ngrams) for the terms or phrases you have selected. What conclusions can you come
to about the use of these terms/phrases over time? Consider comparing the data for the general English corpus against the data for the English
Fiction corpus. You can also compare the data for the American English and British English corpora. You can compare the data for the
two centuries against data from more specific periods within those two centuries. You are welcome to include results from more advanced
search options (such as stemming) in your analysis. Your essay should include a discussion of the limits of the usefulness of the data
from the Google Books Ngram Viewer.
C. TEI-XML
Prepare a TEI-XML edition of the four first stanzas of the poem “The Satrap” as published here:
Smith, W. Frank. “The Satrap.” The Cornhill Magazine 15 (March 1867): 343-45.
Note: use just the first part of the whole poem: that which is on the first page. This can be found on Google Books:
books.google.ca/books?id=G9BGAAAAcAAJ
Your edition should be well-formed XML and valid TEI. You may use the empty TEI shell: TEI shell.
Your edition should include information for all required elements of TEI and should employ the <lg> and <l> tags exhaustively.
Your edition should also employ three or more instances of each of the following tags: <rhyme>, <w>, <seg>, and <interp> (each with
appropriate attributes). If you wish, you may employ more TEI tags and attributes. You may test your TEI-XML, if you wish, at the following web site:
TBE validation service. Your essay will be a discussion of your choices (in tagging and
any other decisions) and the advantages and limitations of transforming the poem into the edition you have produced. If you wish, you may also produce
one XSLT file that transform your XML for the purpose of display: include an explanation of this file in your report.