Abstract
In this chapter, two topological transformations are proposed that enable textual analysis at a scale sufficient to test some of the central propositions of genre theory. The first transformation renders the words of a text into a network graph that may be analyzed using network graphs and adjacency matrices. The second transformation uses rhetorical topoi as nodes to construct graphs that compare instances of known similar genres. The chapter closes with several examples of both techniques implemented used to perform rhetorical analyses in a manner designed to be assistive to rather than to replace human interpretation. The goal is testing genre-theorists’ hypotheses about the social actions that genres perform.
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Hart-Davidson, W., Omizo, R. (2017). Genre Signals in Textual Topologies. In: Walsh, L., Boyle, C. (eds) Topologies as Techniques for a Post-Critical Rhetoric. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51268-6_6
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