Multiple Communication Channels in Literary Texts

作     者：Emilio Matricciani Emilio Matricciani

作者机构：Dipartimento di Elettronica Informazione e Bioingegneria (DEIB) Politecnico di Milano Milan Italy 

出 版 物：《Open Journal of Statistics》 (统计学期刊（英文）)

年 卷 期：2022年第12卷第4期

页      面：486-520页

学科分类：0502[文学-外国语言文学] 050201[文学-英语语言文学] 05[文学] 

主　　题：Alphabetical Language Communication Channels Information Likeness In-dex Literary Character Literary Text Maria Valtorta Signal-to-Noise Ratio Symmetry Index 

摘      要：The statistical theory of language translation is used to compare how a literary character speaks to different audiences by diversifying two important linguistic communication channels: the “sentences channel and the “interpunctions channel. The theory can “measure how the author shapes a character speaking to different audiences, by modulating deep-language parameters. To show its power, we have applied the theory to the literary corpus of Maria Valtorta, an Italian mystic of the XX-century. The likeness index , ranging from 0 to 1, allows to “measure how two linguistic channels are similar, therefore implying that a character speaks to different audiences in the same way. A 6-dB difference between the signal-to-noise ratios of two channels already gives IL ≈ 0.5, a threshold below which the two channels depend very little on each other, therefore implying that the character addresses different audiences differently. In conclusion, multiple linguistic channels can describe the “fine tuning that a literary author uses to diversify characters or distinguish the behavior of the same character in different situations. The theory can be applied to literary corpora written in any alphabetical language.