Text corpus
Due to technical issues, so far our work is limited to a corpus, that is, a set of written texts. They can be written by hand or by typewriter or any other medium, but they must present structured semantics.
Therefore, the concept of text should be excluded in its broad sense, where it is sometimes used for any source from the past, including metatexts, visual material or artifacts.
This also excludes sources such as:
Data from primary sources
According to Wikipedia:
A primary source refers to the documentary sources that are considered material from some source of the moment, in relation to a phenomenon or event that may have interest in being investigated or reported, that is, it is the raw material that is had to carry out a certain research work.
There are also primary sources of information called unpublished, which are not available to the public or with restricted circulation, such as theses or reports.
For our specific case he is even specifying it more:
In the case of historiography, it is what at the time has served to write history. Indeed, at the origin of the development of historiography, is the question of the classification and validation of the sources, when historians analyzed and discussed the writing of history and prehistory, and the way in which the knowledge of the past was obtained by applying the methodology of history. They are also divided into written and unwritten sources.
In summary, the primary sources are those data that have been created in the historical period that we are analyzing.
For example, all texts created between the year 1800 and the year 1900 would be primary sources, if the time we want to analyze is the nineteenth century, whether they have been published or not. On the other hand, if the object of our research is the time of the 10th century. Those texts from the 19th century would be a secondary source.
Or in other words, if the person who wrote the document has lived at the same time as the event he is describing, then it is a primary source, even if he describes something that he did not experience in the first person, such as a police article. about an accident.
Examples for eligible primary sources are:
Audio recordings can be included, as long as they have been transcribed into text. Audiovisual sources are not admissible, not even when they have a transcription, due to the problem that the visual part cannot be analyzed with the present method.
Datos auténticos
These data come from authentic sources. These cover all material produced in the first person. That is, the person who writes the text, not only writes about a contemporary event, but also about himself and what concerns his life directly.
This excludes for example biographies by contemporaries, reports from authorities or newspaper news.
Examples for authentic primary sources are:
- Autobiographies
- Cards
- Speeches
- Opinions and pamphlets written by the person in question
- Contracts
- Scriptures
Autobiographical material
To limit even more precisely the material with which one works, in this project we limit ourselves to autobiographical material. In short, these are all authentic primary source texts that express or describe a part of their author's life.
Tabea Hirzel
Saturday, January 23, 2021