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Title
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London calling from the auction world : a methodological journey through eighteenth-century London auction advertisements
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Author
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Abstract
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| Word embeddings have been proven to achieve interesting results for historical linguistic research and digitized sources such as books and newspapers. The central argument is that few eighteenth-century corpora give as many opportunities to apply, test, and refine digital methods as digitized newspapers. This article explores the possibilities of DH methodology for the empirical examination of auction advertisements in eighteenth-century London. Moreover, it shows that word embeddings, when combined with a more traditional approach to historical sources, might reveal broader societal changes, developments, and patterns that would otherwise escape the historian’s gaze. It also allows the historian to get closer to the importance and use of historical words and their embedded meanings. To illustrate this, a word embedding analysis of the eighteenth-century auction advertisements is complemented with a close reading of the sources to find motivational drivers revealing eighteenth-century consumption patterns. Tracing the pivotal words and stock phrases used to sell products and contextualizing them within auctions advertisements and, by extension, newspapers, and other source material leads to fresh insights into the cultural history of values of eighteenth-century England. |
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Language
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English
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Source (journal)
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Eighteenth-century studies / American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies [Buffalo, N.Y.] - Baltimore, Md, 1967, currens
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Publication
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Baltimore, Md
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Johns Hopkins University Press
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2021
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ISSN
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0013-2586
[print]
1086-315X
[online]
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Volume/pages
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54
:4
(2021)
, p. 979-1004
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ISI
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000686330500010
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Full text (open access)
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Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
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