Version 2.0 of an article first published in TEXT Technology, 4.4 (Winter, 1994), 263-267.

    The Oxford Electronic Text Library Edition of The Complete Works of Jane Austen
    contains SGML tags that precisely identify, among other things, the speaker of every word
    of dialogue in Austen's six novels. (See note 1.) A computer program that I created,
    JADIALOG, notes the speaker tags in the text and separates the dialogue of each of the
    characters (including narrators) accordingly. Some dialogue had to be assigned to
    composites (such as "inseparable groups") or to imaginary or unidentifiable speakers, but
    most of the talking is done by the named characters. In all, there are 141 speakers in the six
    Austen novels, and the number of speakers in each novel is rather uniform: four novels have
    24 speakers; one has 23; one has 22. Using such an electronic edition and computer
    programs designed to read the tags in the texts (see note 2), scholars can do research about
    characters' dialogue that would not be possible without them -- or would be possible only
    with very arduous labor.

    Using my program JATALK, it is easy to determine how much each character speaks. As
    might be supposed, the narrators talk more than most of the characters: from a high of
    69,240 words (Mansfield Park) to 40,686 (Northanger Abbey). Emma Woodhouse talks
    more than any other character (42,800 words); Fanny Price is the next most vocal, but she
    speaks less than half as much as Emma (21,156 words). Ford, the owner of the shop Emma
    visits, speaks less than any other named character: 14 words. Mr. Collins who will be
    remembered as giving frequent, long, formal speeches in Pride and Prejudice, speaks less
    than might be thought: 5,057 words.

    It can be interesting to determine what kinds of words the characters use with a program
    called FINDLIST. Figure 1 shows the percentage of words (from seven lists) that are found
    in the dialogue of characters and narrators. Thirteen male characters and thirteen female
    characters were selected; most of these are major characters, but a few memorable minor
    ones (like Mr. Collins) are included. Also, for comparison, the percentage for the full text of
    the six novels is given. See Figure 1.

    The first four lists contain pronouns. List 1 holds masculine pronouns ("he," "him," "his,"
    and "himself"). List 2 has feminine pronouns ("she," "her," "hers," and "herself"). List 3
    includes all the pronouns of lists 1 and 2, plus it contains the plural forms ("they," "them,"
    "their," and "themselves"). List 4 consists of first-person pronouns ("I," "me," "my," and
    "myself").

    One rationale for computing the percentage of pronouns (and other words) used by
    speakers is that such data may indicate the subjects about which characters speak a lot (or a
    little) and thus reveal something of the speakers' personalities. In some cases, the
    percentages are approximately what readers might expect; other cases may be a little
    surprising, and thus they may lead to new scrutiny of some of the characters.

    Frank Churchill and Edward Ferrars might be thought rather self-centered and even selfish.
    The high percentage of Me Words and the low percentage of Other Words for these two
    characters seems to show that they talk much more about themselves than about others
    (especially Ferrars), thus establishing their characters as expected. Something similar is
    shown for Jane Fairfax -- who talks the most of herself and the least of others of any
    character in this study.

    The lowest percentage of Me Words and the high percentage of Other Words for Fanny
    Price and Anne Elliot matches readers' expectations for Austen's most selfless heroines. The
    percentages for Emma Woodhouse may not be exactly as supposed. Her use of Me Words
    is the third lowest, and her use of Other Words is the second highest. Probably few readers
    would place Emma in a category with Fanny and Anne -- she is frequently interfering,
    scheming, and match-making; she acts rather self- centered. However, Emma's pronoun use
    might suggest a re-evaluation of her nature.

    Jane Bennet, Harriet Smith, and Colonel Brandon seem to talk a good deal about themselves
    as well as about others. In contrast, Henry Tilney says little about himself and little about
    others. Austen scholars might consider what is thus shown about these characters.

    Based on their use of pronouns in Lists 1 and 2, it appears that characters tend to talk more
    about the opposite sex than about their own -- especially the female speakers. Ten of the
    thirteen women speak more about men than about women. Seven of the thirteen men speak
    more about women than about men. By contrast, all six narrators speak more about women,
    and they all do so by a substantial margin.

    The words in List 5 ("love," "loved," loves," "affection," and "passion") are found in the six
    novels 940 times: they are only thirteen one-hundredths of one percent (0.13%) of all words
    used. Since the plots of Austen novels deal with courtship and marriage, it is somewhat
    surprising that such low percentages of Love Words are found in the dialogue and
    throughout the novels. More women seem to speak of love: seven women use the words
    0.20% or more, but only two men do so. It may seem natural that the elderly Sir Walter and
    Mrs Clay never use the words. There may or may not be a reason that Jane Fairfax does not
    use the words: readers will remember that she is concealing her engagement to Frank
    Churchill. It does not seem obvious that Elizabeth Bennet should use a higher percentage of
    Love Words than any other character.

    There is little color in an Austen novel. The fourteen words in List 6 ("blue," "green," "red,"
    and so on) are found 152 times in the six novels: only 0.02%. By comparison, several
    novels by Anthony Trollope have about double the percentage of color words as those of
    Austen, and two novels by Nathaniel Hawthorne have about twelve times the percentage;
    even the no-nonsense, western action novels of James Janke have an average of six times the
    percentage of color words as those of Austen. The percentages are so small for each
    Austen character that it is difficult to make distinctions, but it seems odd that Sir Walter's
    dialogue has the highest percentage of color words.

    List 7 consists of 125 words found very commonly in all kinds of writing: prepositions,
    pronouns, articles, forms of "to be" and "to have," and so on. It might be thought that the
    nature of narration ("she said...," "he has been ...") would require that Austen's narrators
    would use more common words than the speakers, but just the opposite is true. All but two
    of the speakers use at least three percent more common words than the narrators. Only the
    dialogue of Mrs. Clay and Sir Eliot fall within the range of the narrators' use of common
    words. There is no apparent reason that those two characters should use fewer common
    words than other characters.

    The overall percentage of common words in the novels of Austen is a little higher than that
    in novels of other nineteenth-century writers such as Trollope, Dickens, James, and Twain.
    If there were tags to identify the dialogue of speakers in the electronic editions of these
    writers, it would be interesting to determine whether their characters use more common
    words than their narrators use.

    This article has just touched the surface of the kind of study of the novels of Jane Austen
    that can be done with the texts in electronic form with the dialogue of each speaker identified
    with SGML tags. Not only is more sophisticated analysis of her novels possible with
    editions in which characters' speech can be isolated, compared, and contrasted, the editions
    stimulate it. Similar electronic versions of the novels of other writers would be truly helpful
    for literary scholars.

    1. For information about this edition, see my "Electronic Jane Austen and S. T. Coleridge,"
    TEXT Technology, 4.2 (Summer, 1994), 93-100.

    2. The computer analysis of novels mentioned in this article, including the output shown in
    Figure 1, was produced by programs that I wrote in SPITBOL-386. A description of this
    valuable compiler is found in my "SPITBOL-386: The Language of Choice for Non-numeric
    Computing," TEXT Technology, 4.3 (Autumn, 1994), 177-185.

Character      List 1  List 2  List 3  List 4  List 5  List 6  List 7

Text File        He      She    Other    Me     Love    Color  Common

                Words   Words   Words   Words   Words   Words   Words
 
 

ELINOR.DAS      3.21%   2.22%   6.28%   3.83%   0.21%   0.00%  55.82%

MARIANNE.DAS    2.17%   0.77%   3.67%   6.71%   0.21%   0.00%  56.85%

ELIZABET.BEN    3.10%   1.97%   5.87%   4.32%   0.27%   0.01%  56.07%

JANE.BEN        3.37%   1.54%   6.24%   6.20%   0.21%   0.02%  55.35%

FANNY.PRI       2.46%   5.32%   8.55%   2.11%   0.22%   0.01%  55.18%

MARY.CRA        2.13%   1.37%   4.27%   4.73%   0.20%   0.03%  55.97%

EMMA.WH         2.50%   3.44%   6.66%   2.76%   0.23%   0.01%  54.57%

JANE.FF         0.68%   0.54%   1.86%   8.53%   0.00%   0.00%  57.17%

HARRIET.SM      3.47%   1.82%   6.06%   5.98%   0.10%   0.03%  57.59%

CATHERIN.MOR    1.82%   3.02%   5.79%   4.32%   0.13%   0.07%  56.19%

ELEANOR.TIL     1.43%   1.08%   3.05%   5.80%   0.15%   0.00%  57.75%

ANNE.ELL        2.97%   2.58%   6.51%   2.71%   0.16%   0.02%  54.07%

CLAY.MRS        1.68%   0.51%   4.71%   4.04%   0.00%   0.00%  50.34%
 
 

FERRARS.ED      1.05%   1.09%   2.71%   8.42%   0.12%   0.04%  56.33%

JOHN.DAS        2.10%   2.36%   5.32%   3.34%   0.06%   0.00%  54.80%

BRANDON.COL     1.79%   3.13%   5.48%   6.46%   0.13%   0.00%  57.24%

DARCY.FW        2.09%   0.87%   3.60%   6.54%   0.17%   0.00%  55.58%

COLLINS.MR      1.54%   1.90%   4.03%   5.91%   0.08%   0.00%  54.62%

EDMUND.BER      1.52%   2.56%   4.86%   4.45%   0.19%   0.02%  56.84%

HENRY.CRA       2.53%   1.99%   4.99%   4.62%   0.13%   0.01%  55.51%

KNIGHTLE.MR     3.28%   2.68%   6.57%   4.37%   0.23%   0.00%  55.40%

FRANK.CH        1.18%   2.18%   4.00%   7.15%   0.09%   0.00%  55.11%

HENRY.TIL       1.10%   1.22%   3.18%   3.59%   0.21%   0.08%  54.68%

JOHN.THP        2.06%   0.38%   3.38%   5.88%   0.03%   0.00%  56.42%

WENTWORT.CPT    1.80%   1.61%   3.97%   6.37%   0.13%   0.00%  57.89%

WALTER.SIR      2.68%   1.64%   5.14%   3.17%   0.00%   0.11%  50.87%
 
 

NARRATOR.SS     2.51%   5.38%   9.53%   0.00%   0.11%   0.02%  50.62%

NARRATOR.PP     3.05%   5.27%   9.95%   0.00%   0.09%   0.01%  50.93%

NARRATOR.MP     2.72%   4.54%   8.24%   0.01%   0.13%   0.03%  50.61%

NARRATOR.EM     2.75%   4.33%   8.07%   0.00%   0.10%   0.02%  49.94%

NARRATOR.NA     1.87%   5.28%   8.51%   0.07%   0.09%   0.02%  50.16%

NARRATOR.PER    2.45%   4.10%   8.02%   0.01%   0.06%   0.02%  50.55%
 
 

AUSTEN.ALL      2.43%   3.41%   6.90%   2.51%   0.13%   0.02%  53.20%

Figure 1. Percentage of Words Found in Austen Characters' Text Files.
 

    Eric Johnson is a former Editor of TEXT Technology: The Journal of Computer Text
    Processing. He can be contacted via email as JohnsonE@jupiter.dsu.edu

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