Unravelling Names of Fictional Characters
نویسندگان
چکیده
In this paper we explore the correlation between the sound of words and their meaning, by testing if the polarity (‘good guy’ or ‘bad guy’) of a character’s role in a work of fiction can be predicted by the name of the character in the absence of any other context. Our approach is based on phonological and other features proposed in prior theoretical studies of fictional names. These features are used to construct a predictive model over a manually annotated corpus of characters from motion pictures. By experimenting with different mixtures of features, we identify phonological features as being the most discriminative by comparison to social and other types of features, and we delve into a discussion of specific phonological and phonotactic indicators of a character’s role’s polarity.
منابع مشابه
A Sociological Study of Iranian Women’s Role in Fictional Literature in the Recent Two Decades
Fictional literature has experiencedan increasing and stunning growthof women writers in the past two decades. In terms of quality and quantity, theincrease was to the extent that nowadays women’s names are mentioned sometimeseven more than men’s amongthe distinguished writers ofcontemporary Iranianliterature. On the other hand, these authors have often chosen the novel astheir main literary fo...
متن کاملA Literary Anthroponomastics of Three Selected African Novels: A Cross Cultural Perspective
Names as markers of identity are a source of a wide variety of information. This paper explores the names of characters to show the sociocultural factors which influence the choice of names and the effects that the names of these characters have on the roles they play. Using a variety of personal names from Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragments, Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood, a...
متن کاملCommitted to Oprah, Homer, or House: Using the Investment Model to Understand Parasocial Relationships
People can develop close relationships with media figures viewed on television. Across two studies we examined the extent to which satisfaction with, alternatives to, and investments in such parasocial relationships (PSR) account for feelings of commitment toward favored television characters. In Study 1, satisfaction and investments positively predicted commitment to fictional television chara...
متن کاملCreating fictional characters: The role of experience, personality, and social processes
Characters are considered central to works of fiction and essential to our enjoyment of them. We conducted an exploratory study to examine whether the ability to sketch engaging fictional characters is influenced by a writer’s attributes. Samples of 93 Creative Writers and 114 Non-Writers generated character descriptions based on a portrait photograph. We measured Participants' experiences with...
متن کاملModels, Sherlock Holmes and the Emperor Claudius
Recently, a number of authors have suggested that we understand scientific models in the same way as fictional characters, like Sherlock Holmes. The biggest challenge for this approach concerns the ontology of fictional characters. I consider two responses to this challenge, given by Roman Frigg, Ronald Giere and Peter Godfrey-Smith, and argue that neither is successful. I then suggest an alter...
متن کامل