好色先生TV

What do a Soviet soldier scribbling on scrap paper during wartime and a 1990s diarist typing on a computer have in common? According to research from 好色先生TV scholars, far more than you might think.

Using computational humanities methods and traditional close reading, the researchers 聽analyzed more than a thousand personal diaries written in Russian from the early 20^th century through the end of the Soviet era. They found that across vastly different historical, social and material contexts, diarists consistently returned to a familiar mix of themes, including introspection, routine cataloging and reflection on the diary as a literary object.

鈥淚 think it suggests that the diary has stronger generic constraints than we might assume,鈥� Tatyana Gershkovich, lead author of the study. 鈥淪o when you sit down to write a diary, you might think that, you know, 鈥楾his is me. I'm pouring myself out on the page,鈥� that it's kind of the most unvarnished form of writing. But in fact, even in this act that seems quite intimate, there are already built-in expectations of what the text will look like.鈥�

Gershkovich, an associate professor of Russian studies in CMU鈥檚 Department of Languages, Cultures and Applied Linguistics; co-authored the study with Madeline Kehl, a 2019 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh; and , a professor in CMU鈥檚 Department of Social and Decision Sciences. Their paper, published in , explored the vast archive, a St. Petersburg-based project that has collected a mass of diaries written by individuals from all walks of life.

Studying Diaries of Others

The researchers did find two noticeable categories of diarists: some were very concerned with the literary aspects of their writing, and others were not.

鈥淏ecause I'm a literature scholar, it did stand out to me how many practitioners of diaristic writing looked to other diarists,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hey鈥檇 read diaries that were circulating in various publications, journals and so forth. So, the idea is that the diary is a literary kind of genre like any other, that it circulates and exists in this literary ecosystem in a full-fledged way.鈥�

The researchers found the people who looked to those examples were more traditionally educated. They explain these writers may have conformed to norms of the genre, even unconsciously, guided by a sense of what a diary 鈥渙ught鈥� to contain.

A Computational Approach to Understanding Diary Keeping

Through their study, the scholars sought to clear up important misconceptions about diary-keeping, particularly in the Soviet era. There had been a commonly held view that diary writing had nearly disappeared in the 1930s and 1940s, often for fear of arrest. Prominent literary scholar Nikolai Bogomolov was among those who revised this view as the Prozhito archive grew. Bogomolov ultimately urged a 鈥渂ig data鈥� approach to the study of diaries.

鈥淥ur study responds to Bogomolov鈥檚 exhortation by demonstrating how a bird鈥檚-eye view of a vast archive, enabled by digital analysis, can amend misconceptions about diary-keeping and the literary forces that shape it,鈥� the co-authors wrote.

An interdisciplinary effort, the CMU analysis used a novel computational reading technique 鈥� Semantic Collocational Clustering 鈥� to identify all mentions of the Russian words for 鈥渄iary鈥� (鈥�诲苍别惫苍颈办鈥�听/听鈥�锄补辫颈蝉办颈鈥�). This helped the researchers to pinpoint where each author consciously reflected on the practice of diary-keeping.聽

鈥淭he digital approach can be like a metal detector on a beach,鈥� Gershkovich said. 鈥淚t identifies where to look for something that seems interesting. And then the deeper digging is pursued with more traditional methods of close reading and interpretation.鈥澛�

For DeDeo, a study like this is crucial for the psychological sciences.

鈥淪cientists love laboratory experiments 鈥� tests we do on subjects who visit our lab for a few minutes on a weekday afternoon. This is very different: a window onto how humans live and record their lives over tumultuous decades. It was a great surprise, to me, to find this stability, which seems to be telling us something fundamental about how the mind handles memory and how writing changes and channels it. I鈥檒l be trying to understand it for a while to come.鈥�

鈥淧ublic Patterns in Private Writing: Computational Insights into Russophone Diaries鈥� was supported, in part, by funding from Carnegie Mellon鈥檚 Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.