First seeing the use of Wordle, it looked like a cool tool
but not necessarily one that would prove overly useful, asides from creating
flashy visuals to show the more common words in a particular text. But then I
began to wonder, what if I used this tool to compare texts, in particular
different items focused on the same subject. It would indeed create great
visuals, but it also keeps tabs on the number of times different words are used
throughout a text. Through doing this there is no doubt that I would come to
some interesting conclusions.
For this comparison I used the book Generation Kill. The book is written by Rolling Stone Magazine reporter Evan Wright and provides an in
depth first-hand account of the invasion of Iraq. Evan rode in the back seat of
a hummer, part of the United States Marine Corps First Reconnaissance
Battalion, Bravo Company. Yet, what proves most unique and beneficial in terms
of comparing the text is the fact that not only was the book turned into an HBO
mini-series, but a Marine who commanded the platoon of Humvees that Wright rode
in also wrote a book. Nathaniel Fick’s One
Bullet Away looks at his personal career in the Marine Corps, most of which
is focused on his time in Iraq. As Fick is a lieutenant it means that he was
almost always no more than two-hundred or so meters away from Wright, which in
turns means the two texts are covering very similar and at most times identical
events.
So long story short, I took the text from Fick’s One Bullet Away, the text from Wright’s Generation Kill and the transcript from
HBO’s Generation Kill and put them
into individual word clouds. This is done in all honesty to satisfy my
curiosity as I have read both books and watched the series several times. But
in terms of research it can be said that I did this to compare a text written from
the stance of the media/a non-combatant/someone with little knowledge in terms
of military (asides from a brief assignment in Afghanistan), compared to a
Marine lieutenant. I was also able to compare Generation Kill the book to the mini-series, which of course means
that there would be a difference from a text consisting mostly of descriptions
to a text consisting of primarily dialogue.
It is also important to keep in mind that while the series
is highly accurate in accordance to the text it’s based on and most of the
dialogue in the book has been translated to the series, there is still a large
quantity of “made up” dialogue in the HBO series. However because of the
creators great attention to detail and heavy communications with the marines
who the series is based on dialogue that is made up still bares the mannerisms,
similar opinions to an extent that it could have been said by the marines
themselves. This helps to assure that commonly said words would have most
likely been the words commonly used by the soldiers during the invasion.
Scene from HBO's Generation Kill, episode two "The Cradle of Civilization" |
Results of Wordle’s use to come in Part 2
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