The historical question that I was aiming to answer was, “What was it like to be an immigrant in the United States, and what kind of jobs did they have?”. The assumptions I had regarding this question was that it probably wasn’t a super easy adjustment and that immigrants took on “odd jobs”.
I searched “immigrant” and “immigration” when I was trying to find sources for my question. I would look at the “Subject Headings” before opening the PDF and I would look to see if any specific countries were part of the subject headings, which they usually were, along with the word “immigration”. I knew once I found those two headings listed, that it was a good document for me to read and possibly download.
My experience using Voyant Tools was a bit overwhelming at first. When I first uploaded my corpus, it was a bit overwhelming to see the five different displays that popped up on the screen. However, I found that the “cirrus” display which showed the most popular words in the corpus, was very useful. I liked being able to see what words are repeated the most because it gives anyone a general idea of what the document will entail. The best way to describe Voyant is the way Miriam Posner described it. 1 The corpus I chose to upload and explore were ones that were about immigrants. There was about 12 files within it. Many of the ones I uploaded were people who were of Latino/Hispanic descent and I was able to identify that by looking at the last names. I’m Hispanic, myself, so looking for Hispanic surnames in the .txt file name wasn’t too difficult.
My assumptions changed a good amount by using these text analysis tools. I stated that I figured the immigrants had “odd jobs” when they arrived in the United States, but by using the text analysis tools, many of the reoccurring words on the “cirrus” display proved differently. One example was that one document was about a man named Joseph Captiva, from Havana, and he was a fisherman in Massachusetts 2 Just by using the Voyant Tools, I was able to disprove an assumption I had, which I believe is pretty helpful. Pairing my findings with other reading helped me to contextualize these ideas that I had found.
Final conclusions I made about my historical question was that some immigrants when they came to the States during the late 1800s-1930s were able to acquire somewhat normal jobs. Their families were able to adapt well and refer to the U.S. as their home. I found the word “home” used quite often by using Voyant tools, which is another important thing to point out. Text analysis is a very useful tool that I plan to use again, especially if I’m doing any kind of research project. I think close reading is a lot easier to do versus distant reading, but distant reading requires less time. I view distant reading as “skimming” through stuff, which most people have done before. This assignment definitely helped me to learn useful ways to go over a document.
References
Banks, Ann. “American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1940, Introduction.” Library Of Congress, 1980. https://www.loc.gov/collections/federal-writers-project/articles-and-essays/introduction/
Posner, Miriam. “Investigating texts with Voyant.” Voyant Workshop, 2019. https://github.com/miriamposner/voyant-workshop/blob/master/investigating-texts-with-voyant.md
- “Voyant is a web-based tool for text analysis that is designed to combine ease of use with a sophisticated array of visualization methods.” (Miriam Posner, Investigating texts with Voyant, 2019.)
- “People who told stories of life and work during the 1930s include an Irish maid from Massachusetts after coming to the States. ” (Ann Banks, American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1940, Introduction, 1980.) This quote from this reading we did reminded me of the statement I had said. Many immigrants were able to get good jobs.
