Tracing the Shift to "Objectivity" in German Encyclopedias of the Long Nineteenth Century

Thora Hagen, Leonard Konle, Erik Ketzan, Fotis Jannidis, Andreas Witt

Abstract: This paper presents experiments on tracing the shift toward "objectivity" in encyclopedias of the long nineteenth century, as discussed by scholars, via query of surface features (personal pronoun, exclamation points, and interjections) and emotion analysis. We report a decline in these personal and emotive, and thus less "objective", textual characteristics.