I completed my study in distant reading on Mark Twainâs A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurâs Court. Before I began the word analysis, I read a brief description of the novel so that I would have some elementary knowledge of its framework. The book is about an engineer from Connecticut who is accidentally transported back in time to the era of King Arthur; the engineer, thought to be a magician, uses modern technology to fool the people from that time period into thinking he is a magician (wiki). Knowing a little about the plot, and even reading the title, prepared me to expect certain words in my findings. So, it was no surprise that the second most common word in the entire novelâsirâis used three hundred fifty-three times. Not far behind are words like king and knight(s). The most commonly used word (apart from stop words) is said. This is a word I would expect to be common, but not the most common. Significant finding number one: because said is used four hundred times, I can only assume that this novel is significantly heavy with dialogue.Â
           Another one of the top five most common words in Twainâs novel is time. It is used three hundred-nine times. At first, this did not seem particularly significant since the book is about a man who goes back in time. No matter how general the word, though, some significance lies in the use of that word in over three hundred instances. I wanted to know more about how time is used in the novel. Is Twain referring mostly to specific timeâin measurements of seconds, minutes, and hours? Is Twain referring mostly to a more general timeâin terms of an âeraâ or âperiodâ? In order to find out more about the use of time, I searched for related terms: year(s), month(s), day(s), night(s), young, old, new, etc. First, I will note that time is used three hundred-nine times; times is used thirty-nine times. âTimesâ has a different connotation than âtime.â Specifically, âtimesâ bears the implication of a broad scope of time and is not typically associated with units of measurement (such as seconds, minutes, etc.). Rather, it is usually conceptually synonymous with terms like âzeitgeistâ (the spirit of an age). There is a big difference between âWhat time is it?â and âThe times, they are aâchanginâ.â Because times is used significantly less than time, I figured most of the references to time in the novel are specific and measured. Sure enough, century occurs thirty times; year(s) is used one hundred twenty times; month(s)â23; day(s)â205; night(s)â69; minute(s)â45. Significant finding number two: The book is very concerned with specific measurements of time.
           Another observation that really interested me is the number of words that were related to religion. Words like âchurchâ (55 times) and âpriest(s)â (39 times) appear very frequently. However, words that refer to other supernatural concepts are just as prevalent: âmagicâ (16 times); âmagicianâ (22 times); âmiracleâ (41 times). Because of the high frequency of both religious words and magic words, it is possible that the novel investigates a conflict of ideas between loyalty to church and magic. Significant finding number three: The novel seems to be very invested in exploring a higher power through religion and magic. Â