This is pretty amazing news: Rare words 'author's fingerprint'
Really, isn't this amazing? I didn't know that writing could be so scientific.
Analysis yields authors' "linguistic fingerprint"
- Thread starter pink lily
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Literary fingerprints are also used by criminal profilers whenever someone writes a letter/manefesto to the local cops to try and get a handle on the person of interest. Also helps identify copycats since no two people write/describe things the same way.
Gosh, I feel silly, I knew about forensic linguistics but didn't even think about that when I posted the link to this story.
I understand the science behind this, but I do not, even for a second, believe it actually works. Using this method to say Shakespeare didn't write all of his plays may sound nice, but it doesn't discount the possibility he was trying to do something different. It's an interesting idea, but it's more of a hatchet than a scalpel. Surely it has something to tell us, but not enough to make us believers.
Hence the continuing arguments concerning works by Shakespeare and Homer... News such as this crops up, ooh, I'd say once every couple of years or so. Never fails to amuse me though.
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Elizabeth Friedman (Wife of famous cryptanalyst William Friedman and a skilled cryptanalyst in her own right) did a review of all of Shakespeare's works to hopefully settle the whole Bacon dispute.
Not only did she back up her arguments with the linguistic sciences of the time, she also wrote her findings as a cryptogram in the book to her main rival. *grin*
Not only did she back up her arguments with the linguistic sciences of the time, she also wrote her findings as a cryptogram in the book to her main rival. *grin*
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Yeah, the whole thing is depressingly circular. The very first attempt at author identification was to compare Shakespeare and Francis Bacon. They looked at the number of four and five letter words. This proved that Bacon did not write Shakespeare. Unfortunately, it "proved" that Marlowe did write Shakespeare. So they reject the number of four and five letter words as a yardstick.
If a test shows Shakespeare didn't write, say, Henry V, they reject that also. On the other hand, if a test shows that Shakespeare didn't write Titus Andronicus, they accept that test. But there are other reasons Titus might not match the other plays, such as it being early and the possibility that another author had a hand in it, which again is kind of pointless, because there's many plays that other authors probably had a hand in.
If a test shows Shakespeare didn't write, say, Henry V, they reject that also. On the other hand, if a test shows that Shakespeare didn't write Titus Andronicus, they accept that test. But there are other reasons Titus might not match the other plays, such as it being early and the possibility that another author had a hand in it, which again is kind of pointless, because there's many plays that other authors probably had a hand in.
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