(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
(reader, criticks); they may be products (poem, fable, book, works, tragedy, verse,
poetry, opera, Paradise (Lost)); or they may refer to something that a poet does in a
poem (description). Five of the top ten keywords also fall under this heading. Clearly,
literature, and more particularly poetry, is one of the major topics of discussion in
Addison’s essays. Famously, he discusses Milton’s Paradise Lost in eighteen numbers
of The Spectator, starting in number 269 and ending in number 369, and this is reflected
in the composition of Addison’s keywords.
A look at the concordances for the top five literary keywords also confirms the
centrality of literary discussion to Addison’s contributions to the periodical. The only
content-bearing collocate for Homer is Virgil, and the string Homer and Virgil occurs
ten times, these two poets being the classical standard against which Addison regularly
compares Milton’s accomplishments. As for the word Milton itself the concordance also
gives just a single meaning-bearing collocate, genius (five times), pointing to Addison’s
positive evaluation of the poet.
Concordances for poem and poet tell a similar tale. The major non-functional collocates
for poem at L1 – the position directly preceding poem in the concordance lines – are
heroic(k), epic and Milton’s, namely the (types of) poems that Addison evaluates. The
most common non-functional L1 collocates for poet are Greek (on most occasions
Homer) and great, indicating the evaluative nature of the discussions. At R1, directly
following the keyword, the main collocate is functional has. Addison, in his discussion
of Paradise Lost, often refers to what Milton has achieved in the poem, for example,
‘The Poet has very finely represented the Joy and Gladness of Heart which rises in
Adam’ (no. 369), also indicating the evaluative nature of his prose.
As for reader there are two uses that are notable and which are reflected in its main L1
collocates. These are the (133 times) and my (61 times). In the majority of the examples
‘the reader’ is either ‘the reader of a piece of literature’ (for example, when referring to
Paradise Lost, ‘He (Milton) continually instructs the Reader’ in no. 303), or, as with
‘my reader’, it is a direct address to the reader of The Spectator. In the latter case
Addison often attempts to evoke solidarity of opinion with the reader by using will or
may – ‘The Reader will see that this is rather an Imitation than a Translation’ (no. 229),
‘The Reader may guess at the figure I made…’ (no. 7). Here the importance of
inspecting concordance lines before assigning meaning to keywords should be
underlined. This particular keyword has a function that may have been hidden from us if
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