Why do I use “I am” to introduce myself? Why not just Andrew? Why is “Nice to meet you, my name is Andrew” socially acceptable, but not “Hate to meet you, Andrew”? “Cool” can literally be used to describe cold or low temperature, but you can also use it to describe people being unbothered, or being calm and composed… All this is to say- Just hear me out! This may sound like a bunch of gibberish, but you can’t tell me you’ve never thought some words had weird meanings that didn’t really make sense… And that’s what I’m trying to find out!
This fellowship will allow me to find out what I’ll need to through looking at large portions of texts from ancient authors, help me sift through all sorts of old dictionaries and archives and help me find singular events, movements, trends that might’ve contributed to changing the meanings of words over time-leading to the words and meanings we are familiar with today. I’m mainly looking at literature and other media from the late 1800s to modern day in the U.S. The technology and tools from this DSSRF fellowship makes my life much easier and this project far more feasible by allowing me to look at and compare texts on a much larger scale with much less effort. Imagine life without keyword search! How many days it would take to find keywords by reading through a dozen books!
I hope to learn the skills to use the tools needed to answer my project, also to make a timeline and other ways of making my research presentable!
