Speaker: Marijn Koolen, Rik Hoekstra, Ronald Sluijter and Joris Oddens
Affiliation: 1, Huygens Institute, Netherlands; 2, DHLab, KNAW Humanities Cluster, Netherlands
Title: Formulas and decision-making: the case of the States General of the Dutch Republic
Abstract: Formulaic expressions are commonly used in administrative texts, and may reflect standardisation of the decision-making process or its recording process. In this paper we investigate whether the use of formulas in the Resolutions of the Dutch States General (1576-1796) reveal an increase in standardisation. % We use stylometric analysis and measures of textual repetition to identify shifts in the use of formulas, and study how the fraction of paragraphs that is covered by formulas changes over time to identify templates consisting of frequent combinations of formulas. Our findings are that there are stylistically clearly distinguishable periods, and that the use of formulas and templates increases between subsequent periods.
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