"Measuring the Mind" - Prof. Dr. A. Glawion (FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg): Gender, speech acts and power: Digital analyses of editorial interventions in the Children's and Household Tales

As part of the research colloquium "Measuring the Mind", Prof. Dr. Anastasia Glawion from FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg will be giving a guest lecture, to which we would like to cordially invite you:

Between the first edition of 1812 and the last major edition of 1857, not only the style and target audience of the Children's and Household Tales changed, but also normative ideas of gender, morality and social order. Building on Ruth Bottigheimer's thesis of the increasing disciplining of female characters, this lecture examines how such shifts manifest themselves at the level of speech acts.

The focus is on a pilot study of Rapunzel and Allerleirauh, in which direct and indirect speech, speech act verbs and ascribed positions of power were systematically annotated. The analysis shows that editorial interventions do not primarily change the proportion of speech, but above all the embedding and evaluation of speech. Certain speech act verbs are increasingly used in a gender-specific way and linked to asymmetrical positions of power.

Methodologically, the article combines manual annotation with digital tools such as CATMA, LERA and automated speaker attribution. This reveals how digital processes can contribute to empirically testing and at the same time critically questioning literary-historical assumptions about gender and power. The lecture concludes with an outlook on scalable annotations and the development of more precise categories for power positions in narrative texts.