2024/12/22 by Esther Shizgal, Shizgal, Esther, Eitan Wagner +5 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #Computational and Text Analysis Methods #Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Natural Language Processing Techniques #cs.CL
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.17063
openalex publication_date 2024/12/22 · arxiv published 2024/12/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · arxiv updated 2025/10/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This work presents a computational approach to analyze character development along the narrative timeline. The analysis characterizes the inner and outer changes the protagonist undergoes within a narrative, and the interplay between them. We consider transcripts of Holocaust survivor testimonies as a test case, each telling the story of an individual in first-person terms. We focus on the survivor's religious trajectory, examining the evolution of their disposition toward religious belief and practice along the testimony. Clustering the resulting trajectories in the dataset, we identify common sequences in the data. Our findings highlight multiple common structures of religiosity across the narratives: in terms of belief, most present a constant disposition, while for practice, most present an oscillating structure, serving as valuable material for historical and sociological research. This work demonstrates the potential of natural language processing techniques for analyzing character evolution through thematic trajectories in narratives.