Coding Imagination Within Clear Guidelines

By Kenton Rambsy

This project cemented for the Data Rangers that imaginative texts still require disciplined systems when transformed into structured data.

Nandi Chase, a sophomore Economics major at Howard University, discovered that annotating literature is not an open-ended exercise in interpretation. She admitted that “turning literature into data has more moving pieces than I realized,” and the process is “more formulaic and less subject to interpretation than I expected.” While the stories may be imaginative, the coding follows defined guidelines to ensure the integrity of the dataset.

Speculative fiction proved to be an interesting challenge for Lyric Hoover, a junior English major at Howard, since she had to apply the same principles to imagined worlds. She explained that “annotating speculative fiction felt so different from annotating non-speculative fiction,” especially when elements like geography and settings “required a different perspective and analytical process.” She had to determine how imaginative settings and speculative elements still fit within clear guidelines since the categories remain consistent across all stories for coding dialogue, character, and space.

The reflections underscore how even though imaginative, literature can be translated into structured data, but only through disciplined judgment that respects both genre and guidelines.

Related:

• The Black Short Story Project