Sentiment analysis of selected works by Mark Twain with the statistical software R

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to explore the possibilities of sentiment analysis by focusing on a selection of literary works by Mark Twain such as: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , The Prince and the Pauper , Tom Sawyer, Abroad , Tom Sawyer, Detective . The sentiment analysis is done in the programming language R and with the RStudio program, including software packages available through it. Since the process of doing sentiment analysis via RStudio is not fully automated, a script had to be written in order to accomplish the goal of doing sentiment analysis. The analysis of the selected works will be done in three ways. Firstly, by identifying the nine most frequent negative and positive sentiment words in every book separately. Secondly, visualizing the overall distribution of sentiment in every book in order to categorize the narratives into certain types of stories. Thirdly, by portraying the amount of negative and positive sentiment words that were used.