The aim of this study is to compare the speeches of two important Czechoslovak politicians – Edvard Beneš and Klement Gottwald. Thematic words (TW) and keywords (KW) of their speeches broadcasted on radio during World War II (1939–1945) are analysed. Although these methods are related, each of them provides different perspectives on the issue. Thematic words are based on the frequency distribution of the analysed text itself, whereas keywords are generated through the comparison of two corpora (namely Beneš versus Gottwald). Since Czech is a highly inflective language, all texts are lemmatized. Beneš led the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London from 1939 to 1945. Gottwald, as the leader of the Communist Party, emigrated to Moscow in 1938. The results show that their differing political orientations, enhanced by their time in exile, influenced the language of their speeches. Beneš emphasized democratic principles, while Gottwald promoted communist revolutionary ideas. Gottwald’s speeches were also considerably more offensive and direct. The results also show that both politicians emphasized the importance of the Soviet Union in World War II, whereas only Beneš mentioned the United Kingdom.
Rewriting books was a widespread phenomenon during the Baroque period of the Czech literature. The manuscripts were not always „honest copies”, on the contrary, scribes often compiled several sources or added their own texts to the original. The famous book Golden Key of Heaven by Martin of Cochem is compared with a manuscript Key of Heaven from a Regional museum in the town of Náchod. We use two statistical methods, both of them strongly indicate that the manuscript is a copy of some chapters from the Golden Key of Heaven rather than a compilation.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.